Top Workplace Inefficiencies (and Strategies for Overcoming Them)
In the dynamic world of retail, efficiency and productivity are key to success. However, according to a survey conducted by Legion Technologies, the retail industry is grappling with a significant efficiency crisis. The survey gathered responses from over 1,200 hourly workers and over 750 managers, revealing the major drains on operational efficiency and labor effectiveness in retail workplaces.
The three identified efficiency drains are: 1. Economic strain on operations. 2. Burdened managers overwhelmed by manual, time-consuming scheduling and labor management tasks. 3. Disengaged workers leading to high turnover and reduced productivity.
These issues collectively hamper the retail sector, making it crucial to find solutions. Legion Technologies addresses these drains through its AI-powered Workforce Management (WFM) platform.
The platform introduces several AI features designed to optimize labor deployment, boost employee engagement, and enhance overall productivity and cost efficiency for retail businesses. These features include:
- Employee productivity-based scheduling: AI calculates granular employee productivity scores based on KPIs (sales per hour, transactions, etc.) and integrates them with fairness rules, skills, tenure, and preferences to generate optimized schedules that enhance performance and balance costs.
- Shift prioritization: AI assigns top-performing employees to high-priority shifts aligned with business goals, ensuring key shifts are staffed by the most effective workers.
- On-demand shift offers and swaps: AI facilitates real-time shift offerings and swaps based on productivity, roles, and compliance, increasing scheduling flexibility and employee satisfaction.
- Automation of scheduling: The AI-driven system reduces the time spent on manual scheduling by up to 50%, alleviating manager burden and improving schedule accuracy and fairness.
By implementing these AI features, retail businesses can optimize labor deployment, improve retention, and enhance overall productivity and cost efficiency.
Moreover, the platform addresses the issue of high turnover, a consistent problem in the retail sector. Retail turnover consistently hovers around 60%, leading to additional costs in hiring, onboarding, and losing productivity of experienced workers.
Legion Technologies' AI-powered WFM platform can help retailers emerge stronger after economic challenges. Prioritizing labor optimization and leveraging automation can remediate a vast web of efficiency-killers in the workplace, relieving the administrative burden on managers and creating a more engaging work environment for associates.
Michael Spataro, the SVP of Partnerships and Employee Value Solutions at Legion Technologies, emphasizes the importance of streamlining administrative processes with AI, particularly in scheduling tasks. Greater scheduling flexibility can persuade hourly workers to take a new job, and pay flexibility, such as the ability to be paid early, is a top incentive for hourly employees in a new job opportunity.
In conclusion, Legion Technologies' AI-powered Workforce Management platform offers a promising solution to the efficiency crisis in the retail sector. Adopting AI in labor management doesn't require a full pivot and can focus on the biggest productivity drains to boost business performance while effectively controlling costs.
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