scheduling

Employee Insights

Updates from the bottom rung

Karin Allen

Cabela’s Outfitter • Gifts & Fudge - Grand Junction • March 29, 2013

“EMPLOYEES ARE KEY TO THE SUCCESS AND FUTURE OF OUR GREAT COMPANY. WE KNOW THAT TO SUCCESSFULLY ENGAGE, CHERISH AND IMPRESS OUR CUSTOMERS, WE MUST HAVE ENGAGED EMPLOYEES.”

Tommy Millner

CEO

                 Scheduling

“Our managers are spending over 6 hours a week on scheduling.” -Jessie

                                                  Work - life  balance

Each Outfitter has his own passions, his own needs. Diversity is the spice of life.

At this month’s town hall meeting, Jessie correctly listed scheduling as the employees’ top concern.  He explained that the managers work from a computer generated schedule and that they are spending over 6 hours of their work week adjusting that schedule.  He mentioned work-life balance.  He told us that over 600 work hours go unfilled each week because people call in sick (inconveniencing their fellow outfitters).  I remember Mary Jo mentioning once at a morning meeting how just many schedule change requests cross her desk (a lot).  It’s obvious something’s wrong with this picture.  The excuse  is, “It’s retail.  We have a lot of hours to cover”.  “Open availability” is the corporate catch phrase that is unraveling  respect for the individual.

Core Value: Respect for individuals

If respect for individuals were taken into consideration by the scheduling gods, then a seemingly random and painful rotation with somewhere between 10 and 20 days advance notice would be illegal.

How can you plan your life?  When do you make appointments if you don’t even have one regular day off?  There is no reason  for this lack of respect.  The employees complain, shake their heads, and lose respect for management in return.  Everyone thinks they could do it better. (I heard it in the break room).  

Personally, I work part time and have fixed my availability sheet so that I have two days off in a row.  I did not apply for full time because full time people rarely get two days off in a row.  They might get a weekend day off on occasion.  Sometimes they work 6 to 8 days in a row because it crosses two separate work weeks. Even with the parameters I’ve set, my short work week exhausts me due to things like working back to back shifts - late nights and early mornings.  I’m constantly amazed whenever my schedule comes out.  I can never guess what it will be.  My most recent schedule didn’t even have me making fudge Monday morning or any day the week before Easter!  Is my manager a moron?  No, the scheduling is unnecessarily  complex.

A Simple Solution: When you hire great people and you treat them with respect, it is the first key to having engaged employees.

 It just makes sense to give people regular hours.  It makes it easier to plan ahead.  It makes it easier to schedule.  There will always be exceptions, that’s the nature of life, but I think the result would be less “lost hours” and probably less trading of hours. .  When you post a job and you can post what hours are expected and how much it pays, HR will have more relevant applicants and less to weed out in the hiring process.  

Our work force is a diverse group in many ways.  I’m impressed most with the diversity in age.  We have Outfitters in our store that range from young students to men and women in their 70’s and 80’s.  With this kind of diversity comes diverse availabilities.  In general, students want to work weekends and evenings, older people probably have the most flexibility, but that doesn’t mean they want to work an insanely diverse and flexible schedule.  It means they can fill in when needed on a regular basis.  Balancing family life is particularly tricky and in a caring system,  hours could be scheduled to coincide with school schedules as well.  

• Hire key full time people to work specific regular shifts - openers & closers
• Hire part time workers to fill in the regular gaps - early, late, lunch hours, days off

It’s not rocket science.