10 Tested Ways to Improve your Shift Management Process

Managing the process of retail shift system is a tedious job. Maintaining a proper employee record is immensely beneficial for compact and efficient work management. This helps in creating a well-coordinated work schedule that meets your entire business objective.

An excellent retail shift management process helps to sort out the work schedule for every employee, set-up the employee requirements, and customer management. Since the whole process is more challenging than you would think, we have come up with some of the best-tested ways that will improve your retail shift management process like never before.

Importance of successful shift management process

All big agencies face a lot of issues while scheduling retail employee shifts, which has caused substantial money losses. Hence, if you are driving an SMB, it is evident that you will face such problems too, and you need to overcome them to avoid losses. Here, we have enlisted a few reasons to explain why you need a well-defined retail shift management process.

• The workers will have a clear idea of their work plan and should know their roles and responsibilities precisely.
  • This system helps to compartmentalize the employee schedule according to their skillset, and thereby, it makes your business ventures run efficiently.
  • Employee versatility increases due to retail shift process as when an employee is sick, someone else can fill up in his place quickly without harming the on-going work process.
  • Rotating employees is an overall flexible process for both employers and people working there.

Hence, you can understand why the shift management process is immensely vital for your organization. Now, in this segment, we’ll jot down the top 10 ways to improve your retail shift management process for your aid.

1. Simpler and more comfortable with a proper employment budget

Every retailer of a chain store receives a fixed employment budget from the manager or the owner of the store every month. The value of the amount changes on a weekly basis, depending upon the workload and business traffic. The district manager decides the budget; so the retailer has no say over it.

So, sometimes it becomes difficult to maintain the store and the staffs while keeping the budget in control. There are retail erp software systems such as planner tools which help you in foreseeing the pay rate of the employees and judging their work rate. Thus, it becomes easier for them to keep a check on everything.

2. Timing is the key

Time is said to be one of the most valuable assets of any business. Here, time plays a significant role as well, and we will tell you how. You can schedule the shift management in advance so that there is a smooth flow of work. For example, you can give the employees their work schedule at the beginning, before they start their work, so that, they can also schedule their plans accordingly.

• This will give much-needed flexibility to the employees as well as the retails store work program.
  • Although it is a difficult job to plan out the employee shift two or three weeks beforehand, it will eventually help you a lot in the long run.

This will also reduce the unnecessary risk of making a last-minute schedule, which becomes stressful at times, and often makes the plan unsustainable.

3. Personal relationship with the employees

It is always essential to maintain an excellent personal relationship with your employees. The workplace might get disrupted, if there are any unavoidable incidents like illness, accident, family or friend’s death or any situation and the employee cannot turn up; these are genuine problems that one cannot avoid.

If you have an excellent personal relationship with your employees, then the schedule of retail shift gets more comfortable because they will not hesitate to tell you about their problems and you can make the changes accordingly. Transparency is the key to any businesses. You should be well aware of each employee’s capability to take responsibilities and their ability to fulfill those given assignments on time.

4.Predict retail management schedules

You should avoid two things, which are very common in this business when a retailer is handling the shift management process.

• Avoid calling in before the schedule if it’s a busy day. Predict the schedule according to the events, and make sure you follow it through. 
  • In the same way, make sure that the employees take the work hours seriously, and they do not leave before their planned shift hours are over just because it has been an idle day. Make sure they follow the planned and predicted shift timings carefully without any mismanagement. Let them know that sometimes they may even have to fill in more hours than they are supposed to because that’s only part of the job. Let the employees know that there are monetary incentives for overtime and good work.

5. Identify the peak sales period

This is an essential step for organizing your work plan, especially for stores that are using retail pos software, which gives you the report of the sales every hour. With this software, you can quickly determine the period of the month of the year when the sales are at a peak.

According to various surveys it is seen, most of the retail stores are extremely busy during the opening time slot in the morning or else in the evening session when people are returning home from their workplace and pay a visit to the nearby retail shops. However, you have to determine other factors too, to identify peak sales hour; we have listed down a few.

• Any special occasion of the month such as Christmas or New Year
• Weekends
• Holidays or any national events

6. Keep a strict order when it comes to time offs

It has been a common phenomenon when employees or retail store workers want additional lengthy time offs, which can affect productivity significantly. The retailer should strictly mention beforehand about the maximum number of days that the employees can take, for time offs and make sure that the employees take this rule seriously. Although, if there is any serious issue that is unavoidable, then there will be an exception.

7. Employee input matters a lot

The relation between the employer and the employee is one that should have transparency about their roles and expectations. However, the retailer should listen to his employees, and he should not give them enough leeway as you cannot satisfy everyone. The following two points can make employee and retailer relation much better and reliable.

• Give your employees time offs if there are some legit issues and in the employee’s side; do not be harsh on them during their tough times.
• Let your employees know that they matter and their needs are also satisfied.

8.Know your workers and their strengths

Not everyone is going to be the same when it comes to “working at a retail store.” Thus, it is crucial for you to know your employees and what they are good at. If you know about your employee’s skill set, strengths, and their area of expertise, you can schedule your work accordingly and assign them to do what they are best at.

9.Timely response

It is always advantageous to have employees available at the go. Whatever the situation is, you must take actions promptly and give responses without any delay. For that, you need a trusted, reliable workforce at your disposal available as per their shifts. For example, on a good day with a lot of business traffic, and you get many questions on social media or as simple as customer calls; your employees can handle them on time if appropriately scheduled.

10. Keep learning new ways and never fail

There is no end to learning new things every day, and it is the same case here. You can keep learning how to improve your shift schedules with new retail software. Thus, with the apt tools and a unified workforce, dealing with shift management becomes more manageable. You can take your time and schedule the shifts accordingly without much headache. In no time, you will be on top of things, and you will be running a successful retail shift management system.