PCA Magazine Winter 2020

PREMIUMCIGARS.ORG WINTER 2020 | PCA The Magazine 55 O U T S I D E T H E C I G A R B O X ENGAGED EMPLOYEES Once your staffing needs are addressed, the next obvious question is: How do you get staff fully engaged in the customer experience? First, scheduling is a key factor. Research has shown increases in sales productivity when staff schedules are stabilized. Instead of viewing staff as expenses, employees may be the key to overcoming any preference for online buying. According to an article in the Harvard Business Review , “Research: When Retail Workers Have Stable Schedules, Sales and Productivity Go Up,” practices such as bare-bones staffing in stores and unstable scheduling have flourished in the guise of enabling better profits for retailers. In study after study over the past decade, operations researchers have found that retailers understaff during peak hours even as the research tells them sales and profits would increase if they just did the opposite. In this research, Joan C. Williams, Saravanan Kesavan and LisaMcCorkell conducted a randomized controlled experiment at Gap. They shifted retail associates tomore stable schedules by: Eliminating on-calls, where employees are scheduled to work shifts that can be canceled anytime up until two hours before they are scheduled to begin. Requiring employee schedules to be posted two weeks in advance. Plus, once the experiment began, managers who chose to participate committed to trying out five additional changes: Giving a core teamof associates a “soft guarantee” of 20 or more hours a week. Establishing standard start and end times for shifts. Giving associates a stable core schedule (meaning that associates will have consistent schedules week to week). Using themobile app Shift Messenger, in which associates could swap shifts on their own without getting amanager’s approval. Addingmore staffing during understaffed periods, which were identified based on analysis of store traffic and conversion rate data. The results were striking. Sales in stores withmore stable scheduling increased by 7 percent. Labor productivity increased by 5 percent. The researchers estimate that the retailer Gap earned an additional $2.9million as a result of more stable scheduling during the 35 weeks the experiment was conducted. Data fromQuickTrip and Trader Joe’s also demonstrates that stabilizing schedules delivers not only greater employee satisfaction, but also higher customer satisfaction. At QuickTrip, employee onboarding and training are seen as critical to employee success. (Staffers regularly attribute their success to their trainers and the culture.) QT clerks could pass for some of the hardest-working folks in the convenience-store industry. Theymust be able to count change in their heads without relying on the register. Theymust do store upkeeps every 30minutes, which involve everything fromkeeping the restrooms clean and stocking coolers and filling coffee and tea dispensers tomaking sure hot dogs are on the grill. During the training process, new hires learn in explicit terms what the culture is, what is expected of them, and how important customer service is. As one QT employee notes: “I even learned how to find nutritional information on a food item in case a customer asks.” Employees learn from the outset that every customer is important, and QuickTrip ties bonuses to customer service and regularly sends in secret shoppers to evaluate merchandising and staff interactions. These evaluations factor into employee performance reviews. At Trader Joe’s, employees are encouraged by their managers to take ownership of their work and are given the responsibility to do so. As one former employee writes, “Crewmembers are trusted tomake decisions for and take the lead on various tasks.” She says that crewmembers are encouraged to take ownership of their success and mistakes, but managers are always on hand to offer guidance or help when necessary. “[Staff] maintained an attitude of ‘there are 1,000 right ways to do something,’ whichmade employees feel safe about making suggestions or changing up methods,” she writes. There is somuch to dive into about staff development that can be noted here, but as the above research points out, the right staff at the right time who are 100 percent bought in and engaged will undoubtedly increase your revenues and your customer satisfaction. And having the proper staff in place will also help with inventory turns as you sell through products at increased rates resulting inmore sales, lower overhead, and happier staff and customers.