MAN 3310 Module 3 Workforce Planning Assignment Example

Fewer Cashiers, More Pickers: Workforce Planning and Scheduling for a Supermarket Chain in a Changing Market

Student Name

B.S.B.A. in Human Resources/Organizational Management, Thomas Edison State University

MAN-3310: Human Resources Management

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Fewer Cashiers, More Pickers: Workforce Planning and Scheduling for a Supermarket Chain in a Changing Market

Two changes in the environment are reshaping the workforce of Tuckahoe Markets, the invented grocery chain carried through these MAN-3310 papers. Self-checkout lanes, installed in six stores last year, are reducing demand for cashiers, while online orders for pickup and delivery, now about 9% of sales, require a new kind of worker who picks and packs orders. At the same time, a tight local labor market and high turnover make every hire costly. This assignment forecasts the chain's labor needs for the next three years, examines the mix of full-time and part-time employees, and recommends changes to scheduling, which the textbook treats as part of workforce planning in a changing environment (Jackson et al., 2017).

Forecasting Labor Demand

Workforce planning compares the labor an organization will need with the labor it will have, then plans how to close the gap. The chain's current hourly workforce works about 2.6 million hours a year. Planning assumptions, agreed with operations, are that self-checkout will spread to all 11 stores, reducing cashier hours by about 30%, and that online orders will grow to 15% of sales, with picking requiring about one labor hour per 70 items.

Total hours fall only slightly, but the mix changes. The chain does not need layoffs: with clerk turnover near 70% a year, natural attrition alone removes far more than 234,000 cashier hours annually. The planning task is to redirect hiring and to retrain interested cashiers as pickers or fresh-department staff, which keeps experienced people and avoids recruiting from scratch.

Retraining needs a plan of its own. Cashiers who move to picking must learn the handheld system, product substitution rules and food safety for temperature-sensitive orders, about sixteen hours of training each. Offering the move first to cashiers with at least a year of service rewards loyalty and keeps experienced people, while new hires fill the cashier shifts that remain.

The Part-Time Mix

About two thirds of the chain's hourly employees work part-time. Part-time staff give stores flexibility to cover peak hours, but more is not always better. Kesavan et al. (2014) analyzed two years of data from 445 stores of a large retailer and found an inverted U-shaped relationship between the share of part-time workers and both sales and profit: some part-time labor helped, but beyond a point, adding more hurt performance. Part-time workers, they suggested, may know less about products and processes and be less available when needed.

For Tuckahoe, the analysis suggests a modest shift. Fresh departments, where product knowledge drives service, should move toward a higher share of full-time staff, about 50% rather than the current 35%. Cashiering and evening stocking, where peaks are sharp and tasks are easier to learn, can remain mostly part-time. The new picking role can use a mix, with a full-time lead in each store.

Stable Scheduling

The chain's scheduling practice is a major source of turnover. Schedules are posted three or four days ahead and change often, and part-time hours swing widely from week to week. A field experiment suggests that changing this can pay for itself. Kesavan et al. (2022) randomly assigned stores of the apparel retailer Gap, Inc. to adopt more stable and predictable schedules, including more consistent shifts, more notice and more employee control over swaps. Over nine months, productivity in the treated stores rose by 5.1%, through sales up 3.3% and labor hours down 1.8%, and the authors traced the gains to better store execution.

Tuckahoe should adopt a similar package: post schedules two weeks ahead, give each part-time employee a core of consistent shifts that changes only with notice, allow employees to swap shifts through an app with manager approval, and guarantee a minimum number of weekly hours to employees who want them. Because the Gap study involved apparel rather than groceries, the chain should test the package in three stores before rolling it out, tracking turnover, overtime, sales and out-of-stock items.

The plan should also be explained to employees before it begins. Staff who hear only that schedules are changing may assume hours are being cut. A short meeting in each store, showing the forecast and the guaranteed minimums, would turn a rumor into a commitment.

Conclusion

The chain's environment is changing what work needs to be done, not how much. A three-year forecast shows a shift from cashiering toward online picking and fresh service, which attrition and retraining can absorb. Research suggests limiting part-time staff in knowledge-intensive departments and stabilizing schedules, both of which address the turnover that makes every change harder.

Finally, the chain should revisit the forecast every year. Online demand could grow faster or slower than assumed, and self-checkout acceptance varies by neighborhood, so the plan is a starting point to be updated as actual hours come in rather than a fixed target.

References

Jackson, S. E., Schuler, R. S., & Werner, S. (2017). Managing human resources (12th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Kesavan, S., Lambert, S. J., Williams, J. C., & Pendem, P. K. (2022). Doing well by doing good: Improving retail store performance with responsible scheduling practices at the Gap, Inc. Management Science, 68(11), 7818-7836. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.4291

Kesavan, S., Staats, B. R., & Gilland, W. (2014). Volume flexibility in services: The costs and benefits of flexible labor resources. Management Science, 60(8), 1884-1906. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2013.1844