technology – Workforce

February 14, 2020June 29, 2023

Everything’s coming up Roses Only: How Workforce.com helps save 100s of hours a week

roses-only-floristry — Florists hard at work

Valentine’s Day: On this day celebrating love and relationships, couples, friends, and family prepare their choice of gifts for the special people in their lives. Hearts adorn storefronts, packages and discounts abound, and behind the bustle and celebration are the retailers that make it all happen.

Today is one of the busiest days of the year for the Roses Only Group, a business founded in 1995 that has grown into one of the leading flower retailers. It brings together more than 45 years of floristry and retail experience to create a business that provides gifts of all kinds to those who want to share the love: boxed roses, seasonal flowers, full arrangements, wines and champagnes, chocolates, and more.

We caught up with Chief Operating Officer Kelly Taggart as she prepared for the busy season to ask about how she manages it all. “A day in the life of me,” Kelly says, “no two days are the same.”

The search for the perfect software fit

Not everything was always wrapped up neatly at the Roses Only headquarters. “Our biggest workforce management problem was really about planning scheduling,” Kelly says. “Previously we were working in spreadsheets, and as a growing team, you tend to spend a lot of time in those spreadsheets. That time would be much better spent elsewhere, on making the business more productive.”

Using spreadsheets was an ordeal. Roses Only holds multiple warehouse locations and an online store. With many teams and all 300-plus staff working in-house, balancing administrative tasks without a good platform was challenging.

That search for better shift scheduling software led them to Workforce.com

Kelly recalls: “When we were comparing solutions, what actually stood out was the feedback Workforce.com had received from all of their existing clients. And for me personally, and for us as a business, recommendations are so important. For Workforce.com to get that client feedback, that was a big factor in our decision.”

They implemented Workforce across the organization to positive reception. Changing from a manual process to a technology solution suited the team, with them even having some fun with the selfie photos in the employee time clock. The integrations the platform offered was a big part of that decision, as Roses Only uses bespoke systems and they found it fit neatly in alongside their preferred payroll software.

Trimming hundreds of hours from scheduling means more time for operations

Roses Only has been using Workforce.com for so long, the team barely thinks of the problems it helped solve.

“They would be things like the administration time managers take to look at what time people show up to work every day. You really want your managers to be leading the team and making them more productive and hitting those business targets, not clock-watching.”

All in all, Kelly estimates Workforce saves them 100 hours a week across all locations. These saved hours go a long way—especially on huge business days like today, Valentine’s Day, and other peak periods like Mother’s Day and Christmas where they use the shift scheduling software to compare labor data from the previous year.

Roses Only uses a significant amount of big data in its operations, and that’s essential to their success each peak season. Understanding their processes and building efficiency into them is key to scaling for significant events. By having efficient operations already set in place, they don’t need to make too many changes: it’s just the same, only bigger.

“We found it’s even more beneficial with the extreme growth that we’ve had in the last 2 years, that our managers have been able to focus on other things besides managing people’s time and schedules because they have such a great platform in Workforce,” Kelly adds.

Blooming in a competitive industry

So what’s next for the retailer? As the market leader in delivered flowers and gifts, the organization is setting its sights on supporting the future of its business through leadership development. They’ll also continue to serve their customers in the best way they know: with efficiency, productivity, and excellent service.

“Everyone’s collecting information, and you’ve got to be able to put that information through in the right way and understand what customers are trying to do, so you can provide them with what they’re looking for. Then look at your own infrastructure and the way that your operations are set out, the way that your teams are set out, to support that offering to your customers.

“This business, in particular, has been in the industry for the past 12 years, and we have been online in a big way from the beginning. So we’ve already experienced many of these learnings and we’re making sure our infrastructure is supporting what we’re learning from that big data so that we can be the most productive that we can.”

Want to streamline retail operations to support your growth and expansion? Try the Workforce platform for free, no credit card required.

