Balancing spending and service: How Humanforce helps Retailers accurately forecast staff numbers

In Retail, no two days are ever the same. One weekend you’re rushed off your feet with queues at the checkout, the next you’re left wondering where the shoppers went. This unpredictability is what makes Retail exciting — but also what makes staff scheduling such a headache.

Get rosters wrong, and the costs stack up. Too few people on the floor? Customers walk out frustrated and sales are lost. Too many staff? Wage bills creep up and margins disappear. The real challenge is striking that sweet spot: enough coverage to deliver great service, without breaking the budget.

Luckily, with the right tools and a smarter approach, this balancing act doesn’t have to be guesswork.

Why Retail demand is so hard to predict

Retail is heavily influenced by things outside your control — from seasonal shopping events to weather shifts and social media trends. A sudden cold snap can send customers rushing for winter coats, while a viral TikTok trend might empty your shelves in days.

Research shows that demand forecasting is one of the biggest pain points in Retail operations. Managers often rely on historical patterns or gut feel, but this isn’t enough in today’s environment where real-time insights make all the difference.

And when schedules don’t match reality? Staff feel overworked, morale drops, and turnover rises — which is already a major issue in Retail, where turnover rates consistently rank higher than other industries.

Four ways to make scheduling smarter

1. Forecast demand, then plan around it

Instead of rostering the same way every week, Retailers need to lean on data. That means pulling in sales history, promotions, foot traffic and even weather predictions to get a clearer picture of when demand will peak.

2. Use templates for recurring busy periods

Why reinvent the wheel each season? Holiday trade, weekend rushes, or back-to-school periods follow fairly predictable patterns. Creating reusable roster templates helps you prepare ahead of time and saves managers hours of manual work.

3. Give staff more flexibility and control

Today’s Retail workers, especially younger staff, want flexibility. If they can swap shifts with colleagues or bid for available shifts, they’re more likely to stick around. Flexibility helps people juggle study, family or even a second job, and it shows you trust them.

4. Keep an eye on costs and compliance

Nothing drains a Retail profit & loss faster than ballooning overtime or incorrect award payments. Linking rosters directly to labour cost projections — and embedding compliance rules into every shift — means you stay in control while giving staff the confidence they’re being paid fairly.

How Humanforce helps Retailers balance the scales

This is where Humanforce’s Workforce Management (WFM) suite makes a real difference. Built with shift-based industries like Retail in mind, it takes the stress out of the scheduling process for store managers & HR teams alike.

Predictive, demand-driven rostering

Retail managers can’t rely on guesswork to align staff with customer demand. Humanforce’s Workforce Analytics provides the insights they need — from historical sales peaks to shift acceptance trends. With these data points, you can forecast not just when you’ll be busy, but also whether staff are likely to accept offered shifts. That level of foresight helps avoid last-minute scrambles and under-resourced shop floors.

Humanforce has always prioritised making rostering and scheduling easier for end users. In 2025, we’ll be enhancing our solution further with AI-powered Demand Driven Rostering (DDR)*. This functionality will automatically generate smart worker- and environment-optimised rosters, ensuring labour costs are minimised without sacrificing customer service. Key features will include:

• Demand forecasting: Forecast demand and shift requirements based on external demand drivers and historical data

• Shift generation: Auto create shifts for various roles based on the forecasted demand

• Auto fill: Auto allocation of right fit employees to vacant shifts based on specific objectives and award agreements and other constraints

In addition, Humanforce’s Template Manager allows you to pre-build seasonal or recurring rosters. For instance, you can design a Boxing Day roster weeks in advance, confident that it will scale to meet the surge. By embedding these into your planning cycle, you give staff more notice and managers less stress.

Empowering employees with flexibility

The Retail workforce is diverse — from students balancing part-time work with studies, to parents juggling childcare. Flexibility isn’t a “nice-to-have”; it’s essential for retention.

Through the Humanforce Work App, employees can:

• Swap shifts or bid for available shifts without breaching compliance rules

• Set their availability and preferences, helping managers roster in a way that respects personal needs

• View and manage rosters instantly on mobile, reducing confusion or missed shifts

This autonomy builds loyalty and reduces turnover — critical in an industry where constant rehiring is both costly and disruptive.

