CLASP/CENTER FOR LAW AND SOCIAL POLICY

May 21, 2015

3:00 p.m. ET

OPERATOR: Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Job Schedules and

Scheduling Software Call.

All lines have been placed in a listen-only mode. If you should require assistance

throughout the conference, please press star, zero on your telephone keypad to reach a

live operator.

Now, I’ll turn the floor over to Jodie Levin-Epstein of CLASP, the Center for Law and

Social Policy.

Jodie, the floor is yours.

JODIE LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Thank you.

And welcome, everyone.

Employers often deploy scheduling software to achieve what is called workforce

optimization, scheduling their labor according to projected demand. This can generate

erratic and unpredictable schedules for their workers. Some large companies have begun

to change some scheduling practices, including Walmart which now has “open shift” that

employees can seek to take.

Starbucks has also made some changes following a New York Times story that brought

its readers in touch with the phenomenon of clopening, known well to retail workers

when they are assigned shift to both open and close a store just a few hours apart. And

The Gap is involved in research into its own schedules to learn about impacts on workers

(in part) to understand how schedules that fail to reflect employee well-being can turn out

to be costly. Software – it can be designed to optimize scheduling and also take into

account the needs of employees.

Here, to discuss these issues with me today are my guests, Susan Lambert of the

University of Chicago . Hi, Susan.

SUSAN LAMBERT: Hi. Good afternoon, everyone.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: And JD Miller with Workplace Systems. Hi, JD.

JD MILLER: Hi, Jodie.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: And Shawna Sharie of Blue Bottle Coffee. Welcome, Shawna.

SHAWNA SHARIE: Thanks very much, Jodie.

We’re going to turn to you first, Susan. And, by the way, welcome back. I was just

saying that there is never a year where I don’t have you on one of these audio

conferences, and we are very grateful to you and for your research. And the last time you

were on, I believe we were talking about your research with your colleague, Julia Henly,

on early career earners. And that piece of research really has set the stage for much of

the current attention to what is known about the scope of those with scheduling issues –

erratic scheduling issues and other kinds of aspects of scheduling. Can you remind us,

though, about the breadth of the scheduling issues, you know, just like two or three top-

line data points, Susan?

LAMBERT: Sure. I think the key takeaway is that problematic scheduling practices are

widespread among – what we have – we have looked at our early career earners in the

labor market – so, these are workers between 26 to 32 years old who are, you know, in

the middle of forming families and forging careers. And, among them, approximately 40

percent report that they need – they know when they will need to work only one week or

less in advance. Forty-four percent says that their employer decides their work schedule

without their input. And three-quarters report their – that their weekly hours varied in the

past on average by more than a full conventional eight-hour day of work and pay if

you’re an hourly worker and that, overall, workers paid by the hour and workers of color

are at an even higher risk of experiencing these troubling scheduling practices.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: I know want to alert the audience – Susan, did I catch you off?

LAMBERT: No.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: OK. Good.

I want to alert the audience that we are quite confident you came to this audio conference

with your own questions that you want to ask. You can ask them at any time by emailing

audioconference@clasp.org. And I encourage you to send them in at any moment right

now. You can identify the speaker you want to have address your question or I will do

that for you. But, send those in often and early. Oftentimes, when we begin an audio

conference, there are lots and lots of questions in here already. So, you have lots of white

space to fill right now. So, get right on it and start shooting us some questions and I’ll

get to them. Thank you very much.

OK. Susan, this word “workforce optimization” – I think I really heard it first from you.

I mean, I could kind of figured out what it meant. But, it could mean a lot of different

things. Can you briefly describe how workforce optimization works and what the

software can do around that issue?

LAMBERT: Sure. The basic goal of workforce optimization systems is really to

facilitate the ability of managers to staff to changing business needs. So, in retail, for

example, these systems are designed to forecast and then track variations in customer

traffic and sales so that managers can see when more or fewer sales (assistants) are

needed, for example. These systems often integrate forecasting with scheduling. So,

forecast of demand are based on very sophisticated analyses that specific how many

workers are likely to be needed when. Some systems provide managers with a basic

template of what the schedule should look like, how many hours each week, on what

days, during what times. And other systems actually populate the schedule by assigning

work hours to individual workers on the payroll.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: So, you’ve seen this workforce optimization up close and personal

since way back when you did some studies of the few major companies. What were your

takeaways about impact for the company, impact for employees? What was your big

“ahas” out of that experience and research?

LAMBERT: Sure. Yes. These systems are kind of an ongoing focus of my research

because they are really what major employers now are using in their scheduling

processes. And I’d like to just give a couple of examples from those studies in retail in

particular that, I think, highlight kind of the lessons that can be learned.

One of the things that we found in looking at data from these systems is that there seems

to be a lot less volatility in labor requirements than commonly thought or at least what we

initially thought. So, for example, in one firm in which we analyzed data from the firm’s

payroll system and their scheduling system on the times when each employee clocked in

and out of work every day for all of 2012, we found that the total number of hours used in

the stores was over 90 percent the same from week to week and that for the majority of

stores, the difference between the peak week to the bottom of the week in terms of hours

used in the store – that that difference was less than 30 percent. So, week to week, 90

percent the same and over 70 percent consistency across the whole year.

And, then, we also looked at the accuracy of the company’s original forecast of demand

and found that they were over 90 percent accurate. And, maybe, JD can talk a bit about

this too because the new systems are even better.

But, with all that stability and predictability, managers still managed around basically the

10 percent of the instability rather than the 90 percent of the stability. They posted

schedules with little advanced noticed. They scheduled workers for short shifts that they

could cancel or extend if they thought needed. And that’s because managers in retail –

and really in most other industries – are held accountable for maintaining these very

stringent staffing-to-demand ratios. And they get in trouble if they go over even a few

hours.

