The original convenience store (c-store) concept was a gas station add-on enabling consumers to grab a soda and pre-packaged snack while pumping fuel. Over the decades, it has grown into a complex retail environment serving multiple consumer needs. Modern convenience stores offer a range of products beyond fuel and snacks (see Part 2), including groceries, fresh cooked food, customizable sodas and coffees, alcohol, health and beauty products, and more.

To accommodate new offerings, c-stores have grown their real estate footprint and the size of their workforce. Effectively managing a larger employee pool, in addition to navigating retail challenges including labor shortage, changing customer expectations and regulatory mandates like predictive scheduling, requires a sophisticated, data-driven approach to demand forecasting that supports accurate and effective labor planning, scheduling and execution.

Evolution of convenience retailing

Over the past three decades, consumer demand for convenience store shopping has exploded. The industry has grown to more than 152,000 stores in 2023, according to NACS. Where before most c-stores were single-store businesses, two decades of industry consolidation have resulted in many chains with dozens of stores and some that operate hundreds and even thousands of stores. In both the U.S. and the U.K., the larger chains have become increasingly dominant, setting the industry trends and shaping and adapting to consumer shopping preferences.

U.S. c-stores are becoming all-in-one shopping destinations where customers can pick up essential frozen, fresh and pantry groceries, fill up the tank, and grab takeout breakfast, lunch or dinner. Some c-stores prepare their own fresh food, others have incorporated fast-food franchises within the four walls of the store. Increasingly, convenience stores are popping up within interstate rest areas and mass transit stations.

The unique role of convenience stores opens new opportunities to meet consumer needs

Convenience stores offer consumers a unique value proposition. In terms of speed and ease of shopping, there’s no comparison between c-stores and traditional grocers or quick-service restaurants. NACS Speed Metrics Research revealed that customers come inside, choose items, pay for them and depart a convenience store in just three to four minutes. This short duration between entering the store and completing checkout means stores must be optimally staffed and prepared to deliver efficient customer service across a variety of areas.

Customers count on convenience stores for:

  • The first cup of coffee that carries them through their commute to work
  • A quick stop for fuel and a consistent food experience when they are traveling
  • A convenient place to pick up takeout dinner on a hectic day
  • The closest source of essential groceries in many rural towns and urban food deserts

As stores continue to level-up based on consumer demand for healthier fresh foods, a wider selection of mini-grocery offerings, barista-level coffee, and more, their operational complexities expand in parallel. These innovations provide important opportunities to grow the business and open new revenue streams, and c-stores are now competing directly against traditional grocers and quick-serve restaurants for a greater share of consumer spending. However, success with these expanded offerings requires that c-stores equip themselves with the ability to manage and schedule the additional people and activities needed to support them.

Leveling-up requires a new labor model

Offering new products and services means convenience stores must expand labor budgets and hire and train more employees. Beyond the traditional three employee tasks of stocking, cashiering and cleaning, the new model of expanded operations depends on an expanded staff trained in how to bake donuts, make pizzas and chicken tenders, tend to a coffee bar, and maintain food safety.

Traditionally, a small c-store might only need one or two employees per shift. Today’s operations might require several people during busy times, and managers need to match employees with the right skills to the tasks at hand. For example, you might only need cashiering and stocking at midnight on a Tuesday. Fast forward to 12 am Saturday in a college town with a home football game, and you may need a whole team of pizza and snack cooks to keep up with demand for late-night treats.

Accurate demand forecasting provides the foundation to effectively plan, schedule and execute store operations

C-stores must be able to forecast customer traffic as well as peak demand for fresh-cooked items with great precision. Better forecasting will ensure stores schedule the right team members at the right times to satisfy customer demand. It also helps avoid food waste by ensuring employees cook the right amount of food to fill customer demand quickly while avoiding spoilage.

Before creating a schedule, store managers need to forecast what will happen in the coming weeks. This includes predicting sales volumes at the item level and preparing for the associated workload at the task level. The accuracy of these forecasts will drive both inventory management and labor management for the store.

Advanced AI forecasting technology helps c-store operators optimize scheduling and contain labor costs while ensuring an excellent customer experience. The best solutions produce multi-dimensional, multi-layered forecasts that project demand based on historical sales and additional aspects like weather, holidays and seasonality that all impact foot traffic. With an understanding of demand and precisely what work needs to be done, a good forecasting solution works with labor modeling and labor standards inputs to understand how much time it takes to perform specific tasks, like stocking a shelf, preparing a pizza, refilling the soda machine, and baking the donuts, and how many people are required at what times for adequate coverage. The resulting forecast predicts the times of day and number of repetitions these tasks will take place.

Integrated with state-of-the-art scheduling capabilities containing advanced AI logic driving compliance with rules, availability, priorities and more culminates in a schedule with the right amount of task coverage by people with the documented skills to perform those tasks. And to meet the expectations of today’s connected workforce, communicating both schedules and tasks to staff through a mobile interactive employee portal that provides work assignments, task guidance and enables self-service activities like changing availability, bidding on or swapping shifts further facilitates both operational effectiveness and employee satisfaction.

A demand forecasting solution that produces a reliably accurate baseline forecast weeks in advance and subsequently refines that forecast via continuous reforecasting over time based on real-time information not only improves operational results, but can also ultimately translate into better recruiting and retention results by helping c-stores offer more flexible and predictable schedules. Pinpointing the number of people and skills needed for any shift well in advance facilitates schedule building and advance communication of employee schedules to help comply with Fair Work regulations and predictive scheduling rules. Automated scheduling and self-service further enable stores’ ability to generate highly accurate task-level schedules while streamlining and honoring employee preferences, communication with managers and peers, shift changes, job resources and more.

