Employee Experience Optimized: Attracting and Retaining Top Retail Talent

In a squeezed labor market, retailers need to step-up their employee experience game. In this edited webinar transcript, Legion’s Traci Chernoff and Malysa O’Connor Paul share innovative best practices to navigate the hypercompetitive talent marketplace and successfully and create happier, healthier businesses. In addition to an unpredictable economy and disrupted supply chains, hourly roles remain hard to fill and staff shortages rage on. As we dive headfirst into a new year, what can be done to alleviate some of this burden for retail employers? In this transcript of RIS’s latest webinar, Legion’s Traci Chernoff and Malysa O’Connor join RIS’s Jamie Grill-Goodman to discuss the results from Legion’s 2022 Seasonal Hourly Workforce survey. Over the course of the conversation, Chernoff and O’Connor share innovative strategies retailers can employ to attract (and keep!) top talent and create happier, healthier companies. Read on to learn best practices to adopt right now to boost agility, reduce attrition, and meet broader business objectives. Jamie Goodman: Hello and welcome to today's webinar, “Your Holiday Wish Granted: Happy Employees, Increased Efficiencies and Sales,” which is hosted by RIS and presented in partnership with Legion Technologies. I'm Jamie Goodman, editor-in-chief of RIS News, thank you for joining us today. While supply chains in the economy remain unpredictable and challenging, recruiting, engaging, and scheduling hourly employees this holiday season doesn't have to be. Yet, Legion finds that one in three managers are more stressed about the holiday season this year – what can retailers do? Today, we'll look at results from Legion's “Seasonal Employee Survey,” and gain actionable strategies to navigate the holiday season successfully, driving long-term growth for your business. We'll cover what hourly employees' biggest concerns are this holiday season, what you can do to put them at ease, why managers are more stressed this holiday season, how you can unburden them, and what best practices you can adopt this holiday season that will help you improve agility, reduce retention, and drive long-term growth. To explore how retailers can have happy employees and boost sales and efficiencies, not just this holiday season but year-round, we’re joined by Traci Chernoff and Malysa O'Connor, both of Legion Technologies. Traci and Malysa, thank you for joining us today. Please take a moment to introduce yourself and describe your role. Traci Chernoff: Hi, I'm Traci, the director of employee engagement at Legion Technologies. I have a very interesting story as to how I got here. I actually had always worked in HR on the retail side, more recently as a director of HR for the fashion brand Sandro, Maje, Claudie Pierlot (SMCP). It was with SMCP that I first found Legion and brought Legion to SMCP. I went from a customer to an employee, which hopefully tells you that I believe in what we do and our mission. Thank you for having me. Malysa O'Connor: My name is Malysa O'Connor, I’m VP of product marketing at Legion. I've been at Legion for a few years now, and I joined because I believe in our mission of helping make hourly jobs great jobs for employees. I've been working in workforce management for about 20 years now. I spent 15 years at Kronos, and prior to that, I worked in workforce management for contact centers. I've focused on all sorts of different types of the business, from both the backend contact centers, to logistics and distribution, and retail stores. I'm excited to be here today and talk to you about our seasonal survey. Thank you for having me. Goodman: It's wonderful to have both of you with us. Let's just dive right in. Malysa, can you kick us off? O'Connor: As we all know, the holiday season always triggers higher levels of stress for everybody. This year, however, anxiety among employees and managers is hitting new heights as they plan seasonal employment. Why have these stress levels spiked so much? This year, there's global economic concerns, such as inflation and reduced consumer spending. There's been shifts in that balance of power between employees, managers, and the business, and there've been lower employment rate projections. More and more of these things are continuing to contribute to higher stress levels. There's a lot of things that are out of the control of managers and business leaders – such as the economy – but there's also some things that can ease the stress this holiday season and start your new year right. That's what we're here to talk about today. We're going to discuss those strategies and share some insights gained from a study we conducted in September 2022. It was conducted by Propeller and commissioned by Legion Technologies. We surveyed 1,500 hourly employees and more than 500 managers in North America. Let's jump into what we've learned. As we mentioned, we all know that the holidays are pretty stressful, but how stressful are they? Our survey found that almost 90 percent – 87 percent specifically – of store managers reported they're as stressed, or more stressed, about the upcoming holiday season than they were last year, and that hourly workers are feeling the same way. The bottom line is that managers are under extreme stress as the holiday season approaches. What are their top concerns and what can your company do to alleviate some of