And what happens is that this intense focus on staffing to demand leads to the over-

optimization of these systems. Managers focus on these micro moments and really can

lose sight of the bigger picture. I’ve been in stores where more attention was being put

on tracking demand and considering “Who are we going to send home?” or “Should we

call somebody in?” rather than making sure the merchandize was attractive and

customers were being served.

And because managers don’t want to risk going over hours, they, you know, want to wait

until the last minute. And, so, they post those schedules with little advanced notice.

They schedule workers for on-call shifts just in case they need them. They send people

home early because, (oh no), they might go over hours.

And, of course, what that means for workers is that these practices make it really difficult

to hold the job. (It’s the person’s) responsibility to earn a decent living. It’s really hard

to know when and how many hours – you know, when you don’t know how many hours

you’re going to work, it’s hard to budget, set up child care, and it’s really stressful.

But, I think, as JD and Shawna will talk about today, these workforce optimization

systems can be set up so that – to avoid over-optimization. They can be set up to deliver

a greater share of the stability and predictability that’s already right there in the business

to workers through more reasonable scheduling practices.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: So, Susan, you were describing how the managers are held

accountable to these hours ratio. And why do you think that has been a driving force for

the leaders of the company who are telling the managers that that’s what they’re going to

be held accountable for?

LAMBERT: Well, that is a long story. But, to give a short answer, a lot of it depends

on, really, your business strategy. And a lot of retailers are very concerned with cost

containment. And one of the – perhaps, the easiest cost to contain is labor because you

can cut it immediately. You can send people home. It’s harder to control cost through

inventory because those are – you know, those are – you have those there. You know,

it’s easier to move workers out of the stores than sweaters out of the stores, for example.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes.

LAMBERT: And, so, it’s a way to, you know, kind of take a path to profitability through

– by containing cost.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: And your view is – so, based on your analysis so far, is it possible to

contain cost by using your software to focus in on what you can know in advance with

regard to the core of your workers and develop other systems that address fluid

environments?

LAMBERT: Yes, that it’s possible to achieve, you know, profitability and control of

cost, that there is a lot more stability and predictability in there.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes.

LAMBERT: And the other thing is that, often, when there is a focus on those cost, it’s a

very short-term focus. All the other cost involved in these systems are not being included

in that equation. So, what isn’t included in there is a cost to turnover.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes.

LAMBERT: The cost of not having, you know, workers who know where the

merchandise is.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes.

LAMBERT: And, so, people aren’t able to, you know, make the purchases that they

would make if there were more experienced, more engaged workers on the sales floor, for

example.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes, those hidden cost until we ...

LAMBERT: Yes.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: ... expose them. Exactly. So, The Gap is partnering with you on a

brand-new study focused on scheduling. And, by the way, congratulations, Susan. And

particularly, the coverage in the Washington Post earlier this month – you know, it’s not

really ever easy to get into the news. But, listen, when you got a research study getting

into the Post even before there are study findings, well, that really underscores how this

scheduling issue has just taken off. I’m – I was just blown away to see that, Susan. So,

can you tell us what are the goals of The Gap study and when you actually expect to have

those findings?

LAMBERT: Sure. Yes. The study is in partnership with The Gap and also with Joan

Williams in the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings

College of Law. And the goal of our partnership is to pilot a set of practices intended to

improve the stability and predictability of sales associates’ work schedules and, of course,

to then rigorously assess the extent to which these practices actually pay off for the

company in terms of worker engagement and reduced turnover and for sales associates in

terms of actually getting more stable and predictable hours and income and – while

managers stay within their hours requirements so that they meet, you know, the basic

accountability criteria that – you know, that is already in the company. So, we should

have findings early next year from that.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: And, Susan, you were just mentioning before, you know, some of

these hidden costs that employers aren’t often thinking about like a sales associate who

knows how to describe the attributes of a sweater. Will your study be able to take on that

kind of level of question as well?

LAMBERT: Well, we will have – we have many different components to data

collection. And one of the ones that we are planning to have is a workers survey sort of

be more in terms of workers’ engagement and commitment ...

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes.

LAMBERT: ... to the company. But, we’ll also have hard data, hopefully. We are

working with the company to figure out a system. You know, (administering) of data is

different than research data, so we have to transform their data into data that we can use

for analysis. But, we are very hopeful that we’ll have information on at least sales levels

and what are called conversion rates because you want to convert your traffic into sales.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes.

LAMBERT: And that’s a – that is a metric that is highly values and used in retail. So,

we’ll have both, you know, kind of worker level and also hard outcome data in terms of

performance in the stores.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: So, getting back to the research – excuse me. I’m sorry. Getting

back to the research, are you going to be just looking at how the software is deployed in

setting the schedule?

LAMBERT: You know, The Gap certainly uses a set of forecasting and scheduling tools

which is, you know, common practice today. So, these are involved in the research and

that’s where a lot of the data are going to come from. But, that software and technology

are just tools. You know, they are the means, not the ends. And, so, what we are really

doing is working with The Gap to identify a set of practices that work together to produce

meaningful change.

One of the things that I’ve learned from prior research is that just changing one aspect of

work schedules may not be enough. So, for example, a firm might post schedules even

six months in advance. But, if the managers regularly make adjustments after the

schedule was posted, then posting that for in advance may not really deliver any more

predictability to workers than posting the schedule a few days in advance. And, so, you

need other procedures for adjusting the schedule so that predictability is not, you know,

completely undermined. And, so, what we are doing is piloting an intervention with

multiple components. But, it’s premature to talk details since we do – we really do not

have findings yet.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: All right. Well, we won’t press you for findings until you have them.

(CROSSTALK)

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: And, Susan, you have been in this arena for quite some time. We’re

going to then appropriately ask you to pick up a crystal ball. The Gap, Starbucks,

Walmart – is this a blip or a trend in your mind? And what are you optimistic about and

pessimistic about these firms’ activities and actions and interest and so on?

