FORECASTING WORKFORCE FOR STORE ATTENDANTS IN A GROCERY RETAILER
Authors: Zafer Güney Emre 
Published: December 2021

Through the years, automation and computerization change the way of doing business, meanwhile the needs for successful workforce management remains as a key role being sustainable for the companies. In the grocery retailers, where are low margins due to hard competition and many players, the companies search for the new methodologies increased due to decrease the costs and have better efficiency results. In the sector, there are mainly three expenses; workforce, rent and transportation. As in most of grocery retailing organizations workforce is the biggest asset and expenditure in the company, the ability to predict workforce needs is an important research issue and achieving the best configuration for the workforce (time, demand and the cost) can provide a fabulous competitive advantage. Therefore, there is a business imperative to understand, measure, manage and plan for it properly. Achieving match between available and required workforce helps ensure the rhythm of working processes and desired company results. For this purpose, companies can use different tools and specific models for forecasting their workforce needs. Hence, in the grocery retailer stores there are many job description and responsibilities; the different workforce requirement algorithms for each job is a necessity. In the literature, there are many studies on workforce requirements for the cashiers, where is the job description clear and there are more repetitive tasks compare to store attendants. Cashiers have wider opportunity for the data analysis and interpretation. The Store Attendant’s job description is complex and there are more independent variables, while performing the work. Therefore, there are less research about workforce need of a Store Attendant in the literature. This is precisely the purpose of this report to provide a brief account of the essential aspects of the workforce need of store attendants, to justify the need to reconcile the available and necessary workforce and to formulate some advantages/benefits to predict and forecast the needs of workforce. In the project, the store attendants’ workforce requirement methodology in the Turkey’s biggest retail company has been examined and improved. The company’s workforce management department and the store management helped to outline daily task of the job for determining guideline for the time studies. Afterwards, with the time study guideline, 20 different store attendants from 13 different stores with total shifts of 170 hours observed to have an idea about daily tasks and it’s work load distribution during the day. Combinations of sales data analysis and empirical data obtained through time studies helped to output a new way of workforce determination algorithm forecasting any given 30 minutes period for a day. Thus, knowing the workforce requirements for each 30 minutes periods, gives the company advantages to plan flexible shifts hours rather than constant 8:30 shifts. The usage of the algorithm leveraged the company in terms of better workforce demand forecast, utilizing employee costs and reduces waste usage of workforce.