Belk Inc. decides to transform its labor scheduling system from manually operated to an automated software solution, provided by Reflexis. It has more than 300 stores and 24,000 staff and hoped to minimize the time employees sent in non-customer-facing roles, it also expected that the use of big data would make the efficient utilization of resources and would ultimately enhance the sales productivity. The company also expected a significant advantage from this automated scheduling software like many other retailers have achieved. Belk’s implementation allowed the store managers “edit” the system to “fix” the “bugs” in the automated schedules while the other retailers utilized an iron hand approach to promote compliance. The company started piloting the solution in May of 2013 and consequently expanded to various stores, operating the software to 50 over the course of 2013.
However, the store marked success in operating the scheduling solution, but it rapidly confronted with a significant issue in implementation: more than 70% of shifts were receiving manual overrides (“edits”) generated by the system of store managers. Store managers felt that to enhance the productivity and to fulfil the local needs, the edits are necessary. The company’s management was still confused that why it took so much resources in terms of time and money on an automated system only to have the stores to override the automated system. Senior management were concerned that edits produced resistance to productive change.
As Belk itself permitted store managers and lead schedulers to override the system, but now SVP Eric Bass, a retail store veteran who worked his way up to corporate, needed to figure out the reasons that why and how they were doing so, and to ensure that those edits were being done in a constructive manner. Belk provided the way for humans to win the conflicts between human and machine with the help of structure by providing them the right to edit the ‘optimized’ schedules. The case helps the students to analyze the questions qualitatively and quantitatively and concluded that whether the flexible “edit” policy of Belk was a right kind of implementation.
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