LAMBERT: Well, you know, I am just really incredibly excited for this whole time right

now, in terms of improving working conditions and jobs in the U.S. overall, you know,

not just in terms of scheduling practice but also in terms of wage increases and paid sick

leaves because the quality of life for workers involve all of those aspects together.

I am optimistic that, I think, some business leaders will have the foresight to see that it’s

in their best interest and it’s in the best interest of our country and our economy to

improve the predictability and stability in work hours especially, you know, for front-line

hourly workers who, really, if we are going to, you know, build the middle class again,

that’s who they are, you know. And I think that companies like The Gap should be given

enormous credit for being willing to take, really, a risk of trying out new approaches to

scheduling and letting us academics in there, you know, to do a rigorous assessment and

then to be able to share that knowledge with the public.

I’m a little pessimistic, though, that, you know, all companies are not going to have that

kind of vision and commitment. Many workers will continue to be subject to precarious

scheduling practices, you know, unless as a country, we set some new basic standards on

work hours through legislation. But, I’m also optimistic about the prospects of doing that

as well.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: All right. So, I want to remind the audience to send in your questions

often and early to audioconference@clasp.org.

And, Susan, I have one here from Sarah Crow, who is with Next Generation. And she

appreciate your speaking to the issue of on-call scheduling practices, what you know with

regard to the extent of it. And any experiences aside from your research with regard to

the extent to which that is an issue for retail and restaurant workers?

LAMBERT: Yes. One of the data points we don’t have in our national surveys are

questions about on-call work and the way that it’s currently configure in today’s labor

market. Some – we have data on contingent workers who are – their whole job is

contingent. And, in fact, the General Accounting Office just yesterday released a new

report on contingent work in the United States that I encourage people to look at. It had

some really fascinating and depressing data in it.

But, we don’t have a good sense of, you know, what is happening now in retail and what

is happening in other industries – is that on-call shifts are being scheduled. And, so, you

are scheduled for an on-call shift and either you have to call in or you wait to be called.

And, so, we can see in our work up close and personal with employers that that’s

happening. But, I don’t think anyone that I know – and certainly in none of the national

data – have a good sense of how widespread that practices is now.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: And in the research you have done, have you had any sense as to the

impact of the current way of doing on-call?

LAMBERT: Well, it is – yes. I think, you know, not only ourselves but other research

that is done, for example, by the Retail Action Project and the Center for Popular

Democracy and groups that work on the ground with workers see that those on-call shifts

make – are incredibly difficult for workers and families to manage. If you have to call in

a few hours before your shift, that means that you can’t plan anything else in your life

until you know whether or not you are going to work.

And, so, it makes it very difficult to hold a second job. It makes it very difficult to know

whether or not you are going to use child care and what – colleagues who study kind of

more closely what workers do is either they set that child care just in case or they, at the

last minute, have to scramble to find, you know, child care. So, it is very difficult, you

know. It places a huge burden on workers when those – when they don’t know whether

or not they are going to work.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Well, thank you, Susan. And we’ll be coming back to you towards

the end.

And before I turn to you, JD, I want to read a question from Sue Porter with the Oregon

Department of Human Services. And she asks whether we are aware of any states or

local areas that have passed legislation or rules regarding predictable work schedules.

And there is such legislation that has passed in San Francisco.

And all of the registrants have received and will again receive a link to a website that

CLASP manages with regard to scheduling issues. It’s a repository of research, news,

legislation. And you can easily click there and find out the locations for, I believe, the 11

states right now that have had legislation introduced, as well as information about federal

legislation and those San Francisco laws. So, Sue, we expect you will clicking along

with your colleagues and we’ll get that information to you. But, it was also sent to you in

the reminder note, I believe.

OK. JD?

MILLER: Hello.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: How are you?

MILLER: Great. Thanks for having me.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: We’re so glad you could make it on. Could you fill in for folks what

Workplace Systems is?

MILLER: Sure. Workplace is a software company. And we’ve led the market in

workforce management products for about 25 years. But, really, at the end of the day, we

provide a cloud-based or Internet-based application that lets employers and employees

collaborate with one another to create what we call smart schedules. And for our clients,

that means creating a schedule that both increases your customer services and also

increases employee engagement and satisfaction with their jobs and the hours that they

work.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: So, is the – your company – your clients – are they a particular size

range, you know, like a minimum of certain number of employees? Or do you have

particular sectors you serve or you – anybody?

MILLER: Sure. Well, scheduling can apply to anybody. You know, we tend to see

most of our clients are either retailers, restaurants, bars, hotels and also airline or

transportation services.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes.

MILLER: And they range in size from companies that might have a few hundred

employees to some of the world’s largest retailers.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: OK. So, while Workplace Systems provides its client with a diverse

set of services, we’re going to dig in to what you do around collaborative scheduling. So

please, first, take us from the top. What does collaborative scheduling actually mean?

How old is it or how new? And is this something that’s kind of revolutionary for

scheduling software?

MILLER: Sure. You know, I believe that collaborative scheduling is unique especially

to Workplace. I think – I think we see other people kind of getting into the space. But, in

recent years, I’ve really seen retailers and those around the industry place more emphasis

on it. And I’ll describe it this way, and it may be a little bit long story.

But, you know, historically, you’ve seen a lot of workforce management vendors believe

that the value they provide to stores is controlling cost with time and attendance

monitoring. And that, you know, as you talked about earlier, has sometimes created

super-efficient shifts. In fact, actually, I think that’s what the New York Times article

was all about last fall. But, what we found at Workplace is that employee engagement is

just as important as that efficiency, and not just for touchy feeling HR reasons but also

financial ones.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes.

MILLER: You know, when I think about the retailers I work with, they are often – it’s a

very high service kind of sale – so, you know, the sweater that you were talking about

earlier or if you were a luxury goods provider or even just a cell phone store. You

literally can’t make your purchase without interacting with that sales associate in the

store. And, you know, the same thing is true in restaurants and bars. I can’t go to my

coffee shop and self-serve coffee and check myself out. I need that skilled barista there

to walk me through the process.

