Case Study: Retail Employee Scheduling and Timekeeping

Workforce Management is a key sore spot for retail companies with multiple departments. Northwest Outfitters’ primary challenge is keeping unique departments staffed with the right people while reducing costs with viable cross-department coverage. They also wanted to address one of their largest budget troubles; last-minute overtime.

Except for a small team of supervisors, all sales associates are part time. When there is a staffing crunch, it can be nearly impossible to keep part-timers from working forty hours or more. Holiday breaks and year-end staffing has been slinging scheduling dilemmas and compliance pressure with the burden of tracking and reporting.

WorkforceHUB Integration Creates Savings

With TimeSimplicity, the scheduling solution in WorkforceHUB, department managers established standard schedule templates for busy and slow sales periods, which vary from department to department. With the standard schedule in place, managers can drag and drop to adapt to changing conditions. This has been a vital time saver for managers, and with pre-defined alerts, has provided a compelling decrease in unexpected overtime.

SOLUTION — WorkforceHUB

• TimeSimplicity for expedited scheduling and mobile coordination.
• TimeWorksPlus for integrated time and attendance tracking.
• Mobile access provides employee access and management control.

Employee Empowerment

Before WorkforceHUB implementation, staff members constantly contacted managers about shift adjustments, time card errors, and PTO accruals. With Employee Self Service (ESS), employees clock in/out from their mobile device, manage their own time cards, submit time off requests, and check accruals without having to contact a manager. With the intuitiveness of PunchLogic, time card foul-ups are no longer a considerable problem.

Easy Administration

When staff members handle shift changes, all supervisors have to do is confirm them on the Virtual Trade Board. TimeSimplicity even alerts the employees affected when a shift change is approved! With job codes and employee groups, staff members with the appropriate skills are scheduled in the corresponding departments. This helps maintain first-rate customer service for which Northwest is known.

No More Compliance Headaches

With customized overtime alerts, managers are notified when part-time employees are approaching full-time hours, and full-timers are approaching overtime. They don’t need to be continually monitoring time cards to keep staff members working within the authorized hours. In the case of a DOL audit, reports can be generated instantly from attendance data that was automatically captured and recorded.

Northwest Outfitters is benefitting from reduced labor expenses, improved scheduling, automated compliance tools, and employees who are much happier with their jobs.