Self-scheduling on the go: Digitalizing staffing at dm-drogerie markt with projekt0708

⇨ Employee-centric scheduling: dm-drogerie markt prioritizes employee well-being and empowers them to manage their work schedules through digital staffing applications. This reflects their company culture that values self-management and decision-making.

⇨ Improved efficiency: The new system replaces a paper-based process with a digital one, reducing planning time from days to hours. This allows for faster and more efficient scheduling for both store managers and employees.

⇨ User-centered design: The development process involved user research and feedback from employees across various store locations. While balancing all needs wasn't easy, the focus remained on features that benefit the majority of employees, leading to a more user-friendly experience.

Self-Scheduling On The Go: “Here I can be myself, here I like to shop.” This slogan is inseparably linked to the German drugstore chain dm-drogerie markt and its clear focus on both customer and employee well-being. To accommodate the employees’ desire to plan their own work shifts, SAP partner projekt0708 built four SAP Fiori staffing applications together with movable.design. Find out about the user experience journeys of the UX champions Stefanie Sehm from projekt0708, Ralph Tonn from movable.design, and Christoph Ade from dmTECH.

More than 40,000 employees ensure that 2,000 branches of the dm-drogerie markt run smoothly in Germany. Reflecting the company’s dialogical philosophy, dm attaches particular importance to freedom of decision-making for employees. With leadership supporting self-management, the staffing applications aim to put employees in the center. With an average of 20 employees per store, an intelligent system was greatly needed to reduce data complexity.

Besides enhancing accessible self-staffing via smartphones, new features and reducing efforts were the main reasons to replace the legacy Web Dynpro application: “Offering high-quality self-planning with the best possible user experience” – the vision was clear.

From spreadsheets to digital, from spending days to hours

Staffing is organized by the employee as well as by the store manager in the form of the Manager Self-Service in the SAP HCM system. As the solution is running on an SAP HANA database, staffing data for stores and employees can be retrieved fast and frequently.

It now only takes a few hours to staff an upcoming planning period instead of several days before:

• Planning Calendar App: The store manager prepares the staffing requirements.
  Planning Period App: The store manager releases the planning period, i.e. for a month.
• Employee Planning App: Employees enter their working hours according to the store’s needs.
• Planning Calendar App: The store manager reviews and finalizes the planning.
  Planning Period App: The store manager sets the planning period to final.
• Store Working Times App: The employees receive the final staffing plan.

Before – after: The earlier paper-based staffing schedule has now been digitalized, showing the availability of co-workers. Alt Text: The first image shows the paper-based staffing schedule in a tabular form, highlighted by different colors and various handwritten notes. The second image shows a screenshot of the clear and structured digitalized version.

Balancing feedback overload

As employee satisfaction is a top priority at dm-drogerie markt, users were involved in every phase of the development process. At the end of 2017, the first site visits took place in ten selected stores throughout Germany to build a representative sample: Stores differentiate in their size and location, whether rural, urban, or situated in train stations. Stores also decide on how they manage themselves, for example by alternating shifts, demand-oriented planning, or scheduling created by store managers.

The conducted field research typically involved a combination of observation, interviewing, and artifact analysis. For data collection, the team around Stefanie, Ralph, and Christoph had the individual staffing process explained to them, why the system sometimes needs to be tricked, and which aids are being used, for example desk calendars and hand-written lists.

Afterwards, the first wireframes and a process image were created in a five-day workshop. Comparing the internal requirements to the different situations at the stores, it became obvious that balancing all the interests and ideas of employees, store managers, IT, and HR would not be easy The high amount of qualitative feedback has been overwhelming. “We deliberately refocused on features that brought value to the majority of employees, and not to every exceptional case,” explains Stefanie Sehm, project lead from SAP partner projekt0708. Additionally, it was clear that a staffing requirement chart resulting from sales forecasts, logistics, cash register needs, and additional campaigns would be helpful. The idea of commenting on the individual planning was also considered from the beginning, allowing employees to share reasons for their absence.

Learn more about the SAP User Research Panel

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This article originally appeared on SAP News Center