July 26, 2016July 25, 2018

5MM: Robots and Jobs

July 11, 2016July 25, 2018

Candidate Experience Tech Is Ticking Them Off

Job candidates, like customers, expect a certain level of service and courtesy when they engage with a company. Yet most companies aren’t even throwing applicants a bone — and that’s not going over well with their talent pool.

A recent study from Future Workplace and CareerArc found nearly 60 percent of job seekers have had a poor candidate experience, and of those 72 percent shared that experience on an employer review site, social networking site or with colleagues and friends. This trend should be concerning to a lot of recruiters.

When candidates post negative reviews for the world to see, it can potentially poison the talent pool, said Dan Schawbel, Future Workplace research director. Today’s job seekers are savvy researchers, reviewing an average of 16 resources when searching for a job, according to CareerBuilder’s 2016 State of Recruitment study. Whether they hear negative reviews from a colleague or read them on Linked In or Glassdoor, it can deter them from applying for a position that may otherwise be a great fit. “Those review can shut off a lot of people who could be good employees,” Schwabel said.

Recruiters may also be surprised to hear what constitutes a negative experience, says Kirsten Davidson, head of employer brand for Glassdoor Inc., the employer review site. It isn’t caused by aggressive interview tactics, or frustrating background check processes. “Most negative reviews come from people who just never heard back,” she said.

And it happens far too often. A whopping 65 percent of job seekers in the Future Workplace survey said they never or rarely receive notice from employers when they submit applications. Similarly, in CareerBuilder’s report job seekers said their biggest frustration is when employers don’t respond to them. “Candidates invest a lot of time preparing an application, yet they feel like the company is investing nothing in response,” Schawbel said. “That sends a bad message about the company.”

Start With a ‘Thank You’

So how do recruiters respond? With many job postings receiving hundreds of applications, there isn’t time for recruiters to send a personal thank you note to everyone who applied. But unless companies have a system in place to at least acknowledge these candidates, employers may be damaging their reputation every time they post an opening.

Even Glassdoor, the company that gives employees a platform to review current and future employers, has struggled to get this one right. A few years ago the site recognized that most of the negative reviews it received were because candidates got no response to their applications.

In response, the company created a checklist of ways to improve the candidate experience, which includes sending some level of response to every candidate who applies. “It was important to find a process that we could scale,” Davidson said. Applicants who are clearly unqualified for the role receive an automated email thanking them for applying and letting them know they are not a good fit but to please stay in touch, while candidates who participate in further screenings and interviews receive more personalized notes with feedback on where they are in the application process and/or why they aren’t right for the job. Since implementing this response process, Glassdoor now has a 73 percent positive interview experience rating compared with the 54 percent average across the entire site.

Taking the time to respond to candidates isn’t just polite; it’s good for the company’s overall image as well, said Robin Richards, CEO of CareerArc. “When you treat candidates well they become net promoters of the brand.” That’s marketing-speak for ‘measuring the loyalty of a firm’s customer relationships.’ When you consider how many people apply for a given job, building loyalty through something as simple as a thank you email can be a powerful marketing tool, he said.

Companies can also use candidate reviews as a way to assess their recruiting process and identify areas that need improvement. And when negative reviews arise, Davidson said she encourages recruiters to respond in a positive and nonconfrontational way. “When you say you are sorry and share what you are doing to improve the process, it can turn a negative experience into a neutral one,” she said. “It also sends a message to the broader talent community that you care about them.” Glassdoor research shows that 62 percent of employees say their perception of a company improves after seeing an employer respond to a review.

Sending thank you notes to unqualified candidates may seem like an added burden in an already time-consuming job, but taking time to acknowledge people who expressed an interest in working for your company just makes good business sense, Richards said. “In a high-tech, high-volume world, a little courtesy makes people feel valued, and that can have a big positive impact on your brand.”

Sarah Fister Gale is a writer based in the Chicago area. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.