Matthew Zelek, Senior Product Manager

Strong retail organizations understand that it is vital to provide effective time and attendance tools to help store-level management achieve operational excellence and deliver great service to their customers at the optimal cost. All while managing their largest controllable expense – and their most valuable resource – their associates.

Time and attendance modules and functionality are frequently identified and labeled as a “commodity” and viewed as necessary but limited in function. By utilizing time and attendance as a key element of a complete, integrated labor management application, time and attendance can be a vital component in helping your organization achieve its workforce management goals.

As we head into late 2023 and 2024, businesses are adjusting to a post-pandemic phase where widespread social changes will shape how people work. This new normal for employee management will include remote and “gig” work as employers expect those pandemic-era trends to continue.

The latest entry in this blog series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) will focus on top time and attendance trends and expectations in the new normal as businesses strive to better serve their workforce.

A recently released 2024 Salary Guide from employment firm Robert Half highlights how both workers and employers are reassessing compensation, career priorities and recruiting strategies. “Competitive pay and flexible work are top of mind for professionals and will likely influence their career decisions in 2024,” said Dawn Fay, operational president of Robert Half.

“To attract and retain top talent – particularly in an uncertain economy – it’s critical for employers to benchmark salaries and compensation packages, consider options for hybrid work, and employ strategies to bolster employee engagement and morale,” she added.

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Two key initiatives and their time and attendance implications for retail

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Supporting remote and flexible work

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the general adoption of remote work arrangements and communication. In 2023, many organizations continue to embrace remote and flexible work options, allowing employees to work from different locations and providing them with more control over their work schedules. Retail time and attendance applications must provide functionality to accurately capture and calculate these work hours. This includes data collection options beyond the standard time clock on the wall. Mobile and web functionality are vital for accurate collection of work transaction data, and the need for associate self-service capabilities will greatly increase.

Retailers will need tools that allow associates to access their schedules and accurately record hours worked, paid time off and other leave without necessarily having access to the traditional time clock and paper schedule. Mobile self-service drives associate engagement and establishes a protocol for submitting time-off requests and viewing and administering schedules. It increases morale and retention by empowering associates with control over how they are scheduled and paid. This ultimately improves accuracy and associate confidence that they will be compensated appropriately and fairly for their work. Further, the ability to attract, empower and retain top talent in turn drives your customers’ experience while streamlining operations.

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Supporting work-life balance

Employers are placing increased emphasis on employee well-being and work-life balance. In our modern times, younger workers seek gig-like flexibility, mobile-first technology and compelling work options. They want to use an app on their phone to schedule work, not haggle with the manager over their schedule on a week-to-week basis. As such, retail employers are increasingly in need of a flexible, efficient labor model that supports these innovations as they strive to create a productive, engaged and resilient workforce.

Any initiative that helps reduce turnover delivers significant organizational savings. Recent findings reveal it costs, on average, approximately $5,000 to find, hire and train a replacement for a $13/hour associate, and many organizations report a median turnover rate of greater than 75% for part-time employees.

Utilizing effective time and attendance tools that can be accessed directly via mobile devices or associate self-service will empower associates with real-time access, control and understanding of how they are compensated – with the ability to provide input and feedback throughout the process.
In future posts we will examine additional time and attendance trends that include the utilization of AI and reporting tools to meet the evolving needs of both retailers and their workforce.

On October 3, Progressive Grocer published an article about a new type of scheduling implemented by Schnucks that it internally branded as “Schnucks Flexforce.” The “Schnucks Flexforce” toolkit was developed in collaboration with Logile and is generally available (GA) as part of Logile’s Flexible Scheduling portfolio.

There has been a fundamental change in the post pandemic workforce. The pandemic created a desire in workers to have more control over their work-life balance. There have also been recent innovations that have influenced the post pandemic worker’s mindset. These include the flexible model of rideshare work and the expectation of perks and incentives we are witnessing today. This, of course, greatly affects retailers during a time when available hourly labor is becoming scarce and more difficult to attract and retain.

This new reality challenges virtually every retailer. They are faced with:

  • Labor shortages: Many associates were lost during the pandemic as “The Great Resignation” progressed and the market experienced a greater decline in young adults joining the workforce.
  • High inflation: Unprecedented inflation has impacted customer shopping priorities and will continue to do so for some time.
  • Growth of online delivery services: The growth of jobs in rideshare and food delivery industries are of great appeal to younger people who otherwise would be looking for jobs in the retail industry. Center store items are commoditized and can be bought through online channels.
  • Changing associate expectations around work and work-life balance: The pandemic has shifted associates to favor a work-life balance across all age groups.
  • Regulatory policies around predictive scheduling: Policies and legislative mandates are intended to force retailers to address certain issues undermining associate work-life balance.

Bottom line, retailers are operating with a new and more difficult set of challenges. Industry pioneers like Schnucks believe that just because associates are much harder to find and retain does not mean that suitable skilled people are not available. Rather, the prospect of traditional employment is not a good fit for their needs and expectations. For us, the question became how can Logile help in solving this paradigm?

We started looking at rideshare and food delivery services that have, in recent years, created new opportunities allowing people to control both what they do and when they do it. Bringing this same idea to retail is behind our development of Flexible Scheduling. Back in April, Logile announced Flexible Scheduling as a strategic approach to address this change in associate behavior. Working in close collaboration with Schnucks on Flexforce gave us the opportunity to build out all the necessary features to address these challenges for both union and non-union associates and allow configurability across all types of retail environments.

Highlights of Logile Flexible Scheduling

  • Promotes work-life balance by allowing associates to pick their own shifts while still meeting workload requirements of the store
  • Addresses labor shortages in today’s shift-work landscape
  • Supports a new type of “flex” associate, who are neither full-time nor part-time, and are not scheduled, but are available to bid on available shifts
  • Allows regular and flex associates to pick up rideshare-style shifts on demand to earn additional pay
  • Ensures real-time regulatory, union and organizational compliance
  • Integrates with time and attendance and attendance control for real-time pay visibility
  • Fully configurable workflow based on business and organizational needs

What’s Next:

  • Gamify the scheduling and workforce process to allow associates to earn points and badges
  • Utilize points in scheduling and rewards
  • Integrate with existing award and recognition software

Flexible Scheduling is part of what we will be sharing with all our retailer partners at Ascend 2022, Logile’s upcoming Annual Retail Solutions Summit October 11-13. Closely working with Schnucks has given us a significant edge with flexible scheduling in a mixed union and non-union environment. We will provide highlights and recommendations based on our collaboration with Schnucks and how they built their program, aligned business stakeholders, collaborated with their union, and shared with associates and potential new associates.