So, for workplace, that really means that employee becomes a really important piece of

the puzzle to talk about in the schedule because they – that employee is the face of the

brand and they really control a lot of the sales results. At the end of the day, if the

woman behind the makeup counter is irritated because she would rather be at her kid’s

soccer game than working that day, she is not going to deliver service with a smile and

she is unlikely to, you know, upsell the lip gloss on top of the foundation.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes.

MILLER: And, so, at Workplace, when we talk about collaborative scheduling, what we

are trying to do is put that employee front and center in the story. We give them a way to

communicate their availability and shift preferences right into the software. And, so,

when we optimize the schedule, we are also taking into account the employee’s

preferences and the employees interest in working. Ultimately, that puts the right

employee in the right place at the right time. But, it maximizes the chances that they’ll

have the right attitude as well because they have been heard and respected by their

employer.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes. So, you have an app. I’m so jealous. We don’t have an app.

You have an app. And it’s designed to keep scheduling simple. Can you just tick off a

few of its attributes?

MILLER: Sure. You know, if you think about how a lot of the stores do schedules

today, I would say 80 – 85 percent of the time now, when I – when I go shopping, I’m

asking the associates, you know, “How did you get scheduled today?” And they almost

always say there is a poster or some kind of an Excel spreadsheet that’s been printed out

and taped to a break room wall. And so, then, if you ask a follow-up question and say,

“Well, what if you needed to swap a shift with somebody?” The associate says, “Well, I

write something on a Post-it note or, you know, I have a notebook on the back counter

and, you know, it’s a big mad scramble.”

So, what our app is all about is looking at the worker in the store and realizing that – just

as Susan discussed, you know, it’s a millennial worker. And most of them are carrying

smartphones, so they have some sort of Internet access in their life. So, we use that

technology to really associates provide things like their availability, their preferred hours.

They can see their schedules. And, you know, if an extra shift becomes available or

some crisis strikes – that my baby is sick – they can use the app to, you know, say, “Here

is an issue” and other people can volunteer to pick up those extra shifts.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: I want to remind the audience that, to send in questions, all you need

to do is write to audioconference@clasp.org.

You know, you’ve got some metrics on the business benefits of collaborative scheduling.

What did you find, JD?

MILLER: You know, it’s really amazing, you know, because you see business benefits

on both the revenue perspective and on a human resources personnel perspective. Last

year, we worked with the owner of a national wireless franchise. And this particular

franchise owner had about 300 of these cell phone stores. And before they implemented

Workplace, they saw turnover in the range of 125 percent a year. And according to their

own estimates, it costs them about $7,000 to recruit and train a new employee each time

there is a turnover.

So, once they implemented the collaborative scheduling through Workplace, they found

that employee engagement went way up and turnover dropped to 40 percent. So, it’s an

85-percent reduction in turnover.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: That’s huge.

MILLER: It’s amazing. And, you know, it doesn’t surprise me. There is a Society for

Human Resources Management study that says the number one reason that (low wage)

worker leaves their job is dissatisfaction with their schedule. And, so, what this retailer

told us is from an HR perspective, from an employee engagement perspective, getting the

scheduling thing right and having that kind of conversation with the employee made a

huge difference.

The other exciting thing for them is it made good business sense as well. So, from a

revenue perspective, this franchise owner had about 300 of these stores. And we were

able to compare what happened in these 300 stores to the rest of the corporate-owned

stores. And before the implementation began, this retailer was converting – which is kind

of – you know, how many people came in the store and how many left with a new cell

phone contract.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes.

MILLER: They were converting about 4 percent of their traffic.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Converting?

MILLER: And corporate-owned stores were ...

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Wait. Can you do that converting word again for us …

(CROSSTALK)

MILLER: Sure. So, conversion. So, for every 100 people who walk into the store, how

many are going to leave having purchased a new cell phone?

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: OK. Got it.

MILLER: So, before the scheduling initiative, these 300 stores were converting about 4

percent of their traffic. And in the corporate-owned stores, they were getting about 6

percent. So, the iPhone launched. The corporate stores went from 6 percent to 8 percent.

And at the same time as the iPhone launched, you know, this franchisee put in

collaborative scheduling, and his conversion went from 4 percent to 11 percent.

And, so, we asked, you know, “Why were you able to sell so much more?” And they

explained, “It’s because I have that skilled associate who knew about the cell phone and

knew about the plans. I had them at the store at the right time to meet the demand. But, I

also have them in there with the right attitude because they were working in hours they

wanted to work. Their mind wasn’t on, you know, the sick somebody at home that would

really would rather been with. So, they were actually able to take the time with the

customer and walk them through that sale.”

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: I want to turn to something else, JD, which is related ...

MILLER: Sure.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: ... which is that after San Francisco passed the first in the nation’s

scheduling law for formula retailers, which is a terminology used in San Francisco – but,

for the rest of us, it basically means very large retailers – Workplace Systems offered a

webinar for companies about implementation of the new law. And you were it on the

webinar – you were the representative for Workplace Systems. And you said – and I’m

going to quote you – “Companies that comply with the regulations may find that they not

only stay on the right side of the law. They may also see increases in employee

engagement, decreased turnover and achieve more sales through better-served customers

as a result of matching work schedules to customer demand.”

Now, clearly, you had that incredible research in your mind as you – as you made that

statement. But, do you had a sense as to whether or not this message and the metrics you

have to offer about a possible better bottom line driven by compliance is getting through

in San Francisco?

MILLER: Yes. You know, I think the message is getting heard for the best retailers.

And I’m going to kind of harken back to something Susan said earlier. You know, there

has been a lot of press lately about the push for the $15 minimum wage in a variety of

parts of the country. And we’ve seen some employers make headlines right now because

they are going there in advance of the law. You know, they are raising their minimum

wage before they are required to by the law.