In closing

Convenience stores have come a long way since their pared-down origins, and their expanded breadth of offerings has translated into more complicated staffing and operational needs. An expanded labor model and sophisticated AI demand forecasting integrated with powerful AI scheduling logic and task management capabilities set the foundation to optimize operations and create positive employee and customer experiences. As convenience stores continue to evolve, successful operators will leverage these advanced technologies to streamline labor planning, scheduling, tasks and store execution while enhancing profitability and competitive edge.

Mary Field, Implementation Advisor (US)
Julie Monaco, Director of Product Management, Scheduling and Staffing (US)
Andrew Drozinski, Senior Customer Program Manager (US)

When talking with retailers today, it is common to hear about staffing shortages. Staffing shortages are not new. They may not have been national or global challenges, but they can and have impacted different geographies and business sectors and for a variety of reasons. Many retailers attribute the current shortages to the pandemic and resulting drastic shifts in the workers’ attitudes toward work-life balance. Whether wholly attributable to the pandemic or not, the workforce is changing. If you have avoided staffing shortages up to this point, chances are you will encounter them at some point in the future. So, how do you attract and retain employees who no longer can or will commit to a set availability? No longer can or want to work regularly outside the home? Who want extra income but not a recurring scheduling commitment?

In the past, retailers have approached the challenge of worker shortages in a variety of ways. These may have included offering flexible shifts, offering incentives such as a free meal or employee discount, cross-utilization throughout the store, more overtime or increasing maximum hours for part-time employees.

One option that is gaining ground with both retailers and workers is flexible scheduling or, more specifically, “gig” scheduling.

Gig scheduling is the practice of creating open shifts eligible for bidding by pre-approved gig workers in your organization, thereby effectively expanding the associate pool for shift coverage. This kind of shift bidding is not an entirely new concept but has seen a surge of interest in recent years as mobile apps make it easier for employees to interact with the scheduling process. Managers post a shift for bid, and eligible employees can bid on the shift. This expands the retailer’s access to an associate pool across their business, improving utilization and costs and increasing the potential to cover all hours needed to deliver their differentiating service and offerings.

But who exactly is a potential gig worker? It’s a parent that would like to pick up shifts when they have a babysitter. It’s the retired employee who no longer needs or wants a set schedule but would like to stay busy and make some money from time to time. It’s the college student who, when they are not studying or at a school event, would like to earn some extra money at a store nearby. And it’s the trained employee who wants to pick up shifts at their own availability and preference.

Gig scheduling is a win-win for both employee and retailer. With gig scheduling, unscheduled shifts due to labor shortages are posted for all trained employees to view and bid on. By including gig workers when posting shifts, the retailer can expand the pool of labor beyond their current in-house employees who are often already scheduled at max availability.

Just as the workforce has changed, the retail environment continues to evolve. With the rise of e-commerce through ship-to-store, store pick-up, and various delivery services, customer demand has changed. Shift bidding and gig scheduling are beneficial tools that can assist businesses combat unpredictable and fluctuating demand. The power of being able to post a shift on short notice and know there are gig workers waiting to pick up shifts is a reassuring feeling.

So, what does the future hold for this new retail environment?

Just as gig scheduling is an extension of shift bidding, crowdsourcing is the next step for gig scheduling. In crowdsourcing, the pool of labor is expanded even further to a labor pool that may sit entirely outside of your organization. While gig workers as we have discussed are already your employees preapproved by you to bid on shifts outside their primary store and departments, crowdsource workers are not your employees. They are workers vetted and preapproved by you to bid on shifts for specific roles, departments and stores. With appropriate training, these resources could be given access to bid on shifts not schedulable due to current labor shortages within your store. The flexibility of bidding designs and workflows is endless.

With a workforce looking for flexibility and labor demands constantly changing, scheduling systems need to offer options that meet these demands. Gig and flexible scheduling seem like a sure thing.

Jim Wegeleben, Senior Manager of Logile Academy
Kathleen O’Reilly, Academy Specialist

In our three-part Gig Scheduling and Crowdsourcing series, we’ve explored Employee Open Shift Bidding and What Are Gig Employees? Now we’d like to turn your attention to another, virtually untapped, talent pool we call “Crowdsource Workers.”

The need to find employees to work is never-ending. Are you spending a tremendous amount of time searching for qualified applicants? Have your recent search efforts resulted in smaller groups of applicants? Although you would prefer to choose from a larger selection of qualified applicants, do you find yourself having to compromise some qualifications in order to accept candidates from the few that applied?

Consider the typical current hiring steps:

  • Contact the local employment office to send people over.
  • Spend money to place a “Help Wanted” ad in the local newspaper.
  • Contact the local high schools/colleges to post available jobs.
  • Call to set up an interview.
  • Take the time to interview.
  • Select the candidate.
  • Make an offer.
  • Wait and see.

A lot of steps and effort as you grapple with not enough applicants and not ideal candidates. What if you could consider potential workers outside of your organization to pick up an available shift as they wanted? How could you go about obtaining that type of worker?

Let’s start by defining this group of workers.

We’ll call them crowdsource workers because the hiring process involves individuals obtaining work via the internet when using smartphone apps. A potential crowdsource worker is an individual not currently working under the organizational banner. They could be a retiree, a stay-at-home parent looking to earn some extra cash, or an employee working for another organization. These individuals have the time and the qualifications to be considered as a candidate for hire. Once they are approved to work at the organization, they are considered a crowdsource worker and gain access to shifts that are up for bidding.

