Pressure on Retail Labor Operating Models

In almost every market, labor has continued to be one of retail’s biggest challenges since the pandemic. 

Shortages remain chronic, experienced hires are leaving the labor market and government regulation changes are only adding to expense.

As a result of this, we’re seeing three general themes from retailers in rethinking their operating models. Here’s how we are seeing co-pilots assist:

1. More shared roles

After a period of time where the move in retail was towards specialization in departments and roles, the reverse is starting to occur with much more sharing across roles. This puts additional pressure on ops teams:

• A need to get team members up the curve quicker.
• A need to better track follow ups when shared across multiple people.

Where a co-pilot is helping…

With the introduction of “Guidebook” earlier this year, we’ve been able to direct in-moment training to individuals based on data, so that the right person gets the right training and insights at the right time. This is reducing training times and boosting appropriate KPIs.

Example

One client saw their attachment boosted by 21% when giving specific training to individuals now focused in these areas.

Our inbuilt tracking of actions is also helping provide a unified view of work progress and allows a team juggling between multiple roles to keep on track, rather than set and forget.

2.  Greater spans of control

As we’ve previously reported, District Manager churn has increased 3x since the pandemic, and with that, many experienced workers have left the industry. Retailers are being forced into increasing spans of control for anyone with a multi-unit role. 

The core area this calls into question is the “boot-force” nature of multi-unit management. With current reporting and task tools, the only way to check standards and compliance is to visit a store.

Where a co-pilot is helping…

A co-pilot is helping in a few core ways:

1. Automating daily work– from analyzing multiple reports to automating many management workflows through directed work and escalations, Quorso’s co-pilot is simplifying how District Managers can get to the core of supporting and coaching stores and teams.
2. Intelligently planning – by automatically prioritizing stores and connecting to calendars, co-pilots are helping them plan out their weeks more efficiently both on and off the road.
3. Data-informed follow up – by tracking action to outputs. Quorso’s co-pilot is helping District Managers know what’s happening in the store without being there.

By saving time and allowing them to do more remotely, tools like Quorso are helping DMs and other multi-unit leaders manage the increased complexity of higher store counts.

3. Less central support

Many retailers have unfortunately had to announce reductions in workforce, with stores at already threadbare levels of staffing a lot of reductions have been pushed on central teams. However, this hasn’t come with a decreased level of workload and teams are having to find more efficient and productive ways to drive the same output. 

Where a co-pilot is helping…

We’ve been helping central teams get quicker insight and obtain a more holistic view of their network’s performance, allowing them to pursue more focused initiatives and interventions.

We’ve also been seeing ways teams can simplify reporting and systems to find cost savings in removing and unifying multiple information silos.