But, what I am hearing those retailers say is that’s fine. But, eventually, everyone else is

going to have to pay the same wage as we are. And there is going to be no real difference

between an employee choosing to work for me and my fast food restaurant or going to

work behind the cash register at the grocery across the street. So, if wage is equal and

you can have the discussion about what the wage should be – but, if basically everyone is

getting paid the same thing, what am I going to do to differentiate myself as an employer

of choice?

And so, you know, I tie back to that Human Resources – the Society for Human

Resources study that says the number one reason for turnover is, you know, people don’t

like their schedule. So, I think the smartest retailers are saying, “Yes, I’m going to

comply with the law. But, I’m going to actually use this notion that I include your voice

in my scheduling process as a reason to say, ‘Come work for me and stay with me instead

of going and working for the store across the street.’”

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: You did something very funky. I went on your website to prepare to

ask you questions. And I found that you released a free tool for retailers called the

Workplace Smart Schedule Assessment. Why is a company giving away something for

free?

MILLER: That’s a great question. And you will find that tool at

getmysmartschedule.com. And the reason we launched it is because we want to help

employers realize that there is a better way and a smarter way to schedule than the

processes they use today. You know, I believe that, at the end of the day, a lot of retailers

want to do the right thing by their employees. They want to give them the breaks that

they are entitled to. They want to respect time off requests. But, a lot of them don’t have

processes or systems that help them do it. You know, so many store managers are using

paper and pencil to communicate schedules to their employees. So, it makes it hard to

really, you know, have one person keep track of all of these factors of who is available

when and so on.

So, what we did with getmysmartschedule.com is we said, “Go log on. Enter your

schedules up there. And in 30 seconds, we will chunk through millions of permutations

of your store schedule and help you figure out a better way, one that works well for

everyone.” And, for us, that means the business, the customer and the employee. So, we

launched it for free because we want to begin that conversation with retailers about the

way you’re scheduling today doesn’t have to be the way you do it in the future, and here

is a taste of what that might look like in a small investment of time.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: I have a question for you, JD, from Erin Kelly. Erin is at the

University of Minnesota. And she asks, “How does the ability to set your availability

work in practice with the collaborative scheduling?” She wonders, for example, if those

who are always available – are they rewarded within the system, maybe, by getting first

choice of open shifts or something else? Or are those with high availability informally

rewarded by managers on the ground? In short, what are some of the practices within the

collaborative scheduling that are listed up?

MILLER: Yes. Well, you know, at the end of the day, what we are trying to do with

collaborative is introduce transparency into the discussion, to have employers and

employees, you know, candidly understand who is available and when is that demand.

You know, I was talking to a retailer in San Francisco, actually, about three weeks ago.

And he said, “When I start hiring – you know, I run a 24-hour grocery store. And when I

start hiring, I don’t really think I have the data yet to know do I need this person to work

nights, weekends, Tuesdays, Thursdays – you know, what is it?”

And, so, what we really believe that collaborative scheduling software can do is, first of

all, create a forecast that tells you what you need to hire for. You know, retail is such a

high-turnover industry. You know you’re going to be hiring in the future. Wouldn’t it be

great if your next job ad didn’t just say, “I need someone who can work 30 hours” but

“I’m actually looking for someone who can work 30 hours and it’s going to be Tuesday

morning, Wednesday night and Friday morning”? And so, then, you know, letting the

employee communicate that ...

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: So, wait. I’m learning something right – I’m learning something

right now. So, you are saying that many of the retailers and operations that you work

with – at least this one in San Francisco and you think others – when they hire, don’t

know what hole they are filling in the hire?

MILLER: I think at times because they are still scheduling with pencil and paper, Post-it

notes on the break room wall. And so, you know, if Susan was the person that I am

replacing, I start to think, “OK. Well, Susan could only work on Tuesdays. Maybe that’s

when I need to hire.” So, what we try to do with collaborative scheduling is give them a

step back to figure out what is it you are looking for and then recruit to that and then let

the employee share their availability as well. So, you can line up the store’s need with

the employee’s availability and have a winning match there.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: And are they also doing something – is your software in the

collaborative scheduling approach – how does open shifts – how do open shifts work?

MILLER: Yes. Well, you know, I think that’s another area that’s had a lot of press

lately.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes.

MILLER: It’s this idea of call-in shift and open shift. Fundamentally, I think that if a

store is heavily reliant on call-in shift, it’s because they haven’t figured out their demand

ahead of time. You know, as Susan mentioned earlier, retailers can predict their store

traffic within 90 – 95 – 98 percent accuracy. And we see that with Workplace clients as

well.

And, so, if you are confident in the forecast you have developed, you really don’t have to

rely on that open shift kind of ability to cover the gap. I think, at the end of the day, a lot

of people rely on it because they don’t yet have systems in place or the store manager

doesn’t fully trust the system and, so, they kind of are overriding things and saying,

“Well, I’m going to put a call-in shift here just in case I need it.” And, you know, as

Susan talked about, they usually find out they didn’t.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Well, really interesting. Thank you. We’ll be coming back to you,

JD.

I’m going to turn to Shawna now. And, Shawna, if you could just tell us a little bit about

Blue Bottle Coffee, you know, how many hourly employees you have, where you’re

located, how old, not you but Blue Bottle is – those kinds of things. Thanks.

SHARIE: Sure. Absolutely, Jodie. Thanks for having me.

So, I am representing Blue Bottle Coffee, a fairly small but quickly growing coffee

company. And we got our start at the Farmer’s Market in San Francisco in 2002 and, at

that time, we were focused solely on roasting beans and serving coffee. And we’ve since

expanded to three other markets – New York, L.A. and Tokyo, as well as (they’re

expanded) ...

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: I don’t know – that always makes me giggle. I don’t know why.

That’s so great.

SHARIE: That Tokyo piece of it?

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: I’m sorry.

SHARIE: That Tokyo piece of it?

