Labour costs have historically been one of the largest costs impacting a business’s ability to scale and grow. With an increase in energy and fuel costs driving a surge in production and delivery costs, retail businesses are starting to feel pressure from all angles. 

So, how can businesses use data to streamline their labour spending and create business-wide efficiencies?

Labour costs have historically been one of the largest costs impacting a business’s ability to scale and grow. For many businesses, retailers included, labour costs can amount to almost half of a business’s expenditure.

The most successful businesses, however, tend to have processes in place to manage their labour spending more effectively and efficiently, which can create a competitive advantage within their market. Being able to deliver a roster that is perfectly tailored to a business’ weekly ups and downs is far better than being over or understaffed, after all.

Roubler has identified a number of key factors that prevent businesses from properly delivering efficient labour processes – inefficient rostering; the availability of accurate workforce data; and the ability to balance wage spending against sales.

Simplifying the roster

Roubler’s workforce management software was built with many functions, but they all seek to deliver one specific outcome: to create a more efficient and compliant shift-based workforce environment. Between delivering different pay grades to people on casual, part-time and full-time work schedules, retailers also have to manage the complexities around Modern Awards, as well as holiday loading and sick pay

The daily difficulties of a retailer managing their workforce and driving efficiencies have been compounded by major macroeconomic factors driving up production and delivery costs.

Whilst these costs cannot be controlled, the one major cost that can be is your labour costs.

By looking at a business’ rosters with an eye for efficiency, and making smart adjustments, a business can take back some capital expenditure and put it somewhere it could help support the business through a difficult time. 

Leveraging your data to maximise your potential

The next point to consider is whether your business is using its workforce and demand data effectively. 

If your weekend is always busy, are you rostering on more people all day, or just for the peak times? Can you determine, based on a sales forecast, how many staff you’ll need, and when, or is it easier to simply put them all on all day?

Roubler champions ‘demand-based rostering’, where a business’s deployed staff are directly correlated to the number of customers and revenue are likely to come through stores each day. Everything has a common delta, which is demand. 

If your demand fluctuates, your rostering should fluctuate as well. Using Roubler’s rostering technology, you can leverage accurate POS sales or foot traffic data to automate the most cost-effective rosters with a few clicks – all with full visibility over your labour costs

You can do this every day each store is open, and by reducing the amount of variation in the way that your business rosters, you can create a data-driven approach that maximises each staff member, and store’s, return on investment.

For more information on Roubler’s workplace management technology, click here. 

About the author: Nigel Ritson is chief operations officer at workforce management software company Roubler.