How Schuh Mücke bundles New Work with digitization

Due to the changed working conditions during the pandemic, many people began to question their existing job model. The Bavarian retailer Schuh Mücke relies on digitization for satisfied employees in a demanding job market.

The labor market is in transition. Like other companies, Schuh Mücke is also feeling the shortage of skilled workers – in sales, in logistics and “it’s getting really difficult” in IT and e-commerce, observes Kathrin Schmidt, Managing Director for HR, digitization and accounting at Schuh- und Sport Mücke GmbH . In the course of the pandemic, your employees expressed their desire to reduce hours and discovered a different awareness of their free time.

This increased awareness of the right balance between work and leisure is currently being expressed in Germany and other Western countries in the discussions about a four-day week and the buzzword New Work. It’s not about whether everyone works 100 percent or four days, but about companies responding more to the individual needs of their employees, Schmidt said in an interview with FashionUnited during the trade congress in Berlin.

“This topic of individualization and that it really suits the employees individually is actually what we mean by New Work,” she explains. “As far as possible, we meet the needs of the employees.”

Employees in the store decide for themselves when they work

Schuh Mücke achieves this with the help of digital tools. For example, the employees in the branches can decide for themselves when they work. With the help of an intelligent system, the trading company can respond to their needs and ensure that the right employees with the right qualifications are in the right place at the right time.

For the personnel deployment plan, Schuh Mücke enters demand drivers such as turnover and frequency in the branches into a software, as well as the secondary activities and preferred times of the employees, explains Schmidt. Employees can enter specific times in advance when others have plans. The computer program then divides shifts according to these parameters.

In the surveys of employees and in staff appraisals, the retailer found a lot of dissatisfaction with the personnel deployment planning, it was the top 1 topic. It was therefore important to Schuh Mücke to involve the employees here. Overall, the company looks at the annual working hours of its employees; They decide for themselves in which periods they want to work more or less.

Digital swap meet

“Personnel deployment planning is a very emotional and sensitive topic in retail, you can almost only lose there,” explains Schmidt. Employees pay a lot of attention to fairness in the allocation. “The working time of the colleague is sometimes more important than your own working time,” she says during a presentation in Berlin.

With the current system, store managers no longer have to constantly weigh whether grandmother’s birthday or a quiet afternoon on the couch is more important to approve. And when in doubt, annoy the employees. It also saves time for those involved. The approval rate for applications for working hours is now 90 percent.

“Today we can confidently say: Our employees can, must and are allowed to have a say in their personnel deployment at any time,” says Schmidt. “And it’s not for us to define why someone has a preferred time and what the more important concern is.”

At the turn of the year, a digital exchange for shifts is to be introduced. This should also relieve the store managers: inside, who otherwise have to call around in the event of failures.

Work more digitally

“I can’t do without it. A lot of things can be done easier, better and faster,” says Schmidt about the digitization of work organization, which includes more than just personnel deployment planning in the stores.

Nine years ago, an HR employee who loaded applications into a car drove to the branches where they were viewed. But that wasn’t efficient. In 2013, the shoe retailer introduced digital applicant management, so documents were available everywhere. That was the beginning of Myjob, followed by other digital applications in the field of human resources.

A year later came the digital personnel file, which can be viewed by the company and employees. Documents such as payslips and tax certificates can also be accessed here. This saves the printing, folding and sending of payslips.

After that, training courses were digitized, the app for this is called My Learnings. Videos on topics such as product information were shot in-house for the company’s own Mückepedia. Training content for a large range, such as that from Schuh Mücke, can be passed on to employees quickly. Even during the lockdowns after the outbreak of the pandemic, employees could be reached digitally and trained in hygiene concepts.

All tools should soon be centrally accessible for all employees via the MückeApp. Digitizing the processes has helped increase efficiency and conserve resources, says Schmidt. “We have gained a lot of flexibility. You can access all information at any time.”

Mobile working

After the employees returned to the office, Schuh Mücke wanted to offer models that were compatible with the new everyday work routine. Head office employees can do at least 40 percent of their work on the go, sometimes up to 100 percent. That depends on how the team and the projects are set up. Basically, the company trusts its employees that they can organize themselves in such a way that mobile working from home works.

“This mutual trust works very, very well for us,” says Katja Iuras, Retail Operation Partner at Schuh und Sport Mücke GmbH. “In the end it has to be good for the team, and only then can it work in the end.”

Schuh Mücke also reserves the right to summon employees to the office with a lead time of eight days, for example if there are specific projects and also to strengthen the team structure.

fears of inflation

With the digital tools, Schuh Mücke is working on responding to the individual needs of employees. But after the lockdowns during the peak phase of the pandemic, new questions keep arising.

“When you talk to the employees, you feel a lot of strain and stress,” says Schmidt. Persistently high inflation and high energy prices are fueling fears, she observes. Many are asking, “Can I maintain my own standard of living?”

Salary is now a big issue in retail. “But we don’t have a final solution yet,” she says. The company raises salaries every year on a fixed cycle, but it hasn’t decided how big the increase will be this year.

For companies like Schuh Mücke, it remains an issue of “somehow reconciling the different needs and very individual issues of the employees,” says Schmidt.

“We cannot digitize a good mood, but we can provide employees with all the tools to achieve high levels of satisfaction and thus achieve a good mood on our sales areas, in our logistics and at our headquarters.”