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes.

SHARIE: Yes. That was something that has been a dream of our owner for many, many

years. And he had taken a lot of inspiration from the Japanese with regards to their

brewing processes and ...

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Really?

SHARIE: ... just incredible attention to detail and sense of hospitality. Yes.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: But, that makes so much now that you say it. So, now, I understand.

That’s just great.

SHARIE: Yes.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: So, Shawna, we’d like to get your perspective as an employer about

your approach to job scheduling and what feature you like and why you like them in the

software that you use.

SHARIE: Sure. So, scheduling is something that’s just so incredibly important to get

right and something that our managers spend time on every day, not just a weekly basis

or monthly basis – every day to a certain extent, whether that’s scheduling for the next

several weeks out or attempting to accommodate change requests from their teams. We

use a software company called When I Work. And I can talk about – a little bit more

about that in a moment.

But, I think, maybe it would be helpful to provide commentary on the same type of

guidance that we give to our managers with regard to scheduling. With that be helpful

for this?

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Sure. Absolutely.

SHARIE: OK. All right. So, when training the managers on how to schedule, there’s a

few things that we ask of them. It’s not always possible. But, we do ask that this is

maintained for the most part. So, schedules are posted a minimum of two weeks out,

preferably four weeks. Schedules should change on a minimum basis in order to allow

baristas to plan their time off.

So, for example, if they are working a closing shift of Tuesday, they should be able to

assume that one month from now or two months from now that they would also be

working on closing shift on that Tuesday. And we ask that managers, if they do need to

change a schedule, that they first have that conversation with the barista, either by email

or phone or in person to make sure that it’s not going to impact their lives and that it

actually works for them as well. We ask that they provide two days off in a row and that

there are absolutely no closing to open shifts – so, Jodie, (the clippings) that you referred

to earlier.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes.

SHARIE: We also ask that new team members are staffed with experienced team

members. And that kind of speaks to the demand of the consumers and making sure that

we don’t have all new baristas working on bar. And it’s not a great experience for the

new barista if it’s all new baristas as well.

And, then, with regards to time off, if the barista provides two weeks advanced notice, we

ask that the manager make – (attempt) to honor that. It’s not guaranteed, and we will ask

that the barista – if they – if they have a shift that’s scheduled and they want that shift off,

that they also try to find coverage on their own for that. And there has been a little bit of

talk earlier on the call about knowing what the demand is going to be like for consumers.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes.

SHARIE: And I think that’s something that JD has spoke to in that a lot of it is

predictable. We know when the holidays are. We know when we are going to be busy.

Let’s say it’s very rare that we’re caught off guard by something. So, given that we try to

schedule one month out, if we know we’re going to be busy on a certain day, we staff up

then so there is no on-call baristas. We just staff ahead of time.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Well, it sounds what you’ve done here is laid out for us a pretty total

picture of all of the elements that you are trying to juggle. That’s quite a lot. And one

that hadn’t come up before, for example, was the need and the value you place on having

newer staff co-located and co-working with older staff so there is a transfer of knowledge

and learning. And all of that is an element in your scheduling practices.

So, in choosing the scheduling software, you’re obviously looking for software that’s

going to take all those variables and turn them from sticky posts, you know, what last JD

was saying, and convert it into making your life simple and telling you who should be

where when so you can give this advanced notice or post something a month in advance –

I would think you were saying was ideal, right? You try and give the ...

SHARIE: Yes, that’s right.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Right. So, when you’re – when you went out to pick your scheduling

software, what elements were key for you in terms of achieving all of these?

SHARIE: Sure. Well, I think, you know, not that long ago, we were a very small

company.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes.

SHARIE: And we were actually using Google Calendar.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Wow.

SHARIE: And that worked just fine when we had one or two cafes and then it very

quickly became not fine and we needed something better pretty quickly. That being said,

we also had payroll systems in place and (timer) systems in place that we weren’t ready

to necessarily change or we weren’t ready to change over anything. And we wanted to

make sure that if we were investing in a scheduling system that we had a little bit of time

to test it as well and didn’t necessarily need a whole lot of bells and whistles. We just

needed something that was better than Google Calendar.

And, so, we were looking for something with a bit of predictability in it, something to

help us guide our managers as they were scheduling. We were looking for something

that had a good and easy interface, something that was quite intuitive. And that was for

two reasons – one, so that it was easy to implement for our managers and even more so

that it was easy for the baristas to use. That – we wanted something that had an app for

them as well since most of our baristas do most of what they do by their phone – iPhone.

And, so, having an app available for that was absolutely something that we needed.

And we ended up going with a company called When I Work. And it actually does not

have all of the predictability in it. But, we would like or that we could – we could really

use. But, it’s working – it works for right now. I would say that our scheduling

processes is still two difficult and it’s still too hard on the managers and that we will

eventually look to use something a bit more helpful and that has a bit more of the

predictability in it. But, for right now, what we have is a very intuitive, straightforward

product that’s easy for our baristas and our managers to use.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: So, I went on the When I Work website as well, Shawna, because

you had told me earlier that’s what you use, and saw that there is a feature and another

app. And that allows employees to clock in. Do you use that feature?

SHARIE: We don’t use that. And that’s because at that time when we were looking for

a new product, this particular one didn’t integrate with our time and attendance software.

And given that we were a very quickly growing company, a lot of our – a lot of our

software needed to be upgraded and changed, and there was only so much that we could

do at a time.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: I’ve got that.

SHARIE: So, we just did not – we chose not to go at that time an attendance feature and

also because when I work – it was so new to us. We wanted to make sure it was

something that we wanted to stay with long term before we began a full-on integration

with time and attendance.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: So, are you, at some point, thinking of integrating your scheduling

software with payroll, time and attendance?

SHARIE: Absolutely.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes. OK.

