Reference no: EM132919436

HARDARD CASE STUDY:

Belk: Towards Exceptional Scheduling

In 2013, Belk, Inc. (Belk), was a study in contrasts: it employed almost 24,000 people and operated over 300 stores, yet the largest family-owned and -operated department store retailer in the United States also boasted an almost entirely manual scheduling system. The Senior Vice President for Staffing and Productivity, Eric Bass, sought to resolve that problem. Bass, a retail veteran "who went to a mall every day for work from [age] 15 to 43," understood the perspectives of store managers and the challenges associated with retail operations at the store level. He was all too aware that managers sometimes saw change emanating from the corporate office as more trouble than it was worth and ignorant of local realities. He also knew that the existing scheduling system was complicated, could lead to needless duplication of effort, and was driving substantial misallocation of Belk's resources, even by the best store managers.

1. What did Belk look like before implementing the scheduling system? How was its industry changing? What were its major challenges moving forward?

2. What are these workforce management solutions? What were the problems with the current system? What was Belk seeking to achieve? Were its goals consistent with its major challenges?

3. What were the details of the project implementation? Was the authority to override a good design decision? Was scheduling effectiveness the best measure (given that its own rules worked against it)?

4. What have been the major outcomes of the implementation? Which of those were not intended?