Best Labour Scheduling Practices For Companies To Navigate Wage Increases

Several recent proposals will raise the minimum wage and Living Wage that employers are obliged to pay in the United Kingdom. The changes highlight the need for up-to-date automated labour scheduling and time and attendance solutions to control labour costs and improve productivity and profitability.

Labour costs are one of the largest expenses any company has to absorb and manage. For a typical retailer, labour costs can average 10-20 percent of total revenues. Other industries, such as food and hospitality, can see labour expenses as high as 30 percent of total revenues. No wonder then that retail executives in finance and store operations have traditionally paid close attention to how much their companies spend on labour and the impact to the bottom line.

In the UK, several new proposals to raise the National Minimum Wage (NMW) and National Minimum Living Wage (NMLW) have put renewed focus on how companies manage their labour spend.