By Lyn White, journalist, Inside Retailing Magazine


Retailers say that organising staff can be one of the most stressful, time consuming and costly issues facing their business.

Phil Jones, CEO of Positive Workforce Solutions, says labour cost-cutting and improved productivity are immensely important in these uncertain times.

“It’s very interesting to watch the reactions of the various retailers as they face the reality of the global downturn.

“When the first wave of uncertainty hit, everyone put on the brakes to all projects. Now we are seeing that senior management are focused on the projects that reduce costs and increase customer conversion,” says Jones.
“We are also experiencing a faster decision-making cycle as management realise that this economic downturn is here for the long term and they have to react quickly to protect their business,” he says.

Positive Workforce Solutions is the developer and marketer of e-tivity Workforce Management software and has several high profile clients ranging from Terry White Chemists and Travelex to JB Hi-Fi.

“Our experience is that Australian businesses have been slow in adopting volume-based rostering,” says Jones.
“With the tools and data that are available through a combination of traffic counters, POS data and volume-based rostering methodologies, businesses can have the right number of staff on the floor when the customers arrive and start their browsing.

Jones says the many businesses he has observed have what he calls “reactive rostering” - that is they react to the POS data and if they are lucky, they see a peak of sales or customers counts and increase their staff at that peak.

“However, what most do not do is look at the peak and when those customers entered the business. This is the time you need to maximise your staffing numbers to maximise your conversion rate,” says Jones.

He tells Inside Retailing Magazine how management can quickly assess massive opportunities for improvement in sales.

“When you study the analytical data, you can get through a combination of high quality traffic counters, the POS data, the number of staff a business should have on the floor, versus what they actually had on the floor.
“Using these tools ensures there is the right number of staff on the floor to take advantage of the traffic flow.”
Jones says these same tools also show management the “lazy” times in their business when there are too many staff to the number of customers.

Harnessing in-store data
He cites a case study of the UK’s Marks & Spencer where a new customer conversion system radically improved the retailer’s use of its in-store data.

“More than 15 million people visit their stores each week. They employ 65,000 people and have more than 450 UK stores as well as a flourishing international business.

“M&S implemented a traffic counting system from Experian FootFall. Two years on, there has been a significant improvement. Stores can see how customer flow and sales are linked and use this knowledge to improve conversion rates.”

As well, stores are creating innovative staff rosters based on this new knowledge, Jones says.

He warns that many retailers only have a few employees in each outlet and consequently they don’t see the benefit of smart rostering tools.

Not so Adam Koch, GM Asia Pacific, retail division, Travelex.

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