City Beach is an icon in the Australian fashion industry and plays a part in the day-to-day life of Australia’s youth and cultural lifestyle. Since opening its first store in 1985 in Brisbane, Australia, the company has grown to 65 stores, has created an online presence, and operates a major distribution center to ship goods across the country. As a largely seasonal business, City Beach has a fluctuating workforce.
Challenges
Working at City Beach is more than a job. It’s a way of life. Team members ― and even management ― tend to be up on the latest trends, and most of the City Beach workforce is relatively young. For customers, the stores are a cool place not only to purchase the latest surf and street apparel, but also to hang out and shop with friends. Delivering an exceptional shopping experience requires team members to be trained in the latest store policies and to complete specific retail tasks on schedule.
However, when the head office emailed stores about tasks to be completed, management had no idea whether and when tasks had been done, and stores sometimes struggled with the volume of task assignments. City Beach has been using the UKG Pro Workforce Management™ solution, formerly known as UKG Dimensions®, to manage team member schedules, performance, and leave. Adding UKG Pro Task Management to better manage completion of retail store tasks has delivered on its purpose.
Solutions
The solution is dynamic, enabling City Beach to configure dashboard content to resonate with team members working in a store, the distribution center, or the head office. The change management and rollout strategy has included creative, engaging videos on how to use the new platform. The learning platform is used for onboarding, role-based training, and pushing training out to individual team members.
“The biggest win we’ve gained with UKG Pro Task Management is centralizing all our information and operations so it’s a one-stop platform for support with task management and communication,” said Elle Stephan, Operations Analyst at City Beach.
UKG Pro Task Management sends out communications and task assignments to individual team members, who view them on their mobile devices. Head office staff then has visibility via a dashboard to view the status and compliance of the task. The team members also have an open line of communication back to the head office.
“If we push out a task, it’s fantastic to see on a dashboard how much they’ve done and keep a pulse on compliance. It also opens up communication from the stores back to the head office,” said Ben Nau, Head of Retail at City Beach.
“If the head office thinks a task will take only 30 minutes to complete, but they hear back it takes three hours and adds little business value, they can receive the feedback quickly and make adjustments,” he added.
Message templates in the solution allow for clear, consistent, and efficient communication. Messages are sent to individual team members, not to a generic store email address. This was especially beneficial during the height of the pandemic, when City Beach learned a customer with COVID-19 had been in a store. The store’s team members were notified of the incident via the solution’s mobile app.
“If we push out a task, it’s fantastic to see on a dashboard how much they’ve done and keep a pulse on compliance. It also opens up communication from the stores back to the head office.”
Ben Nau
Head of Retail
Results
“Sending out tasks to stores and having them log time to those tasks allows us to have better predictions and forecasts about how much time and effort tasks are going to take,” said Stephan. “This functionality is amazing.”
Visibility into task completion time helps the head office better predict staff scheduling needs to align staffing with expected store foot traffic and sales, and to adjust the number of task requests sent to stores. Gatekeeping functionality in Task Management helps the senior retail team track and adjust task request numbers by store.
UKG Pro Task Management also gives City Beach managers visibility into the completion rate of task directives. With this visibility, the company can validate task completion and quickly identify, monitor, and address issues. Training material can be pushed out or provided to individual team members as needed.
Store managers have task completion information and other dashboard reports available at their fingertips, giving them more time to mentor their team members. Managers can give store iPads to team members to log in on the Task Management mobile app for additional learning while they’re working.
Head office team members are engaged with the platform too, having seen the efficiency gained from sending tasks to the stores and having visibility into task completion status.
Employee engagement at all levels is a top priority for City Beach, and UKG Pro Task Management has delivered the state of-the-art task management and communication system the company needed.