that stress? At the top of the list are staff shortages, having the people that they need to provide great service to your customers this holiday season. Then, rounding out the top three are economic uncertainty, and not understanding what traffic's going to look like this year with fewer people potentially spending money and lower customer traffic overall. The last two are somewhat out of a manager's control, but just under 70 percent of managers are concerned that they won't have the people they need this year. Traci, what are your thoughts on these findings? Chernoff: As I mentioned, retail was my career before joining Legion. Managers, in any industry, are tasked with not only managing people, but also managing the day-to-day 911s, things that come up that are unexpected. To your point, Malysa, those two things are, for the most part, outside of a manager's control. Yet, they are so impactful on a manager's experience because at the end of the day, especially when you meet a retail manager, that store is no different than if it were a store that they were opening with their own money. That type of entrepreneurship and commitment to the team and the business is what creates some of these added stresses and pressures because you have folks tasked with goals, managing folks, and managing all these other things. When we think about how to approach or address some of these stressors, there are ways to do that. There are ways to solve those problems, which we'll get into, but understanding the impact of the holiday business on the manager is also important. When we think about where society is today, we are still in a tenuous labor market, experiencing some of those challenges and changes on top of all of these things that come with driving a business during the holiday season. O'Connor: On the other side of the equation, they're seasonal employees and under a lot of stress. I’ve worked retail jobs through the holiday season in the past, and remember how difficult it was to juggle your family, all the things that are going on at that time of year, work, and being pulled in a lot of different directions. It's always a stressful time of year. This year, when we talked to survey respondents, they shared how economic pressures are causing many seasonal employees to work multiple jobs. It's no longer worrying about that one job, but worrying about multiple jobs, which are further squeezing their time. In fact, the survey showed that 38 percent of seasonal employees expect to work more than one job this year. The reasons they're working more than one job aren’t surprising: they're concerned about the rising cost of living, or the ability to afford gifts this year for the people they love. Traci, when you think about squeezing employees, what additional thoughts do you have? Chernoff: Every year, this remains true. We see a seasonal influx of folks looking and interested in earning additional income, especially during the holidays. What's unique about this year is that we are also in the midst of economic changes. Everyone talks about inflation and rising prices. Now, not only are we seeing the typical and standard influx of people who are interested in seasonal employment, we also have a lot of jobs. Managers are stressed because of staffing shortages. There's a unique experience this year because of rising prices – which is maybe not so unique, but it is a little bit when we think about the macroeconomics here – in that, people are not only going to be working their typical jobs, but also committing to side hustles. The hourly employee that already earns an income on an hourly basis now has added stress and added pressure because of these economic changes. There are folks who maybe are not earning an income on an hourly basis who want to, in the midst of the seasonal hiring spree, now earn an hourly income. It’s unique in that this year we're seeing the standard for seasonal hiring, as well as an additional pool of people. In fact, there are more part-time jobs opening and being taken in just October than in years past. We can see that this is a trend that will continue, but it's good news for employers who can meet the demand – it's not all stuff to get worried about. O'Connor: It's the most wonderful time of the year, right? When it comes to work, there are a few key areas that employees are concerned about this year. Similar to managers being concerned about not having enough staff, almost 60 percent of employees we spoke to are feeling the same way: they're not confident their employer will have enough people this holiday season to cover the work that's needed. As mentioned, managing work and family priorities is causing stress this holiday season. Compounding this is the fact that employees are feeling their employer lacks a solid process for scheduling – another key item that came out in survey results. Rounding out the top concerns shared, just under half expect to work overtime, and miss out on personal events and opportunities this year. Finally, another 39 percent expressed concern of having no time off or working long hours this year. That's a lot of stress on employees. Traci, how do you see these challenges impacting employees and their performance while they're on the job? Chernoff: It's really intense. Let’s go back in time a bit, when we think about all of the impacts that 2020 had on every single person around the world, it made us realize – at a really human