Showing posts with label Workforce Management. Show all posts
2012 Future of Food Retailing Report (Needs registration)
With the U.S. economy experiencing slow growth, persistent unemployment, and stagnant household incomes, consumers are moving toward extremes. Cost-conscious shoppers continue to seek extreme value and acceptable quality or better at low prices. Other shoppers less affected by the downturn have returned to upper-tier food retailers. Retailers who cater to the middle are finding their positions more challenging to maintain. With the most recent bout of food inflation seeming to moderate, the pressure on their sales and profits is likely to continue.
This year’s edition of The Future of Food Retailing Report highlights market share figures for grocery and consumables by store format, illustrates which formats are thriving and look to continue growth in today’s challenging economy, and forecasts how these key formats will perform over the next five years, i.e., by 2016.
PODCAST: John Orr, Trends in Human Capital Management for Retailers
On this two-part podcast, we talked about trends in human capital management and what retailers need as it relates to human capital management.
On part one of the podcast, we focused on compliance among labor laws and visibility of the business. On part two, we addressed the need for speed as a big trend in retailer human capital management.
Retailers are under attack from many angles. There is scarce talent, they’re in a high turnover industry, they’re being legislated left and right, whether it’s gift card legislation in NJ, or California labor laws and class-action lawsuits. We discussed the challenges retailers face navigating through this landscape.
Concerning the challenge of visibility, more and more retailers are expressing the need for better visibility at the store level and above store. Legacy applications, however, have fallen very short in giving retailers access to the information they need. Most retailers are fraught with manual processes, inefficiencies and spreadsheets. The reporting from these systems is not timely enough for the executives to be proactive and make the decisions they need to do on a day-to-day basis. Retailers need solutions that provide intuitive real-time information, and should not be held hostage to legacy systems and interfaces and processes.
The internet, by allowing anonymous browsing and rapid price-comparing, was supposed to mean low, and equal, prices for all. Now, however, online retailers are being offered software that helps them detect shoppers who can afford to pay more or are in a hurry to buy, so as to present pricier options to them or simply charge more for the same stuff.
Technology Grows in Importance for Retailers, New CompTIA Research Study Reveals
Seventy-two percent of retailers surveyed rate technology as important to their business, CompTIA’s Retail Sector Technology Adoption Trends Study reveals. That figure is projected to increase to 83 percent by 2014.
A net 63 percent of retailers expect to increase IT spending in 2012 with the remaining 37 percent planning to cut back or hold the line. Large retailers expect to boost IT spending the most – 4.8 percent, on average. For all firms, the planned average increase is 4.2 percent.
Competing With Amazon on Amazon
Thousands of small merchants depend on Amazon.com Inc. to reach customers who otherwise wouldn't know they exist. A few of them complain, though, that Amazon sometimes eats their lunch.
According to some small retailers, the Seattle-based giant appears to be increasingly using its Marketplace—where third-party retailers sell their wares on the Amazon.com site—as a vast laboratory to spot new products to sell, test sales of potential new goods, and exert more control over pricing.
Mindflash has released a great infographic which examines the world of seasonal employment, what other companies are doing and how you can successfully hire employees for your business.
Recently I had blogged about what happens when technology and culture collide. The article pointed out in the blog talked about a new Workforce Management System (WFMS) deployed by Ann Taylor and how it is reducing the opportunities for store associates with less success by giving them fewer and less desirable hours while giving the busiest and most desirable hours to associates with higher sales numbers.
Now an article from Knowledge@Wharton, criticizes the Ann Taylor WFMS by comparing it with “squeezing blood out of a turnip” and by describing the initiative as "a case of something that has its roots in a good idea [but that has been] taken too far."
On the Clock: Are Retail Sales People Getting a Raw Deal? - Knowledge@Wharton
Wharton marketing professor Stephen J. Hoch says the Ann Taylor system is like "squeezing blood out of a turnip" and goes a long way toward alienating employees. Erin Armendinger, managing director of Wharton's Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative, describes the initiative as "a case of something that has its roots in a good idea [but that has been] taken too far."
'The Worst of Dilbert'
While the softening economy may give employers a stronger hand in employee relations, retailers historically have difficulty attracting and retaining qualified workers because the industry pay scale is so low, Hoch points out. "Ann Taylor, and the retail environment in general, is not the only place where people can work. This system potentially creates a hostile working environment. It's the embodiment of the worst of Dilbert."
