Photograph by CSP Staff
Hourly workers are very unhappy, especially younger workers, according to Legion Technologies. Half of the employees surveyed in the company’s 2024 State of the Hourly Workforce study said they were very likely to leave their jobs in the next year.
For employees between the ages of 18 and 24 years old, 76% plan to leave their jobs in the next year, according to the study. But there are ways technology, like artificial intelligence (AI), can help convenience stores and other employers with hourly workers.
Michael Spataro (pictured above), chief customer officer at Legion Technologies, spoke at CSP’s C-StoreTEC event in October in Schaumburg, Illinois. He shared how Legion’s workforce management platform leverages AI to optimize labor efficiency and employee experience.
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“If we’ve learned anything over the last couple of years, hiring and retaining employees is going to continue to be a challenge,” Spataro said. “Retaining the employee is going to be critically important—and you can leverage technology to retain those employees.”
The top reasons why hourly employees want to leave their jobs are a lack of flexibility, lack of recognition and no instant access to wages, he said.
AI can help, though, with both scheduling and earned wage access, which gives employees’ instant access to their paychecks, Spataro said.
When it comes to creating a schedule that is conducive to the employee’s definition of work-life balance, a manager has to consider the employee’s availability, the employee’s preferences, the company’s compliance rules and more.
“If a manager has to figure out how to create that schedule, that’s really complicated. And that’s going to work for one employee, but it’s not going to work for another employee,” he said. “So AI enables you to use all of those inputs to provide a schedule to the employee that is closer to what their definition of work-life balance is.”
Legion’s automated scheduling system also allows employees to pick up open shifts, swap shifts with the right person and more, Spataro said. Ultimately, this will reduce administrative work in approving time-off requests, he said.
Legion’s tools also allow for companies to give employees instant access to earned wages. With this technology, employees can access a portion of their earned wages before their scheduled payday. This can boost moral and job satisfaction, drive open shift uptake and improve clock hygiene and on-time performance, according to Legion.
Retail customers who use Legion’s earned wage access technology have it set up so employees must punch in accurately to receive their money early—if they aren’t punching accurately or miss a punch, they can’t access their earned wages, Spataro said.
“One of our retailers has seen a 62% drop in late clock ins and early clock outs because the employee wants access to their money,” he said.
Legion’s workforce survey was conducted by Propeller Insights. It analyzed responses from 1,569 hourly workers and 557 managers in North America.
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