Solving Key Business Issues
Labour Costs are the biggest single costs, by far, for Retailers and controlling and reducing costs is a sure way of improving profitability.
Even a small percentage reduction in Labour Costs and improved labour productivity can have a significant impacton the bottom line.
These cost savings are achieved every year and Return on Investment is typically within 12 months.
Labour Costs are being driven by the following factors:
Employment Legislation
- Increasing complexity
- Increasing compliance requirements
- Risk of Tribunal fines and costs
Labour Costs
- High Turnover
- Ineffecient Minimum wage
- Inefficient use of staff
- Strong competition for good staff in key areas
Cutting Labour Costs
In any organisation with a large, widely dispersed workforce, such as Retailers, there is a whole range of ‘Hidden Costs’, which are impossible to control without an automated system in store. The ‘Hidden Costs’ are: overpayment, interpretation of the payroll rules in the employees favour (always), lost working time, inaccurate sickness and absence reporting. In addition, there will be poor staff motivation caused by errors, late payments.Improved Labour Management
Controlling labour costs and providing budget and workload guidelines at the time of rostering significantly improves labour costs.
The additional cost savings are in the following areas:
- 2-5 hours per outlet per week saving in administration time
- Improved Rostering control through budget and KPI management
- Workload plans provide guidance on hourly staff deployment and tasks, with immediate feedback to operational management
- Rapid response to rising or falling sales
- Effective ‘contract hours’ management to match ‘staff hours’ to actual demand
As an example, a retail customer with over 300 stores found overspends, due to lack of control of rostered hours, of circa £45,000 per week over its busy period.
Timely Management Information
With a large workforce, most Retailers operate a 4 weekly payroll for cost purposes. However, this means that operational management information is available several weeks after the event. Add to this the common practice of temporary store transfers and you have a management control issue whereby Area and Regional managers don’t know they have a problem until its too late.Outlet Time Savings
It is important to ensure there are significant benefits to the store managers if they are to accept the system. Being easy and intuitive to use and saving them time are key. In a store with 50 staff, we have in-store time-savings reported of 5 hours per week. This is compared to completing the payroll forms and timesheets manually, with a further 3 hours per week saved by using Rostering.Lost Working Time
Where we have implemented Time Recording, customers report two immediate savings in the outlets.The first is improved employee time-keeping and the second is improved accuracy of sickness and absence reporting.