Archived Forecast Trend

[insiteful1]

Has anyone else noticed the odd forecasting pattern? Target has always done this, but it is so much worse/obvious as of late. We smoke sales all week. S,M,T,W,R, and F. Yay, we are up X%!!!! Right? Not so much. Come Saturday we are consistently being over-forecasted. When we end the day we have been up a little week after week, but nowhere near the % we were of Friday. They are doing the same thing for the month. We are up pretty good going into the last week and then we won't make sales the last week. I know our DTL is aware of the tactic because we are consistently getting flex payroll, but he won't let us use it because he knows when the month is over....we will be flexing back down. It's a total waste of time. Just give us a good look at real number so we know what our payroll REALLY looks like. Instead they feed us these artificial forecasts and flex payroll. Just another waste of everyone's time.

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

I noticed it too. Before inventory, we were over 500 hours. Then after inventory, minus 300 hours.

 

[spikegrouchy]

I don't know how Target schedules based on the sales forecast, but when I was a store manager at another retailer years ago, I always based my payroll on last year's sales and what we were trending over the past three months. For example, if we were up 10% over the past three months and that trend was consistent, then I would increase payroll about 5% over last year just to give myself a little room in case we dropped. You can never tell if your are going to have a snowstorm, etc., but this always worked for me.

I also never over-hired either, so my regulars would never get part-time hours, even during slow times. I always tried to keep new hires to a minimum even during fourth quarter because most of my part-timers wanted more hours then and I would rather have an experienced employee working for me instead of a newbie. My team always appreciated this.

I have noticed that Target really could care less about keeping team members happy. In fact, the more they can mess with us...the better! It is very hard to build a team nowdays.

 

[Rock Lobster]

I don't know how Target schedules based on the sales forecast, but when I was a store manager at another retailer years ago, I always based my payroll on last year's sales and what we were trending over the past three months. For example, if we were up 10% over the past three months and that trend was consistent, then I would increase payroll about 5% over last year just to give myself a little room in case we dropped. You can never tell if your are going to have a snowstorm, etc., but this always worked for me.

I also never over-hired either, so my regulars would never get part-time hours, even during slow times. I always tried to keep new hires to a minimum even during fourth quarter because most of my part-timers wanted more hours then and I would rather have an experienced employee working for me instead of a newbie. My team always appreciated this.

I have noticed that Target really could care less about keeping team members happy. In fact, the more they can mess with us...the better! It is very hard to build a team nowdays.

The way it works is the STL opens up the payroll allocator in MAX and looks at the week they are working on... It shows a column for everyday and the sales that were done LY... in the bottom corner is the % you are expected to grow, and then there are your adjusted sales numbers based off of that growth! The hours are then allocated from there based off the new sales figures...

What you speak of can be done by the STL... say the new forecasts only call for a 1% growth and you have been trending 5%... They can over allocate the hours and call that bluff! But you better pray you actually make those sales because overscheduling by that much and NOT making it will make the STL look like an idiot!