Autonomy has long been cited as a key factor in employee motivation at work, so the finding from University of Oregon research that responsible scheduling practices help not only employees but also the business itself should perhaps come as no surprise.

The researchers focused on the retail sector, and the Gap clothing chain particularly, where they conducted a large-scale field experiment. The results show that when stores adopted more responsible scheduling, they were more productive, their sales increased, and they had reduced labor hours than fellow Gap stores that did not. Indeed, the responsible scheduling stores saw productivity rise by 5.1%, sales by 3.3%, and labor fall by 1.8%.

Making changes

The project is now being used as part of attempts in Congress to push through the Schedules That Work Act, which would allow employees to request changes to their schedule without fearing any repercussions, and that employees both consider such requests and strive to provide predictable and stable schedules where possible. Several cities and states have also adopted laws that regulate scheduling practices by large companies, such as retailers.

The researchers wanted to explore the impact of the longstanding practice by retailers of matching labor supply with customer traffic. In recent times, sophisticated algorithms have been developed to help firms schedule labor with the variations in customer demand.

While these “workforce optimization systems” have some benefits, they usually fail to consider the wellbeing of workers. These costs for workers can be considerable as they attempt to navigate unpredictable and unstable schedules. These costs can include poor sleep, harmed mental health, and reductions in happiness. They’re also disproportionately likely to affect workers of color.

The researchers introduced a number of responsible scheduling practices into 19 Gap stores during the research, including:

• Stable shift structures, with fixed start and end times for shifts.
• Core scheduling, with employees getting the same shifts week to week.
• “Part-time plus,” where managers were asked to build a core team of part-time workers whom they would regularly schedule for at least 20-hour weeks.
• Targeted additional staffing, where managers were given modest increases in their stores’ labor budgets for times when the store was deemed to be understaffed.
• Tech-enabled schedule changes, in which employees used a third-party app to post shifts they did not want to work and to pick up additional shifts.

The results of this showed that when people had more stable schedules, they were generally happier at work, which meant they put more effort in, would turn up for work on time, and therefore improved the profitability of the store.

As evidence mounts and legislation is introduced to support responsible scheduling, the researchers hope that more and more firms will start to embrace the practice.