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On shift software6/19/2023 ![]() ![]() Perfect forecasts don’t exist. To produce an optimal labor schedule, the scheduling software must forecast customer patterns accurately-if you want to schedule labor at 15-minute increments, you must also understand demand at 15-minute increments. Three additional realities get in the way: As soon as a computer is scheduling your people at 15-minute increments to match the peaks and valleys of customer demand, employees’ desire to live a normal, predictable life becomes a barrier to profitability. Starbucks’ experience is common among a number of retailers who have taken their passion for engineering and optimizing schedules too far. So why not implement just-in-time, software-driven staffing across the board? The problem - and one that Starbucks was forced to face first-hand- is that while scheduling software may seem “like magic,” as one of the major software vendors in the Times article put it, it’s actually not. ![]() The authors estimated that the retailer was losing about 9% of sales and 7% of profits due to this mismatch. In a study of 41 stores of a women’s apparel retailer, for example, Saravanan Kesavan and his co-authors found that all of the stores were understaffed significantly during the peak periods of the day, while they were significantly overstaffed during the rest of the hours. Our collective research has also shown that retailers really do struggle with scheduling. Automation not only frees store managers to focus on customers, but can take into account much more data than a person can remember -historical customer patterns, weather, experience at neighborhood stores - so workers spend less time either with nothing to do or being completely overwhelmed with long lines and unhappy customers.Īs the argument goes, that’s good for workers, who don’t want to be bored or overwhelmed, and it’s good for retailers, whose biggest cost and revenue driver is typically labor. Until recently, determining who works when involved store managers manually slotting each employee into shifts on paper. Starbucks is just one of many companies using this type of technology, and it’s not hard to understand why. In this case, “the machine” refers to a real machine: the highly sophisticated automated software Starbucks uses to schedule its 130,000 baristas, sometimes giving them less than a few day’s notice about their schedules in order to “optimize” its workforce. ![]() After a lengthy New York Times story, the company decided to adjust some of their controversial scheduling practices, eliminating “clopening” - when workers are required to close at night and re-open in the morning - and requiring at least a week’s notice of upcoming schedules. Starbucks workers recently scored a point against the machine. ![]()
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