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Consider an example:

Dan has recently retired. He thought staying at home working in the garage on his wood projects could pass the time. It has only been about six months and he is already out of ideas for things to build. Dan is bored and wants to do something different with his time. He sees an ad from his local grocery store encouraging people that want to pick up a few hours of work to consider this “Gig Scheduling” thing.

Dan’s first thought is “What is gig scheduling?” But after a few minutes reading the download from the company, it is something he thinks could benefit him now. He is familiar with the idea of gig work because he has used ride-share services accessed through a mobile app. Dan thinks picking up a few shifts during the week would keep him busy. He could decide when, where and how long to work each time. The more Dan thinks about it, the more the idea appeals to him. He decides to contact the store for more information on how to apply.

As a crowdsource worker, Dan could continue to work even though he is officially retired. Becoming a crowdsource worker sounds like a perfect fit for what is going on in his life now.

How does it work?

Individuals already working for the organization, including gig workers, should have the first chance when it comes to shift bidding, receiving the open shift broadcast before a crowdsource worker. First-dib privileges are a way the organization can demonstrate loyalty and appreciation, recognizing and rewarding the value of the gig worker’s contribution and willingness to help support the organization. But, if a shift is still available after a designated time has passed, the unfulfilled open shifts are broadcast out to the crowdsource workers.

The crowdsource worker selects the hours and shifts for the week from what is made available. The number and frequency of shifts bid on are determined by the individual, but it can significantly lighten the burden of store managers trying to find employees, especially during these unique and challenging times.

Both gig and crowdsource workers use the same mobile application. The manager writes the schedule, identifies the open shifts, broadcasts, receives the shift bids and then assigns the work. In either case, training of some sort will occur, so the individual is capable of fulfilling the on-the-job task requirements.

What is next?

Speaking of training, something worth consideration at this juncture regarding an implementation strategy is bubbling up to the surface. We’re thinking about an opportunity, a two-pronged approach demonstrating a good example of the genius of “and.”

What if your gig workers could facilitate the opportunity for you to redeploy to serve critical business needs? By providing strategically focused training, such as daily on-the-job coaching, and rapid skills training, you could meet the needs of customers at a faster and more efficient rate. The flexibility the skills training offers the schedule writer has significant potential. They would be able to fill shifts from the get-go with skilled, trained employees and prioritize from within. Crowdsourced workers could be considered as candidates for additional skills training as well.

Research shows that promoting a culture of learning is beneficial to both the business and the employee. Receiving educational resources is perceived by the employee as the organization being supportive and their job satisfaction index increases. Additionally, when people stay where they are acknowledged and valued, the organization reaps the benefits of cost avoidance when it comes to spending time, money and resources on recruiting, hiring and training.

Conclusion

Crowdsource workers provide another alternative resource to a very compromised retail staffing situation. Implementing a gig-style scheduling and gig/crowdsource worker strategy is an elegant and creative solution for retailers looking for relief from a vicious overtime/burnout scenario.

As you reflect on gig scheduling and crowdsourcing, be sure to identify your needs, both current and future. The pandemic caused a ripple effect with businesses in many ways. The concern we are talking about in this series is ensuring you have a competent, qualified employee pool to take care of your customers. Without your customers, it is just a matter of time before other decisions are made about the future of your business.

Jim Wegeleben, Senior Manager of Logile Academy
Kathleen O’Reilly, Academy Specialist

In the first post of the three-part series, Gig Scheduling and Crowdsourcing: Prelude – Employee Open Shift Bidding, we introduced shift bidding, its importance, and the significant positive effect it could have on your organization’s ability to assign shifts and more effectively staff your stores. The series continues as we introduce the similarities and differences between what we call, “Gig Employees” and “Crowdsource Workers,” both of whom are the people bidding on open shifts.

In this post, let’s focus on gig scheduling and our concept of gig employees: Gig employees are people currently working under the organizational banner, have availability and typically work within the store or at a nearby store location.

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The perfect storm

Let’s pause to reflect and quantify what has transpired to create a perfect employee shortage storm. Many brick and mortar retailers were caught unprepared for the staffing ramifications and consequences resulting from the pandemic. Unprecedented workforce shortages were triggered in part because of a widespread employee mindset shift regarding work/life balance. The pandemic, restrictions and governmental assistance programs provided the circumstantial foundation for that shift to occur. Even as the pandemic becomes less acute, employees are:

  • choosing to stay at home or pursue more flexible work arrangements
  • taking time to reassess, find another job or move to an entirely different line of work
  • working from home to help care for family, especially children

Some retailers are finding the resulting reduced employee talent pool to be a huge challenge. Some are not able to operate effectively with increased business demand. Others trying to get fully back into business after being mandated to close, reduce hours or reduce the number of customers are finding it challenging to retain employees and keep the operation up and running. This problem is more acute for retailers whose staffing model is operating with small rosters, sometimes as few as one or two employees.

That means retailers have had to make tough decisions. These include paying overtime to compensate for the lack of available and qualified employees to fill shifts coupled with working managers and employees way beyond the norm. Paying for overtime impacts the bottom line, but an equally big impact is employee burnout. How long can an employee endure an unrelenting overtime schedule? They begin to question if the extra income is worth the time away from family and the fatigue.

A case in point

Sally is a mother of two kids, ages 7 and 9. She is working as a cashier earning extra money while her kids are at school. Through the pandemic, Sally was not affected at work but has seen the store business increase dramatically and sees her supervisor struggling to get more employees. Sally is considered a part-time employee and can get more hours, but her concern is the shifts being offered are not conducive to her kids and her life. Sally knows other departments or nearby affiliate stores are looking for employees to fill shifts. She could be available to pick up some shifts during the week, but Sally has been assigned to a specific position and is not being considered by the store manager for other departments or roles. Sally talked with her supervisor a couple of times but a workable solution/opportunity hadn’t presented itself for consideration. Sally is happy with her current role. She simply wants more hours that work with her lifestyle and personal commitments.

