Doing Well by Doing Good: Improving Retail Store Performance with Responsible Scheduling Practices at the Gap, Inc.

Abstract

We estimate the causal effects of responsible scheduling practices on store financial performance at the U.S. retailer Gap, Inc. The randomized field experiment evaluated a multicomponent intervention designed to improve dimensions of work schedules—consistency, predictability, adequacy, and employee control—shown to foster employee well-being. The experiment was conducted in 28 stores in the San Francisco and Chicago metropolitan areas for nine months between November 2015 and August 2016. Intent-to-treat (ITT) analyses indicate that implementing responsible scheduling practices increased store productivity by 5.1%, a result of increasing sales (by 3.3%) and decreasing labor (by 1.8%). Drawing on qualitative interviews with managers and quantitative analyses of employee shift-level data, we offer evidence that the intervention improved financial performance through improved store execution. Our experiment provides evidence that responsible scheduling practices that take worker well-being into account can enhance store productivity by motivating additional employee effort and reducing barriers to employees adhering to the scheduled labor plan. This paper was accepted by David Simchi-Levi, operations management. Funding: This research was supported by generous grants from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Institute of International Education in collaboration with the Ford Foundation, the Center for Popular Democracy, the Suzanne M. Nora Johnson and David G. Johnson Foundation, and Gap, Inc. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.4291 .