By Brett Newstead, Director of Sales, Zebra Technologies
While the pandemic has undeniably reshaped the Australian retail industry as a whole, convenience stores (“C-stores”) in particular have faced unique pressures and challenges. Even as the retail sector finds ways to recover and bolster resilience post-lockdowns, many issues faced by C-stores persist today. One of the most pressing issues pertains to recruiting, engaging, and retaining workers. Many C-stores remained open during the pandemic as they were providing essential goods and services. However, due to a drop in customer demand, alongside government-imposed restrictions such as the limitation on working hours byvisa holders and close-contact isolation rules, many stores became short-staffed. Now with normalcy returning, customer footfall has steadily gone back to pre-pandemic levels, but C-stores are still struggling to hire and retain employees. As a result, there are fewer store associates, who now have to cover more shifts and take on more tasks at the same time, which undermines the smooth functioning of the C-stores.
These are unprecedented challenges, and it’s not clear how they will play out in the long run. Many retailers are finding that simply increasingpay is not enough to attract and retain workers. Instead, there is a need to focus on the employee experience and how to empower them.
OVERCOMINGTHEC-STORE LABOUR CHALLENGE
There are several ways technology can enable C-store retailers to better support their front-line employees. For example, intelligent workforce management solutions and employee self-service tools have proven to boost morale and retention by improving efficiency and productivity for all tasks, including scheduling.
Here are four guiding principles for C-store retailers when choosing the right solution:
- Keep workers’ preferences in mind. The system should be able to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to factor in both historic traffic patterns, such as seasonal demand or weather, as well as each store associate’s personal work preferences. With 84% of Australian Retailers Association members stating that it has become harder to recruit new employees, it is imperative that C-stores invest in employee engagement to retain their current staff.
- Aimto avoid staffing shortages. The pandemic has highlighted the need to prepare for sudden changes and to increase worker flexibility. Using an employee self-service solution, C-store employees can use their smartphones to access and modify schedules, put in applications for leave, swap out a shift, or pick one up. This flexibility helps to improve employee engagement, morale, and retention without putting the burden on management to find covers when an employee can’t come into work.
- Fully utilise the workers you have.A robust workforce management solution can schedule store associates to work at multiple locations within a given region or network to better accommodate demand – much like how fitness instructors rotate between area gyms. This allows C-store retailers to maximise their current workforce, especially when staffing would otherwise be lean at certain stores. And store associates can pick up extra shifts where and when they want, which would allow them greater flexibility.
- Create schedules that work. An intelligent workforce management application can assess historical staffing and store performance data, create a labour budget, and then generate an optimised schedule that is shared as far in advance as possible with the store associates.
Implementing solutions such as these can help relieve the pressure on C-store management and employees, thereby allowing them to focus on delivering a good customer experience and engaging in tasks that drive greater satisfaction.
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