Hoch acknowledges that Ann Taylor's new scheduling system may be one way to reduce labor costs. "It can be self-fulfilling. If you give people just a few [off-peak] hours, they will look for another job. Maybe that's what [corporate executives] want." He also acknowledges that technology-based information can be valuable to managers, but only if the value is clearly understood throughout the company. Without consistent buy-in, technology-driven management tools will result in adversarial relationships across all staff levels.
Information technology is not a way to overcome weak management, he suggests, noting that human capital management systems must be sold to workers as a valuable tool for all employees and should be accompanied by training sessions. "It should motivate everybody, not just the best sellers. It would be nice to couple it with training to bootstrap people who are not as effective as the top performers."
The article goes on to state, unlike other retailers like Wal-Mart, Payless Shoesource etc who have also deployed WFMS that puts more workers on the floor at the busiest times, Ann Taylor has added the dimension of individual sales productivity to the equation. This additional dimension may backfire by a way of unhappy workers leading to a drop of sales.
Retailers who anger their staff risk major consequences, Armendinger notes. "To your customer, your store's people are your brand," she says. Those "in the corporate office sometimes forget that people on the front line mean more than any strategy you come up with at the corporate office. To treat them as if they are numbers is a little bit disturbing," especially given that employees have their own fixed costs, such as mortgages and car payments, as well as fixed responsibilities which don't always lend themselves to sharp fluctuations in schedules.
Armendinger suggests that rewarding employees with prime working hours based solely on sales numbers is not necessarily the way to generate better sales over time. The Ann Taylor approach is likely to encourage sales associates to put such a premium on sales that they overpower customers with high pressure techniques that will backfire.
"When customers feel a sales person is not genuine, they feel as if they are a piece of meat," she says. "Women do not want to go into a store and be viewed by salespeople as 'a dollar sign'. They want salespeople who will say, 'That color's not right. Here, this is better.' Now, if it takes an extra five minutes, the salesperson will just say, 'That looks great.'" The new scheduling system erodes the relationship between salesperson and client which is particularly valued by older women, the demographic that makes up much of Ann Taylor's customer base, according to Armendinger. "Why [would these customers] go into the store? They can just stay home and shop online."
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Successful technology-based management practices must be embedded in social relations, according to Yakubovich. Even sales agents working from their homes in far-flung locations wind up forming spontaneous virtual networks -- for example, going from company chat rooms to private conversations. These networks can work both toward and against the firm's goals, Yakubovich states.
Very good read. Every person touched with WFMS development or deployment needs to read this article on how
Very interesting and thought provoking article on what happens when Technology and Culture collide. Talks about how Workforce Management systems are affecting Retail Workers.
Retailers Reprogram Workers In Efficiency Push - WSJ.com
Such "workforce-management" systems are sweeping the industry as retailers fight to improve productivity and cut payroll costs. Limited Brands Inc., Gap Inc., Williams-Sonoma Inc. and GameStop Corp. have all installed them recently. Some employees aren't happy about the trend. They say the systems leave them with shorter shifts, make it difficult to schedule their lives, and unleash Darwinian forces on the sales floor that damage morale.
"There was a lot of animosity" toward the system, says Kelly Engle, who worked at an Ann Taylor store in Beavercreek, Ohio, until late last year. "Computers aren't very forgiving when it comes to an individual's life."
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Vendors of the systems claim they can boost productivity by 15% or more, and can help cut labor costs by 5% or more. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. just completed a yearlong rollout of a computerized scheduling system for 1.3 million workers. It cited 12% labor-productivity gains as a key reason for improved results in its fiscal quarter ended Jan. 31.
"There's been a natural resistance to thinking about human beings as pieces in a puzzle rather than individuals," says John M. Gibbons, a senior research adviser at the Conference Board and a former director of human resources at Gap. "When you have those clear methods of measurement, and just-in-time delivery for supply-chain management, it's a natural transition to apply it to human resources as well."
Vendors call their industry human-capital management. It notched $7.2 billion in revenue last year, and is projected to grow at 12% a year over the next five years, according to Boston-based AMR Research, which advises companies on information technology. Major providers of business systems, including Oracle Corp. and SAP AG, are now in the business.
