Effective Staffing & Payroll During COVID-19 

There’s no getting around it – across the United States, retail has shut down more than 40,000 stores because of the COVID-19 crisis. Yet supermarkets are seeing a spike in traffic and labor demand. For example, California has listed groceries as an essential business to remain open during a state-wide lockdown. Arizona has deployed its National Guard to help replenish grocery stores.

Simply put for food retailers, your associates, old and new, have to be ready for the new normal. To solve the immediate and urgent needs of our food retail clients, here are three areas of focus within their staffing and payroll systems that Nextenture is helping with, free of charge.

Coronavirus Pay Codes

Because of the increased risk frontline associates are taking during this crisis, workers across several grocery chains are seeing a temporary uptick in hourly wages, as well as one-time bonuses for their work. But most time & attendance or payroll systems will were not built with the consequences of an international pandemic in mind. A lack of technical adjustments within these solutions can lead to delays in distributing pay, which will lead to disgruntled employees, potential lawsuits, and high turnover.

For all our partners, Nextenture is offering free time & attendance pay code consulting to match the new pay environment for associates. We also are offering free Coronavirus reporting specific to your workforce management systems so that you can additionally track costs directly attributable to Coronavirus-specific special pays, as well as unscheduled/scheduled absences.
Integrating these into your system will ensure fairness, high morale, and high retention for your workforce.

Associate-First Training and Preparation

Along with hiring new associates come the need to bring them up to speed on specific solutions used in their stores. Similarly, they will also need to be trained for the skills that fit their specific location needs. Nextenture is now including micro-eLearning and job aid delivery services within our workforce management software deployments. We’re also including free baseline change management programs for grocers struggling with the difficulties that come from surging consumer demand and rapidly scaling their business upward.

Configuring new pay codes is just the first step of updating your time & attendance system for associates. Ensuring labor law compliance on a per-county, per-district, and per-state basis for each of your stores and systems will save you noncompliance costs in the long run.

For example, in Philadelphia, starting April 1, retail employers will have to provide posted notice of their employees’ work schedules, 10 days ahead of the first day of the applicable work schedule, which will increase in January 1 of the following year to 14 days. Furthermore, in July, the maximum duration of Paid Family Leave benefits in California will increase from 6 weeks to 8 weeks.

These changes will likely be accompanied by more drastic labor law changes in lieu of COVID-19. Therefore, Nextenture is offering a free initial compliance assurance service for existing partners and customers within their time & attendance and workforce management systems.
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There’s no playbook for retailing in an international pandemic. Supermarkets, convenience, and food retailers face both public health and sustainability concerns. We hope that our services can help your associates the perform vital tasks needed to support their local communities.
Reach out a Nextenture consultant today if you’d like to learn more about how we can help you navigate this challenging environment.