level – that there is no checking your baggage at the door. Why in 2022 could we expect employees, especially hourly employees, who, 58 percent of working and eligible Americans are earning an income on an hourly basis – we already know that even their threshold for income could put added stress on them. Folks are dealing with all of these micro and macro moments that impact their performance – sometimes in a positive way if work is an outlet, but also in a negative way because work is not so enjoyable when you have all of these other things to think about and go back home to. When we think about the hourly employee and what they need, it's not that different from what a non-hourly employee, you, or me would necessarily want to see. We want to know exactly to expect from working hours. We want to know what our schedule looks like in advance. Having access to wages predictably and instantly. Those are things that anyone can understand why it’s fruitful and something to aspire to, but they don't have to be aspirational. This is where, for Legion, we are on a mission to turn hourly jobs into good jobs, because we know we can. We know that through scheduling, flexibility, predictability, demand forecasting, and automating processes for employees and their managers can solve these problems. I can never stress this enough, when it comes to decision makers and decisions to make, keeping the audience and the problems that we're solving for at the forefront of those problem solving moments is critical. There's no sense in saying, "We think we have this problem, we think employees want this," and then applying a solution based on those assumptions. This is where our survey helps solve that problem – we know what employees want and need. We're able to then say, "Okay, when you're making a decision, you're actually solving that problem." O'Connor: Honestly, when you look at this time of year, we've talked a lot about shortages and that both employees and managers are afraid they're not going to have enough staff, but it's not for lack of trying. The National Retail Federation has reported that more than 500,000 temporary workers will be hired just this holiday season. Think about that influx of hiring, but also the need. The balance of power is still with employees because how do you need to think about attracting those workers, and how do you need to think about, with so many open positions, seasonal workers, they can be as more selective than ever this year. What are your thoughts on that? Chernoff: It's really easy for us to pigeonhole what a seasonal worker is and what that means. Specifically, a seasonal employee can be someone who's already actively employed, someone with multiple jobs, someone who wants to work one day a week or five days a week. They could be in college, out of college, retired. I share these specifics because it's important that hiring managers and folks in retail and hospitality think about seasonal employment a little bit differently. How are you reaching these potential employees? They're going to be your customers, or people who have family members working for you already. Branch out – the sky's the limit. There is much more competition this year for all of those reasons that we already mentioned, but there's also an opportunity to have a competitive advantage. What are you offering compared to people in your market? Are you offering schedule flexibility or are you saying to your employees, "Sorry, you have to work nights, holidays and weekends without fail"? I get that, I come from retail, that was always the spiel we gave, "You have to work nights, weekends, holidays. If you can't work all of these holidays, you can't work for us." At the end of the day, there's no flexibility in that. It’s not realistic when you think about the need that you have day to day, even outside of the seasonal employment moment. The labor market is still very tight. People managers are stressed by staffing shortages. If we already know that we have this need outside of the seasonal hiring surge, then it's only doubling, if not tripling, in terms of demand. My best advice to any retailer at this stage is to open up the mind for more flexibility, open up the opportunities businesswise to allow that person who wants to work one or two days a week to do that. You're going to get a happier employee, a more engaged employee. Those employees who maybe have a more restricted availability are so excited and glad that they have the flexibility that they want, that maybe they end up opening up their availability a bit more. You can't have too much help during the holiday season. O'Connor: That's the truth. It's interesting – as you're talking about flexibility and the need for flexibility, based on our survey, that was the number one thing that was important to people: a schedule that can meet their preferences. The majority of respondents said that having this flexibility was the most important thing to them. It would make a difference in them working for a certain company or another. The bottom line is, when you look at what would entice employees, similar to what you said, to leave their current jobs. We asked that as well. Not just attract them to take a job if they weren't already working for another retailer, but what would attract them to leave their current job and go with somebody else? It all comes down to scheduling flexibility – it’s all about a schedule that meets