Within every challenge lies an opportunity

Would it benefit Sally to be considered and have access to shift bidding? Could Sally work additional shifts and accommodate her family schedule and lifestyle? Would it benefit the store to put shifts up for bid to see if someone outside of the department would be available to work a shift? Sally, her family and her employer would all reap benefits. If Sally’s organization implemented gig scheduling, Sally could become a gig employee.

How gig scheduling and gig employees interact

After a schedule is written, any unfilled shifts are broadcast and put up for bid, aka gig scheduling. A preapproved and available employee—the gig employee—is first in line and can bid on a shift using a mobile app. Upon managerial approval, bid shifts are assigned and gig employees are managed by the department and store managers.

To gain access to shifts put up for bid, an employee must first download the app, submit a request for shift bidding, and receive approval from the company and store manager before receiving any broadcast shifts up for bid. This ensures store and managerial oversight of the process. Following approval, an employee may receive the appropriate skills training so they can perform the specific tasks associated with the shift work.

A performance rating system, set up consistently across the organization and informed by the retailer’s specific work culture, could also be used to gather information to help manage performance, program management and training and integrate the gig employee into the particular store. The ratings could function similar to ratings systems like, for instance, ride-share apps.

Change management and communication strategy

With any new initiative, it makes good business sense to couple that initiative with a well thought out and implemented change management strategy. People, processes and communication plans must be in place and tested to vet the change. Implementing a new gig scheduling initiative within an organization requires the care and attention to detail so that all involved can share in the initiative’s success.

With the approval of gig scheduling in your organization, it is vital that first your employees are aware of the opportunity. What will a communication strategy look like? Is it:

  • a sign posted by the time clock?
  • a printed flyer handed out with pay checks?
  • left in the hands of each manager to decide what works best for their team?

Your own specific organizational culture will have a big impact on the best way to roll gig scheduling out.

Conclusion

With gig scheduling, the gig employee can begin to partner with the organization to create a work schedule that revolves around their personal schedule and so gaining an improved sense of work/life balance. In our final post in this blog series, we’ll take a deeper dive into the specific details of crowdsource workers needed to take into consideration when implementing gig scheduling. Stay tuned.

Jim Wegeleben, Senior Manager of Logile Academy
Kathleen O’Reilly, Academy Specialist

Gig scheduling. Crowdsourcing. Those terms are being heard by retailers everywhere nowadays. So what are they, really? And what do they mean? In this series of three posts, we will be discussing just that. First, we will describe “open shift bidding” and what benefit it could have for your business. We will continue with additional posts that will describe what gig employees are and what crowdsource workers are. We want to introduce you to a largely untouched resource that is available for consideration, especially amongst the ever-changing environment employers and employees are faced with today.

Working in grocery retail in particular, you learn how to maneuver around the challenges of staffing your location to take care of customers. Looking back at our own experience in retail over the past 10-20 years, maintaining the appropriate staffing level was one of the biggest challenges. Sometimes we reached out to relatives of employees to get people to fill positions. In the smaller communities, it was not uncommon for a husband, wife and child, or an aunt and uncle to all work in the same location. But this usually isn’t a good solution in most areas. Still, the challenge remains all the same.

The other example worth mentioning is the roller-coaster ride most retailers (not just grocery retailers) experience when staffing their stores. This “Warm Body Syndrome” has been happening as long as we can remember. You probably know what Warm Body Syndrome is—if a pool of applicants for a position is scarce, an applicant gets a job offer just because they came in for the interview.

Consider this grocery retail example. You are the store manager and have approved the following 4 postings to prepare for increased business:

  • One deli clerk to work closing shifts
  • One bakery clerk to work opening shifts
  • One front-end bagger to work after school
  • One grocery stocker to work overnights

You begin your search, set up interviews, and you find one application for the deli, two applications for the front-end bagger, and no applicants for the bakery or grocery positions. The first reaction you have is “Great we have a couple people we can hire.” The second thought you have is how you are going to manage without staffing the bakery and grocery for the business. Sound familiar?

Today, staffing your location remains as challenging as ever. Recent events have only emphasized the challenge of finding qualified employees. The pandemic served as a catalyst for a mass exodus of workers from their jobs by providing a pause from the hectic pace of day-to-day survival and constantly being on the run. A bigger question we are hearing is: “The impact these events have triggered, will they actually go away or improve when the pandemic recedes?” We don’t think so.

Lockdowns forced many retailers to allow specific employee roles to stay home and work remotely. Employers found it to be a more effective work model for their business. Employees liked not getting dressed for work, getting in the car, and driving to work in traffic. It was easier working from home wearing comfy, casual attire. Employees were able to decide when and, sometimes, for how long to work. It certainly gave them an opportunity to compare one style of work against another, and some ended up deciding to change employment permanently. Others seem to have chosen just not to work. The causes are complex. Certainly in the beginning assistance for workers being displaced or reduced in their job made it an easier choice for many to stay at home and care for their families. However, even after specific pandemic assistance ended, many did not return to prior jobs. Have they chosen to stay home and care for family who continue to be displaced? Have they found other employment?

The problem

The applicant field for many businesses to select qualified employees from has been reduced. No matter the reason, more employees are working from home, many employees have decided to change where they work or made a choice not to work. So, as a retailer, where does this leave you and what do you do?

“Reality” is that you have shifts to fill. You have work that needs to get done. You don’t have enough employees to do it.

