16.07.2026
Case Study from Rathauspassage Hamburg
The Rathauspassage Hamburg has transitioned its shift scheduling from chaotic Excel spreadsheets to plano’s workforce management solution. As a social…
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Staff planning software / program for retail — automatic shift schedules
More About Retail Staff Planning
PEP, short for retail staff planning, describes the process used to ensure that exactly the right number of employees is always in the store at the right time. The goal is to provide the best possible service to customers, avoid waiting times, and keep labor costs under control. This means that more staff are scheduled during peak times, such as weekends or special promotions, while fewer employees are assigned during quieter periods. In doing so, staff planning considers not only the expected customer traffic but also legal requirements, working-time regulations, vacation time, and employee preferences.
Thus, good PEP ensures that working hours are distributed fairly, employees are not overburdened, and the store runs smoothly. At the same time, it is important to be able to react flexibly to short-term changes such as sick leave or sudden spikes in demand.
Overall, staff planning helps improve service quality, increase customer satisfaction and efficiently manage labor costs. It also helps to provide employees with fair working conditions and to minimize overtime.
Staff planning is one of the major challenges in the retail sector. Despite large fluctuations, how can staffing requirements be met without losing sight of employees? Frequent high staffing requirements, various working hour models, and working hours that differ from the classic 9-to-5 job can quickly become a problem here.
Varying working hours, which can only be reconciled with family life to a certain extent, and a demanding workday means retailers are often struggling to fill openings. Despite these bottlenecks, shift scheduling also needs to be done fairly while still maintaining ongoing operations. So how can you schedule staff in a fair and economical way?
Even today, some companies conduct personnel scheduling manually or using Excel. This costs an enormous amount of time, is prone to errors, and is particularly time-consuming when last-minute changes need to be made. Especially when your company reaches a certain number of employees, a digital solution for staff planning or for the entire workforce management process is indispensable.
With AI-supported schedules, you can ensure fairer retail staff planning. With plano, for example, we rely on the support of intelligent algorithms to help make shift schedules for retail employees fair and efficient. All data on staffing level, availabilities, company and legal regulations, and preferences, such as preferred working hours, are taken into account, automated, and weighted during the shift schedule creation. At the same time, you remain flexible and can, for example, react to short-term fluctuations at any time.
Staff Planning for Retail
Your personnel right where you need them - for satisfied customers and employees.
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Schedule Your Employees When You Need Them
Whether in-store, online, or by mail-order: In retail, perfect staff planning matters
Employees need to be on the shop floor when customers need them. Goods need to be on the shelves when customers place their orders. With our modern workforce management system, you can make optimal use of your resources, even when retail demands fluctuate. For better customer service, happier employees, and lower costs.
Perfectly Coordinate Shopping Experience and Working Hours
To ensure everything runs smoothly at the point of sale, retail staffing requirements need to be accurately matched with actual staffing levels. Our workforce management software determines exact demand based on numerous individual factors such as sales, weather, customer frequency, seasonal promotions, past data, and many more. These factors are reconciled with working hour preferences from employees and with other legal and company requirements. Employee scheduling is then planned accurately on a daily, hourly, or minute-by-minute basis.
Involve Your Employees in Shift Scheduling
Have your employees take part in scheduling and create a fun work environment. With our self-service tools, your employees can help shape their working hours, from digital time recording and shift swapping to vacation requests via app and scheduling with shift preferences.
The result: An employee experience that motivates and has a positive effect on the entire company—with less administrative effort, too.
plano WFM for Retail Staff Planning
Our workforce management system is perfectly tailored to the requirements of the retail sector.
Whether it’s 24/7 availability of products in online stores or on open-for-business Sundays: Based on calculated staffing requirements, employee preferences, and legal and company-specific regulations, order fluctuations can be balanced out in a cost-optimized way.
Application areas of plano WFM for retail include:
- Retailers
- Wholesalers
- Physical retail stores
- Online retail stores
- Omnichannel retailers
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We make your life easier: You provide the company requirements, our AI-supported software does the rest.
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Complex? Yes, please! Our flexible standard software can be customized down to the last detail and tailored to your specific requirements, regardless of employee numbers, industry, or complexity.
Workforce Management for Retail:
Your Benefits
Take advantage of the most important benefits of workforce management for retail:
Less over and understaffing
Make the most of your workforce, ensuring your employees are in the right place at the right time.
Reduce costs
Scheduling is precisely based on demand. This way, you can avoid overtime and reduce expensive overruns.
Increase productivity
When your employees are assigned where you need them most, productivity increases, leading to fewer expensive bottlenecks and less overtime.
Happy customers
Employee preferences are automatically taken into account during the scheduling process, resulting in fair shift schedules.
Satisfied employees
Employee preferences are automatically taken into account during the scheduling process, resulting in fair shift schedules.
AI-based schedule optimization
Ensure working hour regulations and legal requirements are always adhered to automatically. Proper scheduling prevents violations and minimizes the risk of legal consequences.
Our Solutions at a Glance
From time recording to shift scheduling: We have the right solution for your needs.
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