Dear Retail Workforce Management Professional,
Your job is hard. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Store Operations, Human Resources, Finance, or Information Technology. If you’re involved with retail workforce management (WFM), you are constantly being asked to do more with less, particularly in today’s economy, and that makes your job hard.
If you’re like me, you’ve noticed a lack of information about your field. There is no good source of practical information about retail workforce management.
Sure, the retail trade press runs the occasional case study on a successful WFM software implementation. HR publications may touch on workforce management in between its pieces on talent management and their latest benefits survey.
Your workforce management system’s product manuals (usually) tell you how to fill out a form or use a screen, but what’s the right way or the best way to use a particular feature or function? Product training isn’t helpful because, at this point, you know more than the trainer.
So, where do you turn for help, new ideas, and inspiration?
Starting today, you can come here. This blog – Axsium Group’s Retail Workforce Management blog – will provide you with advice, tips and tricks, and theory and practice focused entirely on your profession.
Most topics will come from the questions that I get asked by my retail clients. The most common question being: “What are other retailers doing about [insert your WFM issue here]?”
I’ll also cover topics related to the state of the industry, emerging trends that retailers are starting to think about, and technologies that will affect your store associates.
If there are specific topics that you’d like to see me cover, have additional insight on any of the posts, and/or agree (or disagree) with what I’m saying, please post your comments. Alternatively, if you want a bit more anonymity, feel free to e-mail me.
This blog is being written for you. You have a right to shape its content, and I’m open to ideas and suggestions.
I won’t focus on any particular workforce management software system in this blog. Wherever possible, posts will apply to all workforce management systems.
Of course, there may be cases where I highlight cool functionality provided by a particular vendor or describe how to implement a solution using one particular system. In such cases, I’ll clearly state which vendor I’m talking about.
The content of the posts will come from my experiences and observations based on designing, building and implementing workforce management solutions for retailers of all sizes and in all categories from around the world over the last 15 years.
New posts will be published on a weekly basis, if not more frequently. I recommend that you subscribe our RSS feed which will automatically deliver new posts directly to your Microsoft Outlook, other news reader of your choice, or website/portal such as MyYahoo! or Google homepage. Of course, you’re always welcome to check back here periodically using your trusty browser.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll talk to you again soon.