When beauty meets brains

Workforce optimization is now in fashion with retailers, and Holt Renfrew is a glamorous model showcasing its benefits.

The Toronto-based luxury retailer is implementing Workbrain Corp.’s integrated suite of workforce management software modules in an effort to enhance customer service levels and reduce operating costs.

Started as a beaver-fur hat shop in Québec City, Holt Renfrew has grown over the years into a national specialty chain with nine stores across Canada catering to the high-end market for designer brands, cosmetics and fragrances.

Customer satisfaction is critical in the demanding luxury market, and superior service is in turn linked with employee satisfaction. But Holt Renfrew's time and attendance tracking was a manual system rife with delays and inefficiencies. The upshot was in inaccuracies and time lags in sales associates' paychecks, scheduling snafus and stress in the payroll department, says Anne Hodkin, director of IT.

Improving employee satisfaction was a major driver. "A happy employee relates that happiness to customers, and vice-versa for unhappy ones," says Hodkin, although she is not comfortable with attempts to correlate such intangibles directly to increased sales.

Holt Renfrew needed a system that would improve operations by scheduling the right sales associate at the right time in the right merchandise area; it was also important that the new system integrate well with Hold Renfrew's existing biometric sign-in application.

The retailer replaced what was essentially an honours system for tracking staff comings and goings with a fingerprint-based biometric system. The system does not image or store them but rather generates an algorithm based on points on a fingerprint.

Interestingly, staff response was overwhelmingly positive, says Hodkin, in spite of common wisdom that people dislike this biometric because of its criminal associations. "Our employees loved it, because you're only accountable for yourself," she says, pointing out many staff felt compelled to cover up for their teammate's true comings and goings in the past.

Hodkin wanted to avoid replacing it with an automated time-card process. In addition, she wanted a Web-based system that could be integrated and administered from Holt Renfrew's corporate headquarters. This would ensure consistency in the way HR rules were applied across all its stores, and would also avoid any need to implement extra hardware at its stores and the inevitable disruptions and training associated with that.

Toronto-based Workbrain's solution was selected as it satisfied Holt Renfrew's business and system requirements.

The vendor's suite is comprised of four software modules that have been customized for the retail sector: time and attendance, scheduling, workforce planning, and Workbrain intelligence. The software can run on most major platforms such as IBM and Microsoft, and integrates with ERP systems.