WFM 2014: Bridging The Execution Gap

By Matt Pillar, chief editor

May 2014 Integrated Solutions For Retailers

According to Retail Systems Research, there’s a massive gap between modern WFM/HCM (human capital management) solution capability and retailers’ execution of sophisticated labor management practices. In its recent report, “WFM 2013: The Store Employee in the Customer Age,” RSR revealed that only 33 percent of retailers consider themselves highly capable of absence management and recruiting. Slightly fewer consider themselves highly capable with their hiring/onboarding and labor budgeting and planning systems. And most startlingly, well under a quarter of retailers rank themselves highly capable of forecasting and scheduling, task management, and labor analytics.

The laggard state of retail WFM adoption is no doubt — at least partially — a product of the propensity for retailers to leverage multitasking POS software for labor management functions like time and attendance and scheduling. This approach, however, often fails the scalability test as the business expands, and the retailer finds itself returning to old labor management classics: pens, paper, and Excel.