Being occasionally short-staffed is a solvable challenge, but too much overtime leads to burnout, which is coupled with a huge impact on the bottom line. Being perpetually short-staffed requires a sustainable solution.

The solution!

What if the traditional way of selecting additional applicants to work in your organization could be flipped? What if, instead of you assigning extra shifts, your existing employees could choose where and when they wanted to work additional shifts using the mobile app technology they are already familiar with? Let’s explain with a few questions and probable answers.

Question #1: With the traditional schedule created by the employer, what happens to any open or unfilled shift(s) that cannot be filled by the current employee availability?
Answer: The manager seeks support from current employees who pick up the slack in overtime if there is no one to fill the open shift(s). This causes the employer to seek additional applicants to work to fill the shifts.

Question #2: What if all employees could be made aware of any available open shift(s)?
Answer: Employees could make their own decisions to work more hours.

Question #3: What if employees could bid on open shift(s) in other departments or sister stores to work?
Answer: Employees could make decisions about where and when, and how many additional hours they want to work.

Question #4: What if employees could bid on open shift(s) using a company app on their phone?
Answer: Employees could manage their own schedules as they want, with only approval from the manager.

These scenarios provide an employee with greater control of where and when, and how many additional hours they want to work. Managers know which employees are available and want to work, because the employee is telling them so. The process empowers employees to fit their work schedule to their circumstances, priorities and lifestyle. The use of a mobile app places more of the control with the employee.

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That overall solution provides a win-win:
  • Employees bid on shifts that work around their life rather than life around their work
  • Employers gain access to a larger staffing pool

It’s all possible and worth the time, energy and conversations to define what it would require for your organization to implement open shift bidding. It’s an elegant solution to a timeless—and timely—retail problem.

What’s next?

We talked about open shift bidding for your company. This brings to light some facets of scheduling and additional applicants you may not have considered but should consider. Think about this: What if a store manager could consider their employees and the employees of sister stores—or even employees of other companies—as the Gig and Crowdsource Employee workforce for shift bidding?

We will explore those topics in further posts of the Gig Scheduling and Crowdsourcing series. Be on the lookout for “What Are Gig Employees?” Stay tuned…

Rachael Bilan, Customer Program Manager

It is a busy day, and you ran to your local grocery store to grab a quick lunch. All register lines are about the same: four customers deep in each one. But the one you pick is taking twice as long to get your items scanned and paid. Why? What factors are contributing to your line going so much slower than the other line? Is it just the customers in front of you? Or could it be the team member’s skill or training? Could the store manager have scheduled differently to account for not only the volume of customers, but the skill of her employees? As your frustration builds, you fixate on what the store could have done differently. Finally stepping away from your completed transaction you turn around to see three empty register lanes, all with cashiers waiting idly. How frustrating!

As a retailer, understanding how to identify and proactively manage potential variations in your customers and workflow systematically is not only possible, but imperative. Employee productivity and employee utilization are two often conflated concepts that are used to identify these differences in your workforce. Each can be controlled managerially and systematically by having the proper configurations in place in your labor model and scheduling system.

What is employee productivity? What is employee utilization? The two phrases have totally different meanings. Productivity refers to the state or action of producing something, while utilization involves the process of making practical and effective use of something.
Let’s dig into productivity first.

Employee productivity

When we refer to employee productivity, we mean how effectively and efficiently your employees work. Some employees work faster than most and some work slower than most. Labor models, especially those using engineered labor standards, should assume that each employee is working at an average pace and using the defined best method. But what happens when employees do not meet those standards exactly? In particularly high-turnover departments, where overall employee productivity is low, failing to properly mitigate low productivity can mean poor customer service as employees struggle to keep up with the workload demanded of them.
So how do you mitigate low employee productivity? We believe it is two-fold:

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1. Proper training and supervision:

Ensuring employees are knowledgeable on prescribed best methods, and providing manager feedback and appropriate coaching when they are not, means that more employees will rise to meet productivity expectations keeping the department’s overall productivity at an average pace.

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2. Systematic assignment of productivity factors:

While this approach is less common and should be reserved for unusual situations when the first suggestion is ineffective, effective labor models allow for an adjustment to productivity as a percentage at a more granular level. By setting an adjusted productivity allowance at a store, department or even time of day, you can ensure that even in situations where productivity is known to be low, schedules can be written to compensate for the additional hours needed to provide proper customer service.

Employee utilization

Let’s contrast employee productivity with employee utilization. When we refer to employee utilization, we mean how effectively your workforce’s time is being used. Do you have employees who are idle waiting for work? Do you have employees with skillsets that are not being tapped into? We all have seen employees standing around socializing due to over-scheduling or an unanticipated low customer demand. Perhaps we overlooked team members with cross-utilization opportunities.

The amount of time unused might seem miniscule, but if you take the total amount of unproductive time from all your team members for one week and multiply it by the average hourly rate, you would be astonished how much labor is being missed and under-utilized. For example, 100 team members, one hour of unproductivity and a total average hourly rate of $15 equals a total of $1,500 per week and $78,000 per year of missed utilized labor. Again, we believe there is a two-fold approach to addressing employee utilization:

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1. Cross-training:

Employees who have expanded skill sets are able to jump between tasks to fill in lulls in customer demand with more flexibility. Not only this, but cross-training employees may reveal a particular efficacy that one employee has for a new job, increasing their overall contribution to the business and their own job satisfaction.

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2. Use of task-based automated schedules:

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While employee cross-training may be useful in theory to mitigate utilization concerns, in practice it can be difficult for schedule writers to take advantage of the increased flexibility it creates. Trying to balance who can do what, with exactly what time of day the work is required can be a lot for one person to grapple with.

