Oct 24, 2016

Study: Poor scheduling leads to high turnover, low ROI

Dive Brief:

  • A new study from Workjam revealed that a great deal of hourly turnover may be directly tied to scheduling issues.
  • According to the study, only 17% of retail managers feel their employees are “very motivated and engaged,” resulting in almost half claiming that 5% of their staff voluntarily leave every three months. Much of the problem is tied to scheduling conflicts, according to the report.
  • This high turnover rate noticeably hinders attempts to hit sales goals, and also has a strong impact on continuous training and hiring costs.

Dive Insight:

High hourly turnover is especially problematic in the holiday hiring season, where more employees are needed to keep up with demand. If most of an employer’s time is kept consistently training new people who are likely to leave after the holiday season anyway, ROI will remain low.

More retailers have turned their attention to scheduling problems as of late, particularly “clopening” — scheduling an employee to work a closing shift and then an opening shift the next day. In an effort to retain employees, more are considering “fair scheduling” practices, including more predictable shifts.

Kathryn Moody / HRDive

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