Industry Context
In today’s market, labor costs are constantly rising. For retail units, reducing overtime costs and optimizing legal work hours can significantly streamline budgets and improve overall efficiency.
Client challenge
Retailers traditionally faced manual and cumbersome processes for scheduling and managing work shifts. This inefficiency led to increased labor costs and challenges in ensuring compliance with labor laws. There was a need for a solution that could handle unexpected situations in real-time and facilitate seamless communication between employees and employers.
Approach
shiftin was developed as a comprehensive solution for efficient employee planning, work shift management, and workforce optimization. The platform ensures seamless communication between employees and employers by addressing last-minute and unforeseen situations in real-time. Key features of the approach included:
- Automated scheduling: store managers can create shifts based on store requirements, peak hours, sales trends, and operational needs. The platform assigns roles and time slots for various store activities, ensuring a balanced workload distribution in compliance with labor laws.
- Employee preferences: employees can express their availability, request time off, or shift swaps through a user-friendly interface on both mobile and web applications.
- Real-time notifications: shiftin notifies managers of any shift change requests, allowing timely review and approval. Employees receive notifications once their requests are approved, ensuring clarity and transparency in scheduling.
- Regional optimization: regional managers can oversee multiple stores within a city or area, using shiftin to optimize employee allocation between stores, cover unassigned shifts, and resolve workload imbalances efficiently.
Results
shiftin delivered significant improvements in scheduling efficiency and cost management for retail operations. The benefits included:
- Operational efficiency: streamlined shift planning and reduced overtime costs by optimally covering legal work hours.
- Improved employee satisfaction: by accommodating scheduling preferences and leave requests, employee satisfaction and retention increased.
- Enhanced communication: clear and transparent scheduling processes reduced conflicts and improved workplace harmony.
- Regulatory compliance: automatic generation of timesheets ensured compliance with labor laws, reducing the risk of fines and providing organized, verifiable records of employee hours.
- Cost optimization: effective use of available resources reduced labor costs and allowed the retailer to operate successfully in a market with rising wages.
User goals
shiftin addressed the primary goals and objectives of retail managers:
- Efficient shift coverage: ensured all shifts were adequately covered based on real-time needs.
- Work-life balance: allowed staff to express their preferences for working hours and request time off.
- Avoiding scheduling conflicts: automated scheduling reduced the risk of conflicts and ensured smooth operations.
User needs
The solution catered to specific needs and pain points of retail operations:
- Accessibility: available on both web and mobile, allowing users to manage schedules from anywhere.
- Real-time updates: immediate notifications and updates on schedule changes, approvals, and requests.
- Cost optimization: consideration of employee availability and preferences for cost-effective scheduling.
User cases
Specific scenarios where shiftin’s scheduling app proved beneficial:
- Creating and managing shift schedules: Enabled managers to schedule the entire organization with just a few clicks.
- Requesting time off: Allowed employees to request leave from anywhere, with instant approval notifications.
- Receiving shift notifications: Notified employees of schedule changes, shift openings, and approvals.
- Viewing colleague schedules: Provided transparency and collaboration among team members.
- Business workload management: Managers could adjust expected workloads and automatically reschedule staff.
- Group scheduling: Applied specific rules for scheduling staff associated with particular groups.
User stories
Detailed user stories to illustrate the practical use of shiftin’s features:
Retail employee:
- Can request time off, sick leave, family leave, or holidays.
- Receives notifications for approvals or rejections of requests.
- Is notified of any schedule changes.
- Can consult the latest version of their schedule and their team’s schedule.
Store Manager
- Can change daily expected capacity for the store.
- Can ask shiftin to recommend optimal staff structures.
- Can manually validate or alter shiftin’s recommendations.
- Can solve unexpected staffing shortages using shiftin’s suggestions.
Regional manager:
- Can oversee and optimize employee allocation across multiple stores.
- Can transfer employees between stores to cover unassigned shifts or resolve workload imbalances.
HR/Operations manager:
- Can configure business and legal rules for teams.
- Can assign employees to specific groups.
- Can set scheduling rules for groups to optimize workforce distribution.
shiftin transformed retail workforce management by providing a robust, user-friendly platform that enhanced planning, improved communication, and ensured legal compliance. The solution empowered both managers and employees, resulting in increased efficiency, reduced administrative tasks, and higher employee satisfaction.