their preferences. This makes sense because the surveyed employees we talked to stated that this is the number one thing for them. Interestingly, the second most popular selection was instant access to earned wages, which came in at about 37 percent. That's interesting because that instant access to earned wages was valued higher by those 18-34 than any other age group. When we slice it down a little bit, 45 percent of people that are in that 18-34 age group said this is an important element for them this year. It's interesting to note that we did a similar survey in June of 2021, and at that time, only 2 percent said that they would quit their job because they couldn't get paid early. You can see that this is becoming more and more important as you go on. This could be related to the economy. People are feeling a little bit more crunched financially, so they need to have a little bit more access to their pay. It could be things like inflation, as well. Traci, I'd love to get your thoughts on what we're learning from employees and additional recommendations you have. Chernoff: On this idea of instant access to wages, about a year ago, you're right, it was a much smaller number. It was the next frontier for employee experience and employee engagement. And now, we see that this is true. When we think about that age group, 18-34, it’s mostly Gen Z and there are millennials sprinkled in there. We have to meet employees where they are. We know that flexibility, predictability, and matching preferences will always remain as the most profoundly important element of an experience in a working environment. This instant access to earned wages, yes, there are economic factors there. The reality is, there is a whole gig economy out there that people can appreciate. When I say people, I mean a working person who wants to have control over their schedule. What does the gig economy offer? That hyper-flexibility, the ability to work for anyone, wherever, at any point, and to instantly have access to their income. With this instant access to earn wages, we will continue to see this number grow in terms of what employees want. Understanding the impact of staffing shortages and demands, and the challenge there between business needs and employee preferences is that two things can be true at once. A business can have its needs met while an employee has preferences matched. It doesn't have to be exclusive, or one or the other. Part of that is also tapping into the network of employees that businesses already have. This is where, through our solutions, we allow and enable employees not only to have empowerment and ownership over their schedules, but actually be able to communicate with one another, to swap and share. Then, you're actually allowing folks to have greater opportunities for increasing income without going to another employer. O'Connor: Let's take a look at what's on the wish list for managers this year. As you can see, it's very similar in a lot of different ways. The top two items are directly related to attracting employees and retaining them. They dovetail nicely with the priorities that employees are seeking this year, this holiday season. Premium pay for those harder to fill shifts, 58 percent of managers cited that as being critically important, and there it is, again, flexible schedules, 45 percent. In addition, there's a third wish that they could offer that they're interested in, which is more around mental health and wellness benefits. What's interesting is that providing early access to pay is often seen as a key benefit to support employees' financial wellness – they might be bundled in there as we talk about some of those wellness benefits this year. Traci, you're an HR professional who thinks about employee engagement – whether it's managers or employees, frontline employees – you think about every day. What are your thoughts on managers and what they're thinking about this year on their wish list? Chernoff: I love it. I say keep that wish list, write it in pen. It's wonderful. First of all, it's not a surprise. Secondly, it's a wonderful thing that we're seeing mental health and wellness benefits and resources for onboarding on this list. As an HR professional, in the last 10 years, there have been many battles to focus on these things – many battles won and lost. This is a huge win that managers are thinking about. What it tells me is that managers are focused on the people in their business and themselves. A healthier, happier, more well-rounded individual, manager or not, is a healthier, happier business. There is a direct correlation between happy and engaged employees, and happy, committed, and money-spending customers. There is absolutely a direct correlation and a positive correlation. When we think about these resources for onboarding, it's also fair to mention that this is pointing toward automation and a need for automation. Managers are HR people on the floor. When an HR person needs someone to care about these things, you have to go to the manager first because there is a top-down approach to these things. When 31 percent say that on their wish list – dedicating more resources to this – it tells me that automation is an important part of solving some of the problems and challenges. O'Connor: That's actually a great transition. As we talked about with our survey, we found that 60 percent of managers are still using paper-based processes or spreadsheets