Labor costs often pose a major—if not the biggest—challenge to your supermarket’s profitability. How can you manage these costs efficiently while ensuring the quality of your service? Jeroen De Meersseman, owner of Delhaize Kortrijk St. Rochus and Delhaize Kortrijk Noord, explains how he handles it. Here’s a sneak peek: Update-pro and Superplanner work together to optimize staff scheduling in supermarkets.
Jeroen: “If you look solely at the costs, temporary workers and students are cheaper than permanent staff. But to ensure customer satisfaction, in-store efficiency, and good service, you need a balance between the skills of permanent staff and the flexibility of students and temporary workers. At my Delhaize stores, I aim for an 80% permanent and 20% flexible ratio, although the 20% flexible staff is set to increase slightly.”
My challenge is to create as stable a pool of flexible staff as possible so that I don’t have to constantly put the burden of training on my permanent employees. That’s why I always recruit my students and temporary workers myself.
“Superplanner, the custom scheduling tool for retail, helps me maintain as consistent a level of productivity as possible in the stores week after week and month after month. For employees, that means their workload remains roughly the same. The schedule in Superplanner is also ‘the one and only truth.’ If there’s a request for a change, it’s only official once it’s in the tool. That way, you never have any disputes.”
“Hiring flexi-jobbers and students also means paying them, and Update-pro takes care of that,” says Jeroen.
“Technically, this is done through an interface between Superplanner and Update-pro. With just a few clicks, I can create, modify, or cancel contracts. It’s very easy to use and is perfect for large pools of flexible employees. In the summer, I often end up working with as many as 50 students.”
When I need more staff, it doesn’t mean more work for me. Roughly speaking, I spend 20 minutes a week managing the two stores. Having more staff doesn’t cost me any more either, because I pay an hourly rate rather than a per-person fee. That way, I can rely on a large group of students and part-time workers.
So I work in a very efficient and digital way. But if I have a question about payroll—which isn’t exactly my area of expertise as an entrepreneur—I always get a quick answer through personal contact.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m very “protective” of my well-trained students and flex workers. I want to work with a permanent team as much as possible. One advantage of Update-pro is that they have a protected database: this means these employees aren’t contacted for other assignments.
What are the benefits of Update-pro’s secure database? My student workers and flexi workers aren’t contacted about other jobs.
Because students and flexi-jobbers sign up and update their availability in Superplanner so quickly, I know exactly who is truly intrinsically motivated. I want to reward that. Thanks to our partnership with Update-pro, we can pay our temporary staff weekly, and that’s important to them: some want to save up for a vacation, others for something else. By paying them weekly, we create extra motivation.
"I can only recommend Update-pro's services to fellow business owners who work with a lot of temporary staff. Update-pro is a partner that takes a lot of work off your hands," Jeroen concludes.
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