Giving retail workers regular, predictable schedules so they’ll know when and how much they’re working is great for workers—and, according to a new study of 28 Gap stores in the San Francisco and Chicago areas, it’s good for profits, too. Noam Scheiber reports:
The study randomly assigned about two-thirds of the stores to a so-called treatment group, in which managers were encouraged to provide workers with more consistent start and stop times from day to day, and more consistent schedules from week to week. Many managers were also authorized to slightly increase the total number of payroll hours that they could allocate to their workers. Scheduling at the remaining one-third of the stores continued largely as usual.
The result: The change in average sales during the experiment was 7 percent higher at the stores subject to the new policies than at the stores in the control group.
“They were not operating in the stability sweet spot,” said Joan Williams of the University of California Hastings College of the Law, one of the study’s authors. “We basically held up a mirror to capitalism’s self-image of efficiency and showed the misaligned incentives that are disserving both workers and the company.”
This happened without workers’ schedules even being changed all that much—managers were encouraged, not required, to make changes and as a result schedules were made only slightly more consistent. More significant change would have to come from the top, since special promotions and other requirements from corporate management can have big impacts on staffing requirements. But while this is just one small study, you’d think it would be something retail companies would want to look into.
And by the way, dear corporate overlords: increasing your profits shouldn’t be the only reason to stop abusing your workers.