With these additional levels of complexity, most manual schedule writers will fall into a routine for who does what task each week and what time they should do it. Use of an automated schedule system breaks that habit and can factor in the added levels of complexity without bias, properly accounting for forecasted demand patterns and ensuring that employees with the proper skillsets are scheduled at the right time to meet those demand requirements.

In summary

No two employees perform the same. Accounting for these differences both managerially and systematically is possible if you understand both employee productivity and employee utilization and mitigate properly for each. Used in tandem, productivity and utilization management techniques applied to the right automated scheduling solution will produce an effective schedule that prioritizes customer service without sacrificing labor efficiency.

Jeff Duce, Senior Manager of Product Management

From pencil, paper and the expertise of the person writing the schedule to sophisticated scheduling technology, scheduling systems have come a long way. But the purpose has always been the same—to put the right people in the right place at the right time. Advanced scheduling systems allow the consideration of many factors, and the best of them can schedule “Special Assignments.” In this post, I will explain what “Special Assignments” are, why the ability to schedule special assignments is important, provide some common examples and discuss why special assignment compliance reporting is crucial.

What are special assignments?

“Special assignments” as I am using the term means scheduling a person because they have unique skills or certifications that fulfill requirements that are in addition to performing usual job or task duties. Historically, scheduled jobs or tasks are things like stocking in grocery, wrapping in the meat department, or clerking in the deli. Special assignment skills are different. Stores almost always have other considerations that need to be incorporated into the schedule. These considerations create no dedicated or scheduled hours but must be taken into account to assure that properly qualified associates are available to provide double duty—that is for both their task work and the special skills, qualifications or certifications.

Let me give a real-life example to help you better understand the idea behind special assignments. It is very common for retailers to have a policy where at least one person that is CPR certified be available on-premises during store open hours. This may be increased to two CPR certified associates during peak times. It makes more sense to have a smart scheduling system automatically schedule trained associates to the specific requirement at the same time task work is assigned versus having to edit a schedule and manually add associates with this qualification or skill at the times needed.

How to schedule special assignments

What is required in a scheduling system to accommodate special assignments? Each special assignment—the specific skill, qualification or certification—must be identified. Those attributes also must be present on the profile of qualified employees so the system can identify the proper candidates. Additional functionality may be useful to ensure the special assignment rotates among qualified associates rather than selecting the same person each time or to select the most qualified associate using skill ratings.

Initially an administrator would need to specify the associates meeting the requirement. Next the store or departments that have such a special assignment would be configured. Additional configuration would include timing—what days of the week, what times of the day—the number of associates required at the identified times, whether the assignment is to be rotated among associates and, finally, if necessary, an effective date.

Reporting on special assignments

Simply scheduling someone to perform a special assignment does not mean someone was actually on the clock for the scheduled times. It is critical that leaders monitor whether special assignments are actually carried out, particularly as many special assignments fulfill regulatory or policy requirements. Exception reporting is required so leadership can view whether stores are fully complying with special assignment scheduling. For example, where only one of a required two associates are scheduled or on the clock during the required time segment, there is a failure to comply and either situation should be reported as such.

The universe of special assignments

The need for special skills, qualifications and certifications arises in all forms of retail, from grocery to specialty to big box operators. I am sure you have a few ideas that come to mind that cannot be scheduled independently as a traditional job or task. The list of special assignments is almost infinite, but here are some examples for your consideration and to spark your imagination.

Manager on duty (MOD) is a very common need in retail stores. In larger stores this may be scheduled as a labor task, but in small stores this is usually an add-on responsibility. In those situations, select associates may be trained for MOD responsibilities. MODs are likely to be required to be working whenever the store is open to the public. Their MOD duties may be to carry the keys, access change, deal with customers, execute emergency procedures, and so on. The schedule must be built with MOD coverage in mind.

Another example may be a liquor license holder. Local ordinances usually require someone with a liquor license to be working on-premises while the liquor store or liquor department is open to the public. Failing to schedule such a person could result in a fine or even loss of the liquor license. In this circumstance it is certainly ideal to have a scheduling system ensure that this scheduling criteria is met.

Other candidates for special assignment scheduling might be backup customer service manager, someone who can run the front end in case the scheduled service manager is out or must be relieved during breaks and/or lunches. In a department like Deli or Service Meat, consider a lead counter clerk to ensure that among those who are scheduled is a person with leadership training capable of providing direction to other team members. Perhaps some stores have a need for a cash office key holder during the evening to access the change bank. Or there may be a need for a forklift operator at certain times.

Warning Will Robinson, warning!

Excessive use of special assignments will constrain the scheduling system’s ability to optimize the scheduling of task requirements and may drive more overs and shorts. This is a legitimate concern so be warned. Systems must have qualified employees configured and available to perform the work to fulfill your assignments. It cannot schedule when no one has the availability or skill.

Having the ability to schedule special assignments really is an important new tool within scheduling, and I am sure you can see the practical need for it. Because there is an underlying complication to trying to manually schedule special assignments yourself, you can see why it is so important to have this functionality built within the scheduling system. If your current scheduling system has it, that is great for you and your company. If your current scheduling system does not provide this feature, well then, I guess you are simply “Lost in Space.”

Rachael Bilan, Customer Program Manager
Olufemi Olowu, Implementation Specialist

Service Scheduling. This term has been applied and used primarily for the checkout department for years. It refers to use of granular time-of-day data, typically at the 15-minute increment, to drive forecasted labor demand. The checkout department processes a large volume of customers and items, thereby becoming the essential drivers for labor. For those organizations that have been able to study and harness detailed historical information about these two metrics, there have been numerous improvements in technology, configurations and processes that enhance the demand forecasting processes, thereby improving scheduling and profitability. In checkout departments, the primary data source used to gather this information are registers that can capture the pertinent data, down to the 15-minute increment in most cases. Using this data source, organizations can derive historical trends, seasonality, and either micro or macro changes in business to be able to accurately forecast future needs to outlay labor resources accurately.