for scheduling. Think about that. All the things that you cited around automation and how important that is, but 60 percent of managers are still using paper-based schedules and only 40 percent are using an automated scheduling solution. For many managers, that means manual processes, which adds to the stress levels. As you mentioned, Traci, it takes them away from the things that are important, such as being able to communicate effectively with employees, providing that frontline support and customer service to customers. Most importantly, being able to meet and deliver on schedules that meet availability and preferences consistently for employees. Taking a deeper look at this, manual processes are making it harder for managers to optimize schedules and manage conflicting priorities that they're seeing within the business. The survey results show that matching employee preferences and availability with the business needs is the single hardest part about creating schedules during the holiday season. When you think about the things that managers feel like are causing them additional stress, that's number one at 59 percent. Just under 60 percent of managers said creating fair and equitable schedules is the hardest part of their job. Traci, you talked about automation and the importance of automation. You've had a ton of experience with scheduling during the holiday season. How do these findings align with your experience? Chernoff: I shared that I was first a customer of Legions' before becoming an employee, and I would be remiss not to mention or share a specific story and anecdote. At SMCP – French accessible luxury brands – we first rolled out Legion in March of 2020. I don't have to remind anyone what happened in March of 2020. As you know, everything that we knew flew out the window, everything changed about retail, about managing people. Actually, we leveraged Legion to schedule and manage these changes. Thinking about scheduling specifically, March is after the holiday season, but this was the first moment where we rolled out Legion to our teams. We were in the midst of opening and closing stores, and having to go through all of these processes that COVID brought on as a new skill set for those of us in retail, HR, and people management. We were able to take what had been a concern for our managers – scheduling, matching preferences, managing business needs – in a time where you could not find a perfect solution. COVID changed everything. Legion allowed us to remove this concern from our manager's minds. It's safe to say that, to be able to solve a problem at a time where life itself was in question, was a positive way for us to positively impact our teams. What I do want to share is that as we approached Q4, we were able to leverage Legion and the demand forecasting and automated scheduling to have better experiences for seasonal hires, and of course, our managers. We were able to see, through demand forecasting, how many gaps in the schedule we had based on the traffic we could expect during our busiest time of the year. That is a very specific anecdote. I could talk about this for days and days. I should specify that not only was I a customer of Legion, but I was the project manager. I'm speaking to this experience and the facts based on having been there in saying, "Hey, we have these major concerns that we're solving for and need to automate, need to solve this problem yesterday." O'Connor: It's resulting in inefficient processes, which is compounding the stress. Many years ago, as a store manager, I remember managing things like call outs, no-shows, approving time off requests and shift swaps, and it was all so time consuming. It was taking all that time away from being able to be out on the floor, dealing with customers or guests, and creating a great experience for them. When you look at the survey, there are similar challenges. There are so many on manual systems, so it's no surprise that managing things like call outs (64%), approving time off requests (61%), and shift swaps (51%) is causing a lot of additional stress this year. Most of these are being done manually, which is shocking in some ways, but not in others. Chernoff: I'm glad you brought up this point about the call outs and no-shows. The biggest opportunity we had – which is what led us to bringing Legion to SMCP – was that the employees did not own their own schedules because the manager was manually writing the schedule and disseminating it. When there was a call-out, they were managing it manually. Once we rolled out Legion, not only were we solving the scheduling challenges – all of these things we discussed that a manager is experiencing and managing – but also effectively put ownership and empowered the hourly employee. An hourly employee doesn't want to have to go through their manager to effectively have their schedule changed or have something swapped. No one. First of all, these hourly employees are adults and want to be able to own the days, times, and shifts that they're working. It was a significant behavioral shift for us and our teams, to the level where an hourly employee is not calling out to a manager in this way. They're able to find coverage for their shift based on the accessibility and visibility in the mobile app. It's a game changer across the board. O'Connor: I'd love for you to share some more examples because that's critical. If I could wrap one thing up and put it