Real-time visibility of labour costs

Retail is often run on tight margins, and labour costs are the biggest controllable expense. With Humanforce, managers can see real-time wage projections before publishing rosters. For example, if a roster pushes overtime costs above budget, the system flags it instantly. Adjustments can be made before they hit the profit & loss statement.

This transparency prevents the common trap of “over-correcting” by understaffing to save money, which only ends up creating poor customer experiences and burned-out employees.

Accurate attendance that feeds payroll automatically

One of the biggest pain points for staff is when their hours worked don’t match their payslips. Manual timesheets, or outdated clock-in methods, are prone to error. Humanforce solves this with:

• Advanced QR Clocking via the Humanforce Work App

• Facial recognition and finger vein scanning at on-site kiosks

• Geofenced clocking to ensure employees only sign on when in the correct location

These methods ensure that time and attendance records are accurate, secure, and automatically linked to payroll. The result? Reduced instances of time theft, fewer disputes, less admin, and more trust between staff and management.

Compliance made simple

Retail managers juggle a complex mix of casuals, part-timers, and full-time staff, each with different entitlements. Humanforce’s Awards & Compliance engine takes the stress out of compliance by embedding award rules into every roster.

For example, if a casual is rostered for a shift that crosses into a public holiday, the system automatically calculates the correct penalty rates — no manual intervention needed. This ensures staff are paid fairly and managers avoid costly underpayment risks.

Communication that keeps everyone in sync

Retail thrives on teamwork. But if communication is scattered across WhatsApp groups, emails, and noticeboards, things slip through the cracks. Humanforce keeps everyone connected within one platform:

• Managers can send roster updates and announcements instantly

• Staff receive notifications directly on their phones

• Urgent changes — such as covering last-minute absences — can be broadcast via the SMS function in the Humanforce Work App, which has a 90% read rate within 90 seconds of delivery

This centralised communication ensures nothing is missed, even across large, multi-site operations.

Integration with wider HR and payroll

For Retailers managing multiple sites or thousands of staff, integration is critical. Humanforce integrates rostering, time and attendance, and payroll in one system — reducing duplication, minimising errors, and saving hours of admin time each week. It also integrates with over 100 payroll providers, meaning your business doesn’t have to overhaul existing systems to benefit from modern workforce management.

Insights that drive continuous improvement

Humanforce doesn’t just help you build better rosters today; it also helps you improve tomorrow. With access to custom dashboards and real-time analytics, managers can see:

• Absenteeism trends

• Shift acceptance rates

• Labour costs by department or store

• Which roster templates perform best

Armed with these insights, Retailers can refine scheduling strategies continuously, creating a feedback loop that drives efficiency and employee satisfaction.

Smart rostering paves the road ahead for Retailers

Retail demand will always ebb and flow — that’s the nature of the industry. But with data, smarter rostering tools, and staff-friendly flexibility, Retailers can transform scheduling from a constant pain point into a strategic advantage.

By adopting solutions like Humanforce, managers can finally stop firefighting shift gaps and start focusing on what really matters: delivering a great experience for customers and building a loyal, motivated team.

Because at the end of the day, optimising staff schedules isn’t just about labour costs — it’s about people. And when your people feel supported, your customers will too.

*Please note: Demand Driven Rostering is currently in development and not yet available to customers. It is on our roadmap, and we are committed to releasing it in the near future. Humanforce reserves the right to alter the scope, timing, and details of the development. Humanforce encourages readers to contact their Humanforce representative and keep an eye out for Humanforce What’s New for updates and details of the future development.

About Humanforce

Humanforce is the all-in-one platform for frontline and flexible workforces, offering a truly employee centred, intelligent and compliant human capital management (HCM) suite – without compromise. Founded in 2002, Humanforce has a 2300+ customer base and over half a million users worldwide. Today, we have offices across Australia, New Zealand, the US, and the UK.

Our vision is to make work easier and life better by focusing on the needs and fulfilment of frontline workers, and the efficiency and optimisation of businesses.

To learn more about how Humanforce’s solution can help automate people processes in your business, please contact us.