SHARIE: It’s definitely something that we would love to have. It would be great for the

baristas to have as well. They can clock in their – on their phone now. But, again, it’s a

different – it’s a different software.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes. OK. And, so, it’s your sense that it would be something that

they would welcome.

SHARIE: I do. And I don’t think it is – I think our managers would welcome it more. I

don’t think the baristas find it particularly hard to switch back and forth between the two.

It would be just better for our managers to be able to see that, for example, the shifts that

they have scheduled are matching up with what times the baristas have clocked in.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: OK. And, so, some of the other features of When I Work that I saw

was that it includes something that relates to shift replacements when there are requests

for time off or when an employee calls in at the last minute with the flu or something

else. How do these features actually work? And how often do you face a situation where

no one wants to take such a shift?

SHARIE: I think the latter piece of that is often usually because as far as not – baristas

not wanting to take another shift, it’s because if someone wants hours during the week,

we always give them those hours, whether it’s in their home store or another store.

However, many hours the baristas want to work (just full time), we give that to them. So,

it can be quite difficult to find coverage for shift.

So, back to your first question about how – if someone is sick or wants coverage or

something, how the app works, they are able to log on to When I Work, open up the shift

that they want replaced, and it’s a very quick, you know, click to see who else might be

available. They can choose the people that they want to ping to possibly cover the shift.

And alert goes to the other baristas. And if the other baristas want it, then they can go

ahead and pick it up. And there is a step where it needs to be approved by the manager.

And that’s for coverage that is a bit further out. When someone calls in sick, rather than

trying to find someone through an app, the barista usually just calls the manager straight

away. The manager will call other people that they believe might be available. And if

they can’t find someone, then the manager will end up taking on that shift for the day.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: OK. So, I had a question here for you, Shawna, and the same

question for JD. And it comes from a Rachel Disselkamp, who is with the Association

for Workforce Asset Management. And she asks – and again, Shawna, I’m going to ask

you to answer this first and, then, JD. “Does your scheduling software accommodate

certain schedule constraints and goal such as reducing consecutive shifts or overtime?”

Now, you already mentioned, Shawna, that you don’t have clopening. But, it’s that kind

of question. “And how are you helping your” – well, you already understand why

employees don’t like their schedule (and approval of manager) – and, so, I’ll just ask you

the first part and I’ll ask JD the rest, which is, again, “Does your scheduling software

accommodates certain schedule constraints and goal such as reducing consecutive shifts

or overtime?”

Shawna?

SHARIE: It does to a certain extent. So, the – let’s talk about the preferences of the

baristas, first of all. They have an ability to go into When I Work on their end and show

the days off that they would like to have. They can make time off requests from there.

We usually ask that that baristas talk about that with the manager beforehand. And, then,

they can come to an agreement as far as the time off goes or the days off preferences.

As far as overtime goes, it’s more just an alert that comes up. So, if we put in that we

don’t want baristas to work over 40 hours a week, if we accidentally schedule them for

42 hours, there is a – there is a small alert that pops up showing that or just that – it shows

their total hours for the week and it turns red. And it’s just a very quick visual way of

seeing that you scheduled them for too many hours.

I would say that with the overtime, the managers are pretty good about not scheduling

people for overtime. That’s very much a last resort. And if we ever did need to schedule

anyone for overtime, it would absolutely be approved by the barista before we ask it of

them.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes. So, the barista has an opportunity to say they will not take

overtime?

SHARIE: Absolutely. And I want to say while our – while When I Work may not be

very predictable or collaborative, there is a very strong relationship between the

managers of our cafes and the baristas and they are in regular conversations about

schedules. And if there is ever a change that needs to be made, the manager absolutely

has that conversation with the barista before rolling that out into a posted schedule.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: And, Shawna, when you are saying your software is not very

predictable, what you do mean not very predictable?

SHARIE: That may not be the right word. More than helping the manager decide on

what a schedule should look like. So, for example, if the baristas put their preferences in,

When I Work doesn’t come back to the manager with a schedule that may make sense.

So, it’s very much up to the manager to come up with that.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: I see. So, in essence, they are seeing the body of information in front

of them but they are still having to manipulate it and come out with the final schedule.

SHARIE: That’s exactly right.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: OK. So, JD, Rachel’s question at you. “Does your scheduling

software accommodate certain schedule constraints and goals such as reducing

consecutive shifts or overtime?” And, then, the second part of Rachel’s question, which

is for you, is “How are you helping employers understand why employees don’t like their

schedule and improve a manager’s day-to-day scheduling practice?”

MILLER: OK. Great question. So, right off the bat, yet, we do support all of the

compliance. One of the things you get with Workplace is it’s automatically configured

for all of the state and national required break rules and overtime – all of that sort of stuff.

And, then, we additionally give you the ability to build in your own personal work rules.

So, you know, we talked about clopening a lot during our implementation. It’s not illegal

anywhere yet. But, it’s a best practice we know our retailers want to do to treat their

employees well. So, we bake that into the system for them. And, you know, we have a

library of things that we suggest and, then, a lot of companies have their own specific

rules about, you know, “I never want to work more than X number of consecutive days”

or “I want to look at part-time, full-time” or that kind of stuff. So, you can absolutely

design that.

The second piece of that, I think a little bit different than Shawna’s experience, is

Workplace will then communicate to the manager based on all of the rules and all of the

inputs, “Here is a suggested schedule.” And, then, you go ahead and tweak it a little bit

further as you see appropriately.

And so, then, the last part of the question is how do you get feedback? It’s actually one

of the pieces on our app. So, when the employee gets a schedule published to them, on

the app, they see that they are scheduled. They can confirm “I’m going to work that

schedule.” And, then, they can give the rating of, on a scale of one to five, “How happy

am I with this schedule?” And that becomes another piece of feedback that goes right

back into the algorithm so that, over time, the organization gets to basically teach

Workplace “These are the things I want you to create an optimized schedule for.” And it

includes employee feedback and how happy they are with it.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Awesome. OK. I have a question here from Liz Watson with the

National Women’s Law Center. And she’d like each of you to address the – a question

related to posted schedules. And she asks, “What – roughly what percentage of changes

to the posted schedule are employee-initiated and how many are – or what percentage are

employer-initiated?”

