In recent months, scheduling abuse and “unfair scheduling” in the retail industry has come to light as a huge issue. As someone who has been subject to scheduling abuse myself, I can assure you that it is, in fact, a widespread problem that the retail industry not only needs to address, but is actually well-equipped to deal with.
So what is scheduling abuse and how can
you ensure that your store isn’t abusing employees?
Scheduling abuse comes in many forms
and, overall, it means being a jerk to your employees. The most common form of
scheduling abuse is known as on-call scheduling. That means employees are
scheduled to potentially work a certain time. Employees must block those hours
out in the day to be available IF their manager calls them in, but there’s no
guarantee that they actually will work.
Typically, these hours are unpaid if the
employee is not called in, and it means the employee is not able to schedule
anything else that might prevent them from getting to work ASAP. For most
people, this means they can’t plan errands, go to the doctor, pick their kids
up from school, or other things you would usually do on a day off.
A few other major scheduling abuses
include:
- Cancelling your employees’ shifts last minute.
While it might seem nice to have a surprise day off, most retail workers
do not have the budget to be losing hours, especially hours they counted
on.
- Making the schedule only days (or hours!) in
advance.
- Updating the schedule only days (or hours) in
advance. I had a boss who not only did this, but then wouldn’t tell you
she’d updated the schedule until you were late to a shift you didn’t know
you had.
- Requiring your employees to stay past the time
they were scheduled to, without asking if they were ok with that.
With the last two, at least employees
get paid, but nothing makes a worker feel disrespected like their boss showing
how little they care about that employee’s life by switching up scheduling and
keeping them late without asking. Plus, most people have important things to do
after work, like picking a kid up from school, or running to a doctor’s
appointment. You can really ruin someone’s day, or worse, by keeping them
late.
Scheduling abuse occurs mainly because
scheduling managers must keep to a very strict payroll budget. This strict
budget is at odds with making sure you have enough people to man the floor at
all times.
With this kind of tension, on-call
scheduling actually makes a lot of sense. After all, it means that if the day
is busy, you have someone on hand, but if the day is slow, you don’t have to
pay anyone extra.
Changing the schedule in the middle of
the week also makes a lot of sense. If you’ve been having a slow week, by
Tuesday you know you need to cut some people to try and keep to the budget.
Managers’ busy schedules don’t help either. Many managers end up prioritizing
scheduling far down the line and, as a result, schedule only a few days in
advance.
Ultimately, at best, this leaves employees
with low morale, feeling disrespected by their employer. At its worst, it
causes you to lose an employee because they had to go find a job with more
stability and predictability so they could support their family.
This is not good news for you. Losing
a $10/hr retail employee costs you $3,328 – so much more than actually
paying them for the eight hour shift you didn’t need them to work. The retail
industry has a turnover rate of nearly 70%, due greatly to scheduling abuse.
That’s a lot of money lost.
Scheduling abuse is not only a horrible
thing to do to your employees, but it’s actually a horrible business practice
in the long term. A store staffed by ten people plus a manager is, on average,
going to spend $23,296 a year to replace seven of those workers! That same
store would only spend $8,320 a year if they consistently scheduled two
“unnecessary” eight hour shifts a week for each employee. That’s a pretty
obvious solution. Scheduling abuse = bad. Treating your employees well = good.
While scheduling abuse costs you more in
the long term –even $8,320 is too much to bleed out. Is there a way to save all
that money?
Actually, yes, there are a number of
things you as a scheduling manager can do for your store to help cut down on
your payroll budget, while still treating your employees well.
1. Know your store.
As a manager, you have access to a lot
of information about your store – from how busy you’ve historically been on
Mondays to what tasks which employees perform best. Use it. Spend some time
with your POS’s reporting capabilities to determine your peak hours
and best sellers. Armed with this knowledge, you can make better decisions
about whether or not you should schedule that extra person for Tuesday night or
not. You can also be sure to schedule your strong workers for peak hours, and
your new or “better-at-folding-than-selling” workers for quieter hours.
2. Be considerate.
When your employees ask for a day off,
do everything in your power to give them that day off and don’t make them feel
bad about it. If you need an employee to work late, ask them ahead of time. If
you need to make a change in the schedule, also ask your employees ahead of
time and be willing to allow shift swaps. Make your schedule at least a month
in advance.
Treating your employees respectfully and
with care will keep morale high and foster loyalty. An employee who knows you
care about them will be more likely to pick up an extra shift if you need, or
accept a cancelled shift. (Pro tip: ask your employee if they’d be willing to
take the pay cut for the day, and be ready to suck it up if they can’t.)
Overall, employees who are treated well
will be understanding when times are tight, or when you didn’t schedule enough
people. They know that you’ll do them a solid in return for their help in your
time of need.
3. Hire dedicated on-call workers.
On-call is not a bad practice, provided
you hire someone specifically for this purpose. The way on-call scheduling
becomes abusive is when retailers hire without informing an employee this will
be a large part of their job. It gets worse when employees are scheduled for
on-call shifts without being asked.
Most retail employees need a stable
paycheck and to be able to take care of outside responsibilities like
children. For them, on-call scheduling is a nightmare. However, if you hire
employees specifically for this purpose, your store can have all the benefits
of on-call scheduling without the major problems. Look for students or people
who otherwise do not depend on this job for survival, and let them know
explicitly they will be used for on-call scheduling.
4. Use scheduling software.
Employee Scheduling software is
the best. It makes scheduling easier by allowing you to see the whole week, the
hours you’re open, the availability of your employees, and how many hours you
can schedule without going over budget, all laid out in a clean, visual manner.
Many solutions are even able to
partially schedule for you, using an algorithm involving peak hours and best
sellers. While software is not able to fully schedule by itself (yet), having a
software that can pre-place best sellers according to highest sale hours not
only saves you some time, but actually helps ensure your best people are always
on your toughest jobs.
Scheduling software has other
perks:
- It can display the schedule in an online portal
or email to your employees so they don’t have to come or call into the
store each week.
- It can automatically alert your employees when
there’s been a change in the schedule.
- It can display open shifts to employees so they
can choose their own shifts.
- If someone needs to swap a shift, it can let you
know who else is available for the shift that needs to be covered. In
fact, many solutions even let employees handle shift swaps themselves.
Scheduling software easily
does the math to ensure you’re staying under-budget, and many times can act as
your time clock, and integrate with your payroll software, making HR easier.
And there’s no reason not to
have scheduling software. Many solutions are very cheap WhenToWork, for
instance, is only $8/month (when you pay in advance for a year). You
can even find a few for free!
More?
What works for you to avoid
scheduling abuse and come in under budget? How do you schedule your retail
employees? Let us know in the comments below!
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