under the tree this year for managers, it would be automation. Automation by huge margin was the most cited tool that managers said would make their lives easier. It's an automated scheduling tool that 60 percent are specifically looking at. When you look at the other responses, it's about having automation help with more compliant time tracking. How do you make sure that all of those rules are being applied consistently so you can maintain compliance across the board? Automated demand forecasting can help adapt to changing conditions automatically, better communication tools, and instant access to earned wages. All of these are critical, automation is the gift that keeps on giving. We've talked about what's causing stress this year, but let's talk about what things you could start doing today that will help ease the stress during the holiday season and set you up for success in the new year. The first is, no surprise, harnessing the power of intelligent automation to free managers, unburden them from manual processes and accelerate processes. What does that look like when you think about harnessing intelligent automation? Intelligent automation has the power to transform labor operations and the employee experience simultaneously – being able to do one without sacrificing the other is critical. It could also help to maximize efficiency and productivity by automating day-to-day tasks to reduce overhead and maximize store performance. Intelligent automation also enables you to react and adapt to changes to the business faster. Over the last couple years, there's nothing if not change. Being able to automatically analyze thousands of data points and continuously learn from those data points to improve and optimize demand forecasts and schedules in seconds, and keep the automation learning and continuing to grow with your business. You can optimize every customer touch point. Think about the different touch points throughout the day with which your customers are engaging with your business, and how you automatically ensure that your best employees are at the right place to deliver exceptional service at the right time. How can you empower and engage those employees to give them gig-like flexibility? Traci mentioned the importance of gig-like flexibility earlier, and that's something that's extremely important to them. When you think about intelligent automation, Legion's Core Workforce Management modules provide a holistic and modular platform to address labor budgeting, demand forecasting, labor optimization, automated scheduling, and time and attendance. You can generate fully automated, granular demand forecasts and labor budgets in seconds using artificial intelligence. The Legion Workforce Management is also self-learning, which allows it to continuously and automatically improve and adapt as your business changes, in order to optimize schedules that help match business needs with employees’ skills and preferences. Ninety-six percent of the time it is able to meet both the employees’ preferences, as well as the needs of your business, while continuing to be self-learning. Time and attendance. Being able to manage by exception with fully automated timesheet approvals, schedule aware timecards, and timesheets that automatically assess schedule change premiums, and highlight time clock to schedule variances throughout the day. There’s compliance and other key things. All of these are offered in addition to a series of modules that are focused on the employee experience. Those are modules that share the same configuration, master data, integrations and clock awareness, and may contain compliance to offer employees and managers one single app to use. They're able to do everything from managing instant pay, to employee performance and rewards, as well as engaging in modern communications with managers. There’s no more calling your manager to tell them you'll be out sick today. Being able to automatically find employees to work your shift, and more importantly, share kudos to make employees feel like they're doing a great job building culture throughout your business. All of it is on this modern cloud platform. The second action to start your new year is to attract and retain employees by giving them the flexibility they want. I'd like to share a couple of different examples around what these are, then, Traci, you can jump in to share your experience. Why is this so important and how have you seen it make a difference when you think about delivering schedule empowerment and being able to allow employees to manage their time and pay from phones, including things like communications and time off? Can you share the impact you've seen? Chernoff: The empowerment piece – meeting people where they are – is critical. Where are people these days? On their phone. I bet everyone joining this webinar is on their phone because that is normal. Part of that is recognizing that this is normal, typical behavior that employees will be able to interact with in a way that's intrinsic to them and intuitive. When we apply and provide resources that make sense to employees, that's where the empowerment and engagement comes in. You can't say empowerment and engagement isn't important to us, then not provide resources that are intuitive to folks. That’s a huge piece of this. When we think about the communications piece, let’s think about your first job – it was probably at a retailer, maybe a