Frontline Retail Scheduling: Insights from Ex-Store Managers at Orquest

Retail is a dynamic, fast-moving industry, where market trends and drivers are constantly shifting. But there is one thing that always remains the same, the goal of any major brand: to make its customers happy. And the most important part in achieving this is played in-store. This is where frontline retail scheduling is key. 

Yet challenges such as high staff turnover, constant demand fluctuation and compliance issues, just to name a few, make employee shift distribution one of the most complicated jobs, especially for those responsible for creating the schedules: the store managers. 

We talked to three of them for this blog post. Their names are Patricia, Raquel and Borja, ex-store managers of Decathlon, Sephora, Kiko Milano and Pull & Bear. They are now part of our team and shared with us their experience about the challenges that a store manager faces on a daily basis, and how having Orquest as a solution would have changed their lives.

Challenges of front-line retail scheduling

Opening and closing the store, assisting customers, arranging products, monitoring inventory, reaching sales targets… Managing all these tasks in a retail store is complicated. Even more so today, in times of click & collect and in-store returns, the workload in the store has multiplied.

Scheduling all this is not easy. And it gets even more complicated if you also have to take into account the availability and needs of each employee, the mandatory compliance with laws, agreements, and individual contract conditions, shifts in demand, or last-minute absences and changes.

Let’s take a look at the main challenges that store managers face in their day-to-day frontline retail scheduling.

Lots of scheduling time

Balancing employee needs (availability, contracts, absences), business needs (store coverage, productivity, regulatory compliance) and customer needs (excellent customer service, short waiting time, accessible information) in a single schedule takes a lot of time. Those hours spent scheduling are lost in “being on the ground with your team,” says Raquel Mas, former store manager and Customer Success Lead at Orquest.

When managers are not in the field, they lose quality time with their team and watching customer behavior. This leads to a disconnect between managers and employees and a waste of opportunities to improve the shopping experience.  

Mismanaged resources

When front-line retail scheduling does not match demand, the changing store needs and/or the front-line employees’ skills, workload coverage is inefficient and store managers face a frustrating scenario.

Resources are poorly distributed when there is under or over staffing, a need for overtime to fulfill tasks or insufficient team training, for instance. As a consequence, employee dissatisfaction increases as well as labor costs, and the quality of customer service decreases, with a direct impact on sales decline.

The rescheduling dilemma

“In a week, out of 11 employees, 3 can be missing. And you have to assign those tasks to someone,” says Patricia Sanchez, former store manager and Customer Success Manager. This often leads to great dissatisfaction among employees, who see their schedules disrupted.

However, absences are frequent in retail, as is employee turnover. When it happens, and both Patricia and Raquel agree that it is very common, managers have to reschedule the entire store, which has a direct impact on store productivity, customer experience and employee dissatisfaction.

Legal compliance

Regulatory compliance is one of the biggest challenges store managers face when it comes to front-line retail scheduling. Compliance with labor laws and regulations as well as the terms and conditions that apply to each employee must be ensured. 

Every single time the store is scheduled (or rescheduled). Otherwise, retailers expose themselves to legal problems, fines and damage to brand image.

Goal management

In retail stores, managers are also often given sales goals to set for the team they manage. However, these objectives are not always in line with the reality of the stores.

Often, the lack of reliable data makes it a challenge to set goals and, above all, to meet them. As a result, store managers end up working with unclear metrics, which makes it difficult for them to evaluate their teams’ performance, resulting in a failure to meet objectives.

How does Orquest solve it?

“When you have the right people at the right time, you as a manager can add value, support the team, train them” explains Raquel. Orquest helps store managers to achieve this, turning something very complex into something simple.

Less time scheduling, more time on the front line

Orquest automates front-line retail scheduling, allowing store managers to do in minutes what used to take hours or even days. This way, in a few clicks, they ensure they have a schedule distribution that meets the store’s needs while matching the team’s availability, and they gain valuable time that they can focus on more strategic tasks. “It allows you to focus on what you need to focus on,” says Patricia.

The right person, in the right place, at the right time

Orquest creates tailor-made schedules that match the actual workload at any given time, avoiding understaffing or overstaffing. Its powerful AI-driven forecasting engine calculates the exact demand throughout the day and the needs of each store section to place the right team, with the right skills and training, in the right roles.

Schedule and reschedule in a few minutes

Absences and last minute changes are no longer a problem. Orquest is conversational and allows store managers to make adjustments to the schedule, which is automatically updated to always create the most optimal shift distribution. “Orquest is not a replacement for the store manager, who is the backbone of the system,” says Raquel.

100% regulatory compliance

Orquest guarantees compliance with the current labor law of the store’s location as well as the company’s internal guidelines and the contract conditions applied to each employee. In this way, store managers can schedule and reschedule without having to worry about breaching any restrictions and avoiding any legal issues.

Better decision making

Orquest allows for easy real-time tracking of store sales and productivity metrics. In this way, store managers can spot areas for improvement at a glance and make data-driven decisions to optimize store operations.

The result:

• Store managers save time that they can spend with their teams and customers, improving both the relationship with their employees and in-store service.

• Employees are more motivated and the turnover rate decreases thanks to improved scheduling and communication with their managers. 

• Customers wait in line less, are better assisted and leave happier due to an optimized store staff distribution.

• Stores reduce labor costs, avoid legal issues and boost productivity through more accurate store scheduling that ensures regulatory compliance and better-informed decision making.

There is no doubt that front-line retail scheduling is becoming more and more complex, making the store manager’s job more difficult. Orquest’s goal is to deal with all that complexity so they can focus on what really matters – people. 

With Orquest, store managers can anticipate demand, save valuable time, boost store performance and improve customer and employee satisfaction. We make things easy for those who make retail possible.