Several years ago (September 2008), the Wall Street Journal published one of the most poorly researched articles about retail workforce management I’ve ever read. It was delicately titled, “Retailers Reprogram Workers in Efficiency Push. ”

Apparently the WSJ’s retail reporter at the time was invited to a WFM software vendor’s user group conference and provided open access. What came out the other side of that event was very different than anyone expected. Given my attachment to our industry, I wrote a rebuttal of the piece for our newsletter (more about that later). Let’s just say for now that the article was based primarily on an interview with one part-time worker in Langhorne, PA, and almost nothing from the conference the reporter had attended.

It’s also worth noting that the piece was a real contributing factor in me deciding I wanted to write for Forbes. I felt a voice of reason was required in the mass media, rather than this sensationalist stuff. I hope I’ve been true to that vision. But for now, let’s get back to our story.

Last night at 10PM, the WSJ sent an alert out to all its subscribers. The headline? “Retailers Under Fire For Work Schedules. ” Apparently the New York State Attorney General has sent warning letters to thirteen retailers decrying on-call scheduling. Of course, the technology is highlighted as an enabler of this practice, which is apparently, evil. This, for me, is a real head-scratcher.

I understand the concept of having people on-call to come in if a worker doesn’t show up for a shift. To me, that’s a really good thing. I’ve never thought about telling the worker to stay home if business is slow, and can’t imagine a store like Gap (one of the 13) has such heavily weighted shifts that it can summarily cut people from shifts on a regular basis. It strikes me that the WSJ and the AG are taking a political position, rather than a substantive one.

Towards that end, I have a couple of questions on the subject. The first and most important: Given all this righteous indignation over worker treatment, where’s the outrage over having workers in stores on the Thanksgiving holiday? The WSJ has never made a peep about that one, beyond talking about the “fabulous ” revenue increases retailers gain from the practice.

And the second question is, “Isn’t this piece just a bit sensationalistic? ” After all, the AG has not actually instituted anything. No lawsuit. Just a heads up that there COULD be a lawsuit if a worker is sent home from a scheduled shift. That seems like a reasonable law to me. And it’s not remotely the same as what’s described in the article.

And so, given that my original piece didn’t make it over when we re-did our website, I thought I’d re-publish some excerpts here. It’s still true.

“This past year, the stories I’ve read in the mass and business media really have me scratching my head. The media seems to have gotten more sensationalist than ever, and presents what I can only describe as an “odd ” slant on the news.

“I never thought I’d find myself to the right of anything in WSJ, but here I am. When an article is titled, “Retailers Reprogram Workers in Efficiency Push “, it catches my eye, especially when the one retailer highlighted runs high-touch, small-box specialty stores. In this case, the retailer under the scope is Ann Taylor, with a special focus on one store in Langhorne, PA. For those of you unfamiliar, Langhorne is in Bucks County, a nice upper-middle class world of McMansions. My sister lives nearby.

“While relations between many supermarket employees and management have been less than cordial, specialty retail’s situation is much more straightforward. People come…and people go, typically with minimal animosity. Turnover in specialty retail hovers at over 100% per year. It has been so for a long time. But of course, if you’re reading this, you’re involved in retail and you know this already.

“In fact, there are quite a few things we know that the article paints as, .for want of a better word – sinful. Let’s make a list:

• In a high touch retail store, it makes sense to give those salespeople who sell the most the greatest opportunity to do that. Somehow, the WSJ found that offensive.
• Store managers have better things to do that sit with spreadsheets or whiteboards defining and divining schedules that match legal and personal requirements. Especially in a small-box, high touch specialty store where staffing is always minimal. Why not let the computer do that?
• Labor scheduling systems assign workers at 15 minute intervals, rather than ½ hour intervals. That does save the retailer money, and is minimally disruptive to employees.

Let’s Talk About Retention and Hugging Your People

“Not surprisingly, according to the article, implementing the new WFM system has had little to no impact on employee turnover at Ann Taylor. Let’s face it, almost NOTHING has had an impact on employee turnover in retail stores. Now that would have been a good story. There’s a lot that could be said about that side of retail workforce management. Retention policies are non-existent. As my friend Greg Girard used to say and as I’ve repeated before, “Go into a room of executives. Pick the highest level – in any industry in the US. Ask those executives whose first job was in a retail store or distribution center to raise their hands. Invariably, 90% of the people in the room will do so. The obvious question: Retailers get first crack at the best talent in the country. How and why do they let that talent slip through their fingertips? ” We know the answer has very little to do with their workforce management systems.

“In fact, when my dear friend Pamela Miles, personal assistant to Jack Mitchell sent me a galley of his new book “Hug Your People: The Proven Way to Hire, Inspire, and Recognize Your Employees and Achieve Remarkable Results “, I wasn’t sure it would resonate with retailers at large. I told her retailers are more likely to embrace the customer service tenets espoused in Jack’s first book, “Hug your Customers ” than they are the simple idea that you can be nice to your employees and still succeed.

“Still, Jack is right and as usual, he was prescient. Retailers are beginning to understand that you can’t drive customer centricity without empowered, reasonably happy employees. They are also starting to see that it’s silly to let all that talent slip through their fingers. And the hidden blessing in a down economy is retailers might get a slightly longer crack at that talent they previously let slip away. Jack’s book is on store shelves now, and I encourage retail Store Operations and Human Resource executives to give it a read.

“All this begs the question: can a retailer, or any company, use a workforce management system and still manage to ‘hug their people’? The answer is, OF COURSE. As this article suggests, the accent should be on management, not on force. Get the store manager out of the dreary task of scheduling employees, calculating allowable hours for under-age employees and acceptable hours for part-time retirees. Get him or her back onto the selling floor, interacting with customers and getting to know those employees.

Final Thoughts, Moving Back to the Center

“This article started to the ‘right’ of the WSJ, but we’re moving back to the center. We at RSR believe good workforce management and positive employee relations are not mutually exclusive. We walk that walk ourselves and ‘hug our own people’. While we might sometimes get burned, on the whole, we believe it’s worth the risk. We want anyone who works with us to enjoy the experience, and be productive as well. That doesn’t mean we don’t manage schedules, deliverables and pipelines. That’s just sound business practice. It does mean we bend over backwards to treat everyone we come in contact with as human beings. Not a lot of force, but a lot of management. And, at the end of the day, it’s not all that much work to do both. “

It strikes me today, in 2015,that retailers are actually working harder to treat their in-store workforce better than they did seven years ago. I’m sorry the WSJ is so out of touch.