restaurant – probably a frontline job. If not, I apologize for making a generalization. My first job was on a sales floor as a sales associate. The only way I received communication was by having a pointed conversation with a manager and seeking out that information, or by going to the bulletin board or communication board. I have also been the one to have to maintain communication boards. What is the first thing that we know about communication? The moment it's shared, it's already too late. When you think about this idea of the bulletin board, you print something out, you post it, and the next day, you don't know if everyone's read it, you don't know how engaged folks are to the content, and it's already stale. When it comes to modern communications, there's a need to enhance it. Everything is on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Google for a reason: we are not going to our local community center to get this information, or even reading a standard or traditional newspaper anymore. It's all different. When it comes to the challenges that we've experienced as frontline employees, our experiences, and what frontline employees continue to need from a communication standpoint, it makes sense that we bring communications into the forefront of where an employee is spending the most time – figuring out when they're going to work and how much they're earning when they're working – pulling that all together. Now, there's no more game of telephone – managers, district managers, regional managers, and HR managers are able to communicate directly to an employee population that they otherwise would be pretty far removed from. Understanding the need for enhancing communications as a driver of engagement and empowerment is an important takeaway from this conversation. O'Connor: I remember having to call in to the store to get what my schedule was, and if you call at the wrong time, there was nobody that was free to go in the back to check your schedule – you had to call back later. The next action to start the new year is providing employees with instant access to earn wages. What are the real impacts? Why is this important? In the survey, we found its importance: 45 percent of 18-34 year-olds place value on instant access to earned wages. There was a survey done by The Wellness Programs Organization, which found that there's a productivity impact as well. In general, employees are spending 3.6 hours per week managing issues related to financial wellness and financial stress while they're at work. You’ve got employees that are distracted, concerned, or dealing with issues at home and it's impacting their productivity in a negative way. We’re all short-staffed and need to be getting the most out of the resources that we have. Having a productivity loss around financial stress is something that could be controllable with instant access to earned wages. Then, PwC did an interesting study which found that 36 percent of employees were more willing to stay with their company or go to a company that provided earned wage access. Think about that as a tool to increase employee retention, as well as attract new workers – that's important when you're competing for talent. What does instant access look like? As a quick example, with Legion Instant Pay, you can couple that with things like automated scheduling, so that employees can view upcoming shifts and can see how much money they're going to make by working that shift. More importantly, for those shift offers and getting higher uptake on those shift offers, being able to put out a shift that says, "Hey, you're going to earn $50 for working this shift," is important in enticing people to pick up that shift, especially in the times of the holidays when everyone's looking to make a few extra dollars. It's a great tool when you think of things like clock hygiene and making sure that employees are working shifts, clocking in and out, and recording those hours so that they can then get paid immediately after working the shift if they choose. Instant Pay is deeply integrated into the Legion experience to provide real-time access. It's on the same schedule app, helps drive schedule adherence, fills those shifts, and works in a couple of different ways. You work the shift, then employees can just click “pay,” select how much they want to pay of their earnings-to-date, and get paid in the moment directly to their bank accounts. It enables them to track and manage their finances by being able to view earnings in real-time. Thinking about financial wellness, that's an important benefit as well. Happy New Year for retail employees. To summarize, managers and employees know they're under stress this holiday season. However, there's a lot of things they can do to alleviate some of that stress, whether it's schedule flexibility, modern communications, or instant access to earned wages. Through it all, automation is key and critical. All of these can help you improve the employee experience, but instant access to earned wages is something that is also going to help attract more of those employees. Equally important: employers must invest in things such as technologies that reduce the administrative overhead. That's a key component of what we've talked about today. Giving managers tools to improve decision making, improve execution, and enable them to focus on what matters most are the things that are most important. That's probably training