Kronos helps nationwide retail chain manage its labour force effectively

Kronos workforce-management solutions helped Staples use labour far more efficiently.

A frequent challenge of workforce management is aligning labour with demand. Whatever the industry – from manufacturing to retail – labour demand must be determined accurately before work schedules are created. This is one way Kronos Canada helps companies in labour management.

For example, Kronos offered the perfect solution for Staples Canada, when the retail giant needed a way to forecast labour demand.

Real-time view of data

Staples was using an electronic system to track associate time, but managers created worker schedules manually, which made it harder to see if schedules reflected the associates’ time. This also complicated overtime control. Store managers had to review several systems to predict labour demand, which was inefficient and ineffective, and they occasionally forgot to add associates’ off days to schedules.

The organization needed a labour management solution that could determine employee demand by store and department, track associates’ availability, monitor store volume relative to forecast, revise forecasts to ensure the right labour is available, and more. For these, Staples turned to Kronos.

Kronos recommended an automated labour management solution that offered a real-time view of labour data to boost productivity, enabled better-informed decisions, managed labour costs efficiently, and raised engagement. This solution included the following items:

• Workforce Forecast Manager. This uses predictive technology to determine the number and type of workers required to meet demand. It controls costs by aligning staffing to work needs, reducing over-staffing, and better managing budgets.
• Workforce Scheduler. This function creates schedules that match labour to anticipated demand and adjusts them match changing volume.
• Workforce Mobile. This allows workers to see their latest schedules, time cards, and accrual balances, while giving managers full-time access to employee data and time-off requests.

Result? In one year, Staples kept its labour use within budget as sales increased; it now saves 70,000 hours a year in payroll sign-off time and unplanned overtime.

“The volume-driven model of reducing overall spending, by putting it in the right place with the right labour at the right time, has worked quite well,” says Staples senior manager Joe Sherratt.

For more information, contact Kronos.

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