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Subscribe by EmailThe Next Big Wal-Mart Controversy: Rotating Shifts
In what may become the next major employee relations fiasco at Wal-mart, a CNN story reports some unhappyWal-mart employees complaining about what appears to be a “trial balloon” regarding rotating shifts.
As reported in this Cnnmoney.com story:
Wal-mart is apparently experimenting with using rotating shifts at stores. Some employees are quoted as saying:
The policy is designed to force higher-paid full-time workers to reduce their status to part-time, or quit (and be replaced with part-time workers), since this would save Wal-Mart “enormous amounts of money from reduced salaries and benefits paid.”
Wal-mart maintains that this kind of scheduling will allow it to better staff its stores.
Business analysts gave mixed reactions to the possible move to rotating shifts. On the one hand, this kind of practice allows stores to better match staffing needs with customer needs. On the other hand, business analysts mentioned the possibility of increased employee turnover, which will occur if management doesn’t consider employee scheduling needs.
What will the result be? I suspect that much will depend on how the policy is implemented (assuming it is adopted). I also wonder whether there will be more lawsuits (e.g., charges of disability discrimination, gender discrimination) that will result. At the very least, I expect that this change will be debated back and forth in many different forums.
Read the story from cnnmoney.com here on Wal-mart’s possible shift scheduling change.
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Comments
Yes, but George, if it was common for years, why didn’t Wal-Mart use it earlier? Also, keep in mind the potential toll and negative effects on employees. Would you like to be switched to a rotating shift tomorrow? I know I would not!
No doubt the negative effects must be carefully considered. Key is employee expectations. I agree I wouldn’t like to be switched tomorrow.
But if I took a job understanding the arrangement up front, and the flexibility worked for me, including having some benefits (e.g., time off for an equally flexible side business or serious hobby), it would be no issue. That’s how retail gets through Christmas season every year, using many seasonal employees, who gladly take the jobs.
As to why Wal-Mart didn’t do it before, one point in the article is that there apparently has been a measurable shift in shopping habits, with bigger weekend rushes. I certainly see this at my grocery store and Target (rarely go to Wal-Mart, though from my defense of them one might assume I do all my shopping there!)
It seems obvious that a store needs a core of full-time, reliable employees, who will be consistently scheduled. I read this as talking about supplementing this work force.
The same flexibility issues have led to the significant growth in the use of temps in a wide variety of industries.
The key reasoning for this new touting of “flexibility” is not in meeting customer needs. If that were the case, it would be easier to find an associate to assist customers in all departments during peak sales periods. Instead, associates are pulled from regular assigned areas at random intervals to help unload or stock or work cash registers in other departments, often at sponataneously peaking sales hours or in a whimsical moment’s notice.
No, the key reasoning for rotating shifts is the age-old reasoning of “How do we reduce the bottom line?” By using more part time or temporary staff, monies earmarked for wages are reduced, quarterly earnings are boosted and shareholders are impressed or wooed, thus improving the store’s appearance as an attractive financial investment.
If more attention were payed to real-time needs of individual stores and spontaneous peaking or slowing hours, and management had more control over decision-making and scheduling, the store would better be able to meet customer needs and woo back shoppers from stores such as Target and others. The people being shuffled here are not only employees, but potential lifetime customers–make enough of them (and their families) angry and the result is going to be a collapse–see KMart as a perfect historical example. Wal-Mart’s biggest issue is that they fail to realize their impact in the community and show flagrant disregard for the people they purport to serve. That’s just bad business.
Orders to cut staffing hours apply to ALL employees, so the assumption of a core fulltime staff is erroneous. The very definition of full time as it applies to Wal-Mart has been altered to mean 27-38 hours per week. Overages are punished and people are fired if they go over their allottment of hours worked. Again, bad business.
Flexible? Flexible?
My spouse works at walmart and they have unvieled their new plan and it is anything but flexible.
A computer makes a schedule. You MUST be there no matter what, sickness, sick child, flat tire, etc. If you are not you get a “point”. You are allowed only 3 points a 6 month period. More and you are written up.
And they suggest if you are sick more than 3 days for you to take a medical leave!?!
My spouse works in receiving. She and her coworker work every other saturday. Their computerized schedule says for her to work every saturday and take off every thursday.
Every other saturday the coworker is suppussed to work and take off thursday.
Guess what? Every other thursday no one will be in receiving!
There is much more but you get the jist. Walmart wants pure control and to not take into account the little things that can and do happen that cause workers. no, PEOPLE to be late or miss on the rare occasion. It’s obviuos they want to run people out.
I hope it backfires bigtime and unions are voted in. They can’t close all the stores that vote for unions like they have done some.
Of course management doesn’t have to maintain such stringent acountability….
I see lawsuits galore on this one. I hope wallyworlds execs go down in flames…..
A buch of souless machines only concerned with lining their pockets!
Only sense in which this may be the latest Wal-Mart “fiasco” is that it is probably more trumped-up half-truths from the sour-grapes labor coalition that attacks the retailer every chance it gets.
Key excerpt:
“Retail industry watchers said Wal-Mart isn’t exactly entering unchartered territory by exploring a flexible scheduling system. The concept has been rampant in retailing for years, said George Whalin, CEO of Retail Management Consultants.”
“Rampant”? Now that’s not a very objective way of saying “common,” is it?
Read on:
“‘Generally retailers would like to have employees come to the store when they most need them. They want to staff stores when they are the busiest, like on weekends, near the holidays or when the weather is good or bad,’ Whalin said. Therein lies the cost-saving component of a flexible scheduling policy.”
Does that sound like anything unusual, scandalous, or in any way improper? Would you want to run your business any other way?
Of course, get a union in, and you have to be like GM and pay people even when you have no work for them. And we know how GM’s doing compared to Wal-Mart, don’t we?