their teams, onboarding, and interacting with customers. Traci, is there anything else that you want to add as we close out? Chernoff: I’d love to keep the conversation going and encourage anyone to reach out. It's really about the takeaways. We have to know what the problems that we're solving for are: Who is our audience? Are we solving their problems with Legion's help? That's our mission. How are you walking away from every month, every quarter where you're hearing these challenges because you care about your employees? How are you walking away focused on improving those opportunities? Goodman: That was really great, Traci and Malysa. Traci, I loved what you said earlier about turning hourly jobs into good jobs. It's such a nice way to think about it. Chernoff: That's our mission. If you spoke to anyone from the Legion team, it really is true. We are a mission-based organization, mission-driven, and every single person on this team is committed to that mission, which is awesome. Goodman: It's such an important mission. It’s good to keep in mind that these boots on the ground are not just employees, but are driving the whole holiday experience that we all partake in. Traci, what role do you see communications playing in easing stress for managers and employees? Chernoff: It plays a direct role. Specifically, thinking about what a manager experiences day in and day out, having a resource that enables them to communicate one time and reach everyone that needs to hear that communication. Obviously, that level of automation and direct reach is impactful on not only the ability to reinvest time elsewhere, but to be able to enable the employees to feel more connected. Who is working on the frontline? A large majority of people are earning an hourly income on a part-time basis. If you're seeing them maybe once or twice a week as a store manager or assistant store manager, there's no possible way to communicate everything succinctly as you did for someone who was part of a meeting or interaction. It's hugely impactful in that way. It saves a lot of time. At SMCP, we were seeing managers spending almost 10 hours end-to-end on scheduling, including communication, getting people schedules for the month or the next two weeks, whatever that cadence looks like. With Legion, we were able to reduce that by more than 60 percent. Think about these processes in terms of time and dollars and it's much easier to understand the impact that it has. O'Connor: It’s an important tool when you think about culture and engagement in terms of sharing kudos, sharing news of what's happening in the store, making them feel like they're part of a team, and acknowledging their contributions, what they're bringing, and the successes that you've had together. Goodman: Traci, finding interested people to hire for open positions is challenging. For some, it's about optimizing the resources they have this year. What recommendations do you have for this situation? Chernoff: It's so true. My first recommendation would be to broach the discussion with the existing team. At SMCP, after rolling out Legion, we enabled shift sharing across stores. This was an innovation I was passionate about because when you have someone working 20 hours a week, it's very possible that they want hours that are more comparable to a full-time schedule, but they can't necessarily earn those hours based on payroll budgets in one store. When you begin shift sharing across locations in a region, area, city, you are not only reinvesting in the talent that you do have, but you're actually enabling them to earn a larger income. You're driving the best kind of employee engagement that there is, which is investing in employees and wanting to see them beyond the four walls of their main store or home store – seeing them in other places. This was hugely impactful for SMCP. We rolled this out to the New York City stores and saw incredible adoption. Second, is focusing on what employees are looking for. Retailers always have higher attrition, and it will always be that way until hourly jobs are exactly what we want them to be, which are great jobs. Sometimes they're not so great, though. Sometimes they don't offer flexibility because they're not using Legion. Focusing on flexibility is really important. Then think about what problems employees have that we need to solve for. It's going to come back to scheduling flexibility and predictability. You're going to start hearing about this gig economy and earned wage access. If you're doing innovative things and allowing us to help you solve some of these problems, we will get there collectively. O'Connor: Traci, you talked about workforce sharing. When you think about the managers at those stores that are figuring out how to do more with the resources they have because they can't find enough to fill the open gaps – that's another great way to do it because you're pooling resources. You're giving employees more opportunities to earn money, but also enabling flexibility in the pool of resources that can cover shifts across the stores. That’s key. Goodman: I love that idea. Unfortunately, we’re out of time and need to wrap up. I’d like to thank you guys today for all this great information. Thank you to our speakers, our attendees, and our sponsors today. I hope everyone got some great insights headed into the holidays and the new year. Enjoy the holiday season and have a lovely rest of your day.