So, what about the perimeter areas, like delis, bakeries and meat service counters? Can we harness the same benefits of 15-minute data in those production departments as well? Definitely! Data from satellite registers in these departments could provide insight into when items have been purchased from each production area, but that data is not enough on its own, nor are registers always present in these locations. Part of the required customer processing entails preparing product for the consumer to purchase. The timing of this labor does not correspond to when the customer checks out at a register. It necessarily occurs well before the customer even reaches the checkout line.

Scale data plus register data

Envision a deli service counter, one that sells and cuts meat, cheese, premade salads etc. We are particularly interested in understanding the labor that occurs exactly when a customer reaches the deli counter. This includes processes like greeting the customer; slicing meat or cheese; weighing, and packaging and labeling the product. It is common for delis to use a minimum coverage labor model in order to forecast and schedule required labor, simply scheduling the base number of employees at any given time. This can be hit-or-miss in terms of providing great customer service, especially during time periods of increased business, negatively impacting queuing as customers must wait for either their orders to be processed or those in line before them.

What is needed is a way to understand exactly when customers are reaching the counter and how much labor is required to service that customer and use data to find the peaks and valleys of the business. Enter scale data. As items are processed in a deli, they must be weighed at a scale, priced and labeled for sale. This weighing happens exactly when the customer is requesting the item. By utilizing data processed through the deli scale, organizations can see exactly how much of each PLU was processed at a given timeframe throughout the day. Utilizing this scale data to drive labor forecasts and improve scheduling pays huge dividends in terms of efficiency, productivity and customer service. In the next section we will see the potential of what can be done when using detailed 15-minute scale data to forecast and schedule hours.

Benefits of this approach

Pictured below are comparisons between a traditional demand generation, using an approach that considers only daily-level data from one source, versus the application of a proven service solution model that utilizes 15-minute incremental data. The blue line represents the original forecasted labor demand, and the green line represents the true labor demand only known with certainty after the day has completed. Layered over these lines are highlights showing where we scheduled more than we needed (yellow) or less than we needed (red). See the graph depicting the traditional approach:

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Here the main objective is to have minimal coverage throughout the day to cover the hours of operation. The forecast is mostly flat, with only one spike in the middle of the day, where we’ve guessed the peak will be. As you can see, there is a high degree of inefficiency as the day progresses. Queuing during peak times in business is unavoidable, causing a definite lack in both customer service and, as a result, loss in revenue. In times of low customer traffic, the service counter is over-scheduled, and employees are likely not fully utilized.

Conversely, take a look at the second solution below that uses detailed data derived from service counter scales.

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The original forecasted demand is much closer to the true demand curve, resulting in less inaccuracy and better use of hours, not to mention enhanced customer service during the busiest times of the day.

Conclusion

There are definite opportunities to forecast labor demand accurately and efficiently in perimeter production departments down to the 15-minute increment, especially those with customer service counters. When one looks at perishable departments, such as meat and deli, and the rising costs of perishable goods sold in those departments, it is imperative that the labor is controlled and scheduled in order to maximize both customer service goals and profitability.

Businesses need to use all information available to be able to pinpoint, with more accuracy, the actual needs of labor to take care of all aspects of the business, rather than simply covering the hours the service counter is open. As has been seen in the checkout departments, forecasting and scheduling to this level can pay dividends in enhanced customer service, while reducing labor costs. Investment in harnessing detailed time-of-day data that can accurately capture and fuse multiple data sources, should not be ignored. It will help blaze a path to improved longevity in the competitive environments of today’s ever-changing business landscape.

Huw Davies, Program Manager and Pre-Sales Engineer
Josh Coalts, Labor Program Manager

As discussed previously, convenience store growth across the U.S. and U.K. has exploded over the last few decades. Small footprint locations have given way to large, vast stores with offerings like fresh food, made-to-order meals, and click-and-collect. To support this outburst of growth, it has become necessary for convenience store retailers to drastically adapt their business models, planning strategies and staffing considerations to ensure that they don’t fall behind, inadvertently becoming exactly what they sought to replace—obsolete. Completely overhauling an established industry can be daunting, overwhelming and harrowing but at the same time necessary.

Often, adding new services or product offerings can have a noticeable impact on when, and how, customers shop. This is just as true for convenience stores as it is for traditional retail, and that impact is something that must be accounted for when planning for change. Perhaps adding a fresh coffee bar with a barista will encourage new customers to shop earlier in the morning, or made-to-order meals entice existing shoppers to stop by right before dinner. These changing traffic patterns can be difficult to properly plan for without a labor model that acknowledges trends and can react when it counts.

The evolution of convenience stores over the past few decades has also spurred a drastic change in the skills that convenience employees must have to ensure success. As these stores have moved from a model mainly focused on “coffee, soda and cigarettes” towards something that resembles a typical grocer, employees are asked to learn increasingly complex technology. Point-of-sale systems within a convenience store are often on the cutting edge of retail, incorporating inventory management, restaurant-like menus, fuel sales, money transfers, utility payments, and more.

Many convenience stores even find themselves with similar promotional plans to traditional retail, elevating their level of competition. Each advancement has also expanded the need for the following.

Enhanced training

Changes mean that employees need to be brought up to speed. This means that there is a need to develop material covering each system (from simple to complex), legal and regulatory processes, as well as business policies.

