One of the most important tasks of the retail manager is scheduling employees. Creating the work schedule requires meeting the needs of the store, while satisfying the needs of the workers.
The difficulty in scheduling employees will vary with the size of the store, the average sales volume and the total number of employees. These are all factors that influence the store's payroll budget and the coverage needed.
Payroll Dollars as Percent of Sales
Retailers in chain store environments are usually given labor budgets by their regional/district managers or corporate office. These payroll dollars will generally vary from week to week as sales fluctuate. The retail manager will have no control over the labor budget.
Independent retailers may use retail industry standards to estimate the amount of payroll dollars to spend. This amount is usually determined during the business planning process. Both types of retailers should be calculating payroll dollars as a percent of sales.
If a retail store has an annual sales volume of $250,000 and its business plan recommends labor costs not exceed 9% of sales, then the amount of payroll dollars is approximately $432 each week. As sales increase, so will the need to increase the total dollars spent on payroll, not the percent.
Peak Sales Periods
For stores using a POS system which compiles sales reports by hour, it's easy to spot the busiest times of day and ultimately add extra staffing during these peak sales periods. If your store uses a manual cash register that does not provide a reporting system, look over the journal tape to gauge when the store does the most sales.
Many retail stores are busiest just when the doors open, during the lunch hour, around 3 pm when school ends and then again around 5 pm as people leave work. Besides these standard times of day when retailers are faced with the most customer traffic, other times which may warrant an increase in the number of scheduled employees are:
- Special sales or other events
- Holidays
- First of the month
- Weekends
Other Scheduling Factors
Once the retail manager has established what the store needs and how much staffing it can afford, he/she may notice other issues that arise and effect the scheduling. These are the human factors.
Personal issues among staff such as the lack of reliable transportation, illnesses, and child care problems can occur. As new employees are hired and added to the schedule, the ability and responsibility of each worker also becomes a test to the scheduling process.
In a perfect world, we would have an unlimited amount of money, flexible workers who needed no supervision and enough hours in the day to complete every task. However, the retail world is not perfect and writing the schedule can be time consuming and even frustrating.
Read on to learn the basics of writing a retail work schedule.