Susan, in your past research, did you tackle that question in any of the studies that you

undertook or do you have a sense from other work that you’ve seen?

LAMBERT: Yes. We’ve actually – in one retailer, we gathered detailed information on

the reasons for every change to work schedules across several weeks are poor managers.

(Inaudible) this information …

(CROSSTALK)

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Well, I’m hanging on here to find out what those poor managers told

you.

LAMBERT: Well, it was – you know, so when we’ve analyzed that data, it was at least –

it was about 50-50. And we also compared that to managers’ report of whether most of

their changes are employee- or employer-driven. And according to the managers, almost

all of them are employee-driven. But, when we looked at the actual reasons for changes,

at least half of them were employer-driven.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes.

LAMBERT: So, there would be things like a meeting is called all of a sudden and, so,

the assistant manager has pulled off the floor and so everybody’s schedule changes or the

– or, for example, the store managers pulled out of the store then the – then the work

schedules changed for all the assistant managers and then for every other worker in the

store. And, so, a lot of them were that.

The other thing, it’s really hard to trace this, of course, because, you know, when an –

when an employee calls off of work and another employee is then asked by the employer

to work those hours, is that employee-driven or employer-driven? I think there is a

tendency for all of us to think that that’s really an employee-driven change because, you

know, it started with another employee. But, in fact, you know, at least the way that I

think about it when I step back, one of the reasons that there has to be another employee

called in is because staffing is always – is often so tight in those stores. There is – there

is just no kind of elasticity in it, obviously, that you have to replace it. And as JD just

said, if you don’t – you know, often, if you can’t get another, you know, worker to do

that, then the manager ends up working those hours.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes.

LAMBERT: And, so, there is – there is just like (no swap) ...

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes. OK.

LAMBERT: ... even though I can predict with 100 percent accuracy in some ways that

people are going to get sick and they’re going to call off.

MILLER: Well, you know, I think that prediction is the critical issue there with schedule

changes. And I do think it changes by industry.

LAMBERT: Yes.

MILLER: So, I worked with a national pharmacy, one of the largest national pharmacy

chains. They have a very good forecast of what their workload is going to look like and

they publish their schedule 16 weeks in advance ...

LAMBERT: There you go.

MILLER: ... and they rarely change. On the flip side, I worked with a tire company.

And the biggest predictor for them of when most people are going to get flat tires and

need to change is when is the first major snowfall of the year. So, for them, you know,

you’re getting in weather prediction and they’re going to have more volatility than, you

know, someone who is selling sweaters or some who is selling, you know, hotdogs at the

beach.

LAMBERT: Yes.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Shawna, do you have anything to add on with respect to posted

schedule – employee initiative versus employer initiative?

SHARIE: Sure. So, my first reaction to that was that because we try and schedule one

month out, the manager believes in that schedule. And like I said before, we’re rarely

caught off guard with holidays or unexpected amounts of crowds. So, we can schedule

around that. So, it really only changes if it’s driven by a barista wanting to change their

schedule or, like Susan mentioned, maybe there suddenly has to be a meeting so the

managers pulled off site so someone else needs to come in to cover that.

So, my first reaction was that it’s primarily employee-driven. I would have said almost

90 percent. After Susan’s comments, I would say I have – I get – I understand the

question a little bit better and I’ve been thinking about our scenarios, so I’d say it’s

probably 70 percent driven by the employee and 30 percent driven by the manager.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Yes. Well, helpful.

OK. So, we’re almost out of time. I’m going to give you each a change in 30 seconds to

give a takeaway message for the audience with regard to how to think about the needs of

both employers and employees as their schedules are being set using software.

So, I’m going to turn to you first, Shawna. And it’s a takeaway message for the

audience.

SHARIE: Sure. In summary, I would just say that scheduling is incredibly difficult. It is

one of the most difficult things that a manager does on a day-to-day basis if they’re a

great manager. And that’s because they are very much trained to balance the needs of

their team who, in theory, they care very much about, with the business needs. So, it’s

incredibly difficult. And that is where the software can helpful in managing what the

employee needs and what works from the business side of it.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: OK. And, Susan, your 30-second takeaway.

LAMBERT: Mine would be that technology is a tool and I think it’s wonderful that the

companies such as JD’s are providing these very useful tools that make it possible to

provide more predictable and stable schedules to workers while also businesses

achieving, you know, it’s goals. And, so, I think it’s possible to do both.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Awesome.

And, JD, last word?

MILLER: Sure. You know, I do think it’s about using technology to manage the

complexity. When we try to balance the needs of the employee, the business and the

customer, there are lots and lots of factors that need to be considered. And the software

lets us recommend the schedule that’s the best out of, you know, 60 million – 70 million

permutations we’ve looked at which, I think, is hard to do as just an individual who is not

using some sort of tool.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: I want each of you to know, Susan, JD and Shawna, that I was

getting emails from people into my private email account, not the audio conference

account, saying, “Wow, this awesome.” So, I want to thank you so much for exciting the

audience and informing us on these, as Shawna says, hardest things to accomplish for a

manager and challenging and so important for both the operation of any business but as

well for the well-being for employees, which we know as well is central to the well-being

of the business.

So, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. Thank you, everyone in the

audience, for sending in questions and for registering. And we will be in touch with you

following this audio conference with the link to this audio conference so you can

circulate it to your colleagues and friends who were unable to join today.

Everyone, have a great day. Thank you, Susan, JD and Shawna. Thank you so much.

MILLER: Thank you.

LAMBERT: Yes.

SHARIE: Thanks, Jodie.

LEVIN-EPSTEIN: Have a great day, everyone. Goodbye.

LAMBERT: Thanks.

END