Retail is notoriously competitive with busy shopping periods like Black Friday and Christmas sales sorting the winners from the losers.
Leaders across both online and in-store retail are well aware that providing the best customer experience possible, even on the busiest of days, is key to winning customer loyalty. However, only a few manage to effectively deliver this. One of the biggest challenges here is predicting demand. According to e-commerce agency Salmon, almost £5bn is expected to be spent in the UK this Black Friday with nearly half of this online. Getting the biggest slice possible requires thorough preparation.
Having the right people, with the right skills, where and when you need them is crucial for ensuring efficient operations for bricks and mortar stores. It’s also key to guaranteeing seamless experiences online. Many factors impact this, each one of crucial importance, and each one coming with its own list of challenges and frustrations. Black Friday can certainly be a boon for retailers, but only if managed appropriately.
When businesses look to attract customers by promising outstanding levels of service, choice and simplicity – at discounted prices – they can’t tolerate ineffective resourcing and rostering to prevent them from delivering on this. Retailers’ entire reputations are at stake.
The bumps in the road
To cope with seasonal strains and growing expectations for speed and convenience, many retailers look to onboard temporary workers across both in-store and warehouse divisions to support their core team. However, employing seasonal staff is by no means as simple as many would assume.
Employee skills, employment law, budgets, overtime costs, absenteeism, and peaks and troughs in demand are just some of the juggling balls that managers must keep in the air at any one time. The pressure to keep operations in-line is even greater when shopping bonanza reaches its peak. In addition, managers are often hamstrung by the use of antiquated systems, from spreadsheets to handwritten rosters, which are far from efficient and even further from flexible.
Taming the beast
To combat this, retailers must take a fresh look at current onboarding and rostering practices. Reducing time-to-hire and empowering all employees to be productive from day one is key to unlocking the benefits of a larger number of temporary workers and scaling your workforce as needed. In a highly dynamic market, getting temporary workers up-to-speed, motivated and adding value as quickly as possible is an opportunity for businesses to drive a strong competitive advantage.
What is more, predictive analytics can take rostering to a whole new level, providing valuable insights based on historical data. Smart rostering technologies can take a load off managers’ shoulders, save money, and increase business efficiency in one fell swoop. Analytics enables retailers to roster employees more effectively, ensuring enough team members are in place to handle busy periods, while eliminating wastage and inefficiencies during quieter periods.
Achieving more than ‘in the black’
The potential of seamless Black Friday operations does not have to stop there. Management can reap even greater rewards if their chosen technology has the option of employee self-service – staff can select preferred shifts, swap shifts and check their shifts on the go. These capabilities can significantly boost employee satisfaction during busy periods, helping workers retain flexibility and empower them to have more control over their working lives.
That approach will support employee engagement, and ultimately contribute to creating a more productive environment with operational efficiency and customer excellence at its heart. With the right technologies in place, retailers can plan far more effectively for events such as the Black Friday shopping bonanza.