Software improves Wickes' staffing

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The do-it-yourself (DIY) retailer Wickes last month completed a project to refine its current staff scheduling process and implement an automated workforce management system.

The retailer used a legacy systems across its 169 standard and eight 'Extra' stores to determine the level of staffing needed to accurately manage customer demand.

It produced the number of labour hours by store, but was thought to be out of date because it was unable to incorporate new measures driven by store activity or customer service propositions to produce daily employee schedules that could help increase revenue through more cost-effective and improved customer service.

Craig Pickett, Wickes stores productivity manager, said: "We knew that if we could get a better match between our staff and our customer requirements this would make a significant contribution to our performance."

The Travis Perkins Group DIY retail subsidiary chose to work with specialist LSI Consulting, using its RetailEASE tool to review all store processes and produce a representative set of labour standards and to develop an accurate operating model.

It then used this model as the basis for implementing new workforce management software from vendor, WorkPlace Systems.

Pickett said the modelling phase of the project was key: "It was clear that, to get the most from our intended investment in a new workforce management system, we would need to improve the way we generated workload demand at store level," he added.

Wickes now uses the new workforce management system to produce more accurate staff schedules for each store, as well as helping it with attendance management and the labour budgeting process.

"Once the standards had been developed, the acid test was to apply them to our operating model and evaluate the workload demand they generated," said Pickett. "The cooperation between LSI and WorkPlace paid dividends, giving us an integrated approach to standards development and demand generation. The accuracy of the standards ensured a quick validation and sign-off from the retail management team."

He added that the workforce management investment has given Wickes the flexibility to quickly implement future business process change and understand how these changes need to be staffed to maintain high levels of customer service.

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