Communication

As the convenience space has evolved, additional tools have become available that often make it easier than ever to communicate with employees. However, this ease means that today’s employees expect a robust communication tool to be available.

Food safety and compliance reporting

More than ever, businesses involved with the preparation and marketing of meals or prepared food must ensure the safety of their product. Routine monitoring, which can take a clerk away from the check stand and queuing customers, must be done or risk selling a product past its prime.

Along with monitoring, a robust food safety program that earns customer trust often requires a compliance program. Developing an established record of food safety and being able to back that up with detailed temperature logs, holding time records, and more is a critical step in a strong offering.

Sanitation

General store sanitation has become an expectation as the convenience store has evolved. Customers expect a high level of fit and finish in their neighborhood corner store. Conditions and fixtures are used to judge how relevant and trustworthy a store is, and worse, poorly maintained locations can have a negative impact on the overall business.

Scheduling

All of these changes have also led to a need for better time management. Successful organizations are able to ensure their workforce is scheduled at the right time and right place to complete the additional tasks that have been added to a convenience store’s workload. Accurately placing labor ensures that the business’s investment in labor is not misused and returns the expected benefits.

To deliver top-notch service across all these elements successfully for your customers, you must have the right people in the right place, at the right time. You must know your demands and understand the time needed for each activity. Each of these areas can provide staggering benefits to any retail environment, but with their traditionally smaller footprints, tighter margins, and ability to react faster, convenience stores are well positioned for continued growth and evolution over the decades to come. In the next two blog posts, we will look at how technology has changed convenience store retailing and the future evolution of this retail format. We will also explore the kind of solutions and support necessary to successfully implement and adapt to the changing face of convenience retailing.

Julie Bushee, Director of Labor Support
Joaquin Huerta, Senior Industrial Engineer

Your standards work is complete. Congratulations! But that doesn’t mean your journey has ended. It’s only begun. You’re shortchanging yourself if you don’t validate that the labor hours are schedulable, which is crucial to achieving an effective schedule.

When seeking to implement the engineered labor standards methodology to generate labor staffing demand hours, you must have a well-structured validation process. It includes not only the validation of the hours generated by the standards, but also the placement and spread of those hours. After all, if the labor demand is not in the right place, and the hours are not schedulable, then most definitely the journey won’t be successful.

A well-defined hours validation process has multiple steps

The first step is to generate “raw” engineered hours which are work content hours. These hours are the foundation for the transformation that will occur throughout the next steps. To generate these hours, the following considerations must be taken into account:

  • Standards development: Create all the operations assigned to the employees and managers based on the Basic MOST methodology (or any other time study method.) These operations are carried out in two main groups, fixed and variable operations.
  • Store-specific attributes: As is well known, each store is different from the others. Some of these differences might be store size, sales volume, offerings, etc.
  • Operation frequency: It is necessary to determine the month, week or day that the operation must be performed. A good example of this would be the deep cleaning of the shelves in dry grocery. If this operation will be performed only on the first Monday of each month, the hours generated by that operation should only be scheduled for the specific day.
  • Identify where the labor is being completed: Assign the operation to the department responsible for completing the work. Understanding the like skillsets of each operation will help organize the operations in a way that makes sense when scheduling the labor hours.

These considerations are of utmost importance to generate “raw” engineered hours that represent the specific needs of each store. However, these hours are only the labor required to perform all the tasks assigned to the employees and managers to maintain the store as expected. This step only gives us an overall picture of ​​the areas and processes that use most of our labor.

The hours validation must continue through a deeper labor analysis

The next step in an hours validation process takes the “raw” engineered hours through a deeper labor analysis. Additional staffing hours may be needed to meet service directives. In that case, staffing hours adjustments must be applied to the engineered hours to satisfy the gap in hours needed for scheduling. To validate these amalgamated hours, the following considerations must be factored in:

  • Minimum expectation of service coverage: This includes minimum requirements such as:
    • At least one cashier from store open to close
    • Meat case service until 7:00 p.m. nightly
    • Floral coverage from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. daily
  • Opening and closing hours of specific labor or departments: This allows labor tasks to be placed at specific times of the day.
  • Queue (in-line service requirements): Some retailers promote service guarantees that require a cashiered lane to be opened to support specific queue lengths.

If any of the above staffing considerations are applied to your staffing model, a thorough validation of these “all in” hours must be completed. How many hours were added to the engineered labor standards time to accommodate the need to meet customer expectations? Are the hours manageable while keeping the integrity of the engineered hours? These questions must be answered before moving forward in the hours validation process.

The final step

The final step along this process ensures not only accuracy of hours but the placement of those hours throughout the day in a way that can be supported in scheduling. Equally as significant as the total number of hours is whether the hours are schedulable. The placement of the hours is often referred to as the labor demand or staffing demand. The labor hours are grouped together into labor tasks that are assigned to employees for the purpose of scheduling. The labor demand must be reviewed and assessed for schedulability before building a schedule.

Some considerations in this step of the hours validation journey include:

  • Are the labor task hours spread throughout the day based on when the work needs to be performed?
  • Are the labor tasks spread between the department open and close hours?
  • Is there a significant demand gap in labor tasks; Minimums or cross-department LT linking needed?
  • Are the labor tasks too granular for scheduling?

Whether it has been years since your engineered hours have been refreshed or you have made recent updates to standards and operating time, can you say that you have validated the hours beyond this work? If you have not considered a full hours validation to ensure that the work hours are placed in the right place, at the right time, and are able to be scheduled in the most efficient way, use the steps above to guide you along that process. Only once you have validated hours from start to scheduling, can you be sure that the journey to an effective schedule is complete.