HYEMIN | Walmart Schedule + Timeclock
16107
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Walmart Schedule + Timeclock

Background

Today, Walmart associates use an app on their mobile devices called Me@Walmart, or simply Me@ for short. Me@Walmart brings together personal and work needs of Walmart associates into one app. Some features of this app include being able to manage work schedules, request time-off, swap shifts, stock items on shelves, and much more. In this way, Me@ is essentially a collection of mini-apps, each serving a different associate need. Currently, Me@ has two mini-apps for schedule and timeclock experiences. Both have similar functions and similar UI patterns; however, different teams own each feature.

Schedule
Timeclock

Challenges

Associates are the primary link between the disconnected schedule and time clock features, and must remember details across experiences. As a result of this disconnect, we’re missing an opportunity to guide associates, see forecasts, and identify issues in real time. When an associate is asked to work additional time, managers often don’t create a scheduled shift. And consequently, there is a lack of visibility and a lack of data being captured.

Opportunity

Create a unified schedule experience that empowers associates to confidently manage their schedules and clock actions, leading to more accurate schedule and timeclock data and ultimately effective work planning.

Process

Leveraging findings from user research, we led conversations with our product, business, and engineering partners to get on the same page in terms of ownership, business impact, and technical limitations. Due to the nature of this initiative being a North Star vision, we needed compelling reasons to engage business leadership and interest. Our findings uncovered a potentially significant savings to labor cost by implementing a smarter, connected system. By encouraging associates to adhere to their schedules, we would mitigate overtime and “work over scheduled hours” and prevent stores from going over budget. Reminding associates to take meal breaks would not only meet compliance to prevent legal costs, but also reduce overages of not clocking at the expected time.

From both a product and engineering standpoint, an integration required collaboration from two separate teams, each with their own product owners and development teams. These teams would have to be aligned on the approach, the execution, and who owns the governance of what. After countless discussions, we landed on an experience that would allow for GTA (Global Time and Attendance) APIs to communicate with the Me@ system to sync schedules and display scheduling exceptions in real time. With this huge unlock, our North Star vision of automating schedule and timeclock actions and enabling schedule exceptions became a viable concept. The current experience requires a manager to make retroactive edits, taking time and leaving doors open for errors. With this automation, we can provide associates with real-time feedback to enable and empower them to resolve their own exceptions.

Solution

Our North Star concept is an end-to-end connected experience. It begins with the manager experience and how they plan the day’s shift. Once the manager has made the necessary changes to the day’s plan based on day’s circumstances, we shift perspective to the team associate as they accept their new shift, start their shift, work their shift, and end their shift.
Throughout this process, clocking events are automatically connected to their schedule data and synced so that there are no retroactive edits required by the manager and metrics are accurately calculated for effective planning.

 
Once clocked in, he can see insights into how he can staff his team for the best outcome for the day. He’s under scheduled by 16 hours, which will impact 2 goals. He decides to View staffing recommendations to dig a little deeper.
The staffing recommendations presents a shift breakdown, enabling Taylor to understand his needs. He looks at the analysis into his team’s labor capacity, reviews the impacted work, and decides to Share available hours with his team.
In the bottom sheet, he enters a personal message to provide additional context and keep the request conversational. The shift is pre-populated with details to have the best impact. He proceeds to Share with associates.

He receives confirmation that the request has been sent, and that he will be notified once his team picks up the available hours.
After acknowledging the confirmation message, Taylor is taken to the Plan your shift screen where he can see an overview of his shift, updated information about his available hours vs needed hours, and a list of goals to accomplish.

 
Jamie sees a push notification from Me@ where her manager is seeking additional support today.
Jamie reviews the message and understands her team needs extra help. She’s willing to come in but since she’s wrapping up her errands, she tweaks the shift time from 3pm to 10pm and taps Accept shift.
Once accepted, Jamie sees a message thanking her for her support, reinforcing the value she provides her team and the appreciation for it. She taps View my schedule to get a snapshot of her day and week.

On her Schedule page, Jamie sees that her new shift has already been added to her schedule with a meal break already factored in. She also sees a view of her whole week with worked hours and upcoming hours.
When Jamie finishes helping the customer she sees a push notification prompting her to clock in. She taps the notification to open Me@.
Jamie immediately sees an in-app notification that’s guiding her to take the clock in action. The notification is aware of her schedule and geo-location so it provides a smart recommendation on exact clock in time.

After clocking in, she sees her shift schedule as well as current status. She’s able to see what the rest of her shift looks like, meal times, 15 minute breaks she is entitled to, end of shift, etc.
On the home page, Jamie is able to see time worked so far today and her upcoming shift milestones (meal + end) and she feels confident the system is tracking her time accurately.
Jamie’s meal break is scheduled at 6:00pm. Around 5:50 she sees a reminder come up over what she’s currently doing in Me@, and can decide what she wants to do next.
Jamie goes about her current task of stocking shelves. About 20 minutes later, Jamie wraps up, navigates to her current work and pushes the button to Mark Complete.

Since Jamie had set the meal reminder to notify her after completing her work, she sees a prompt to take her meal break. She taps Start meal and heads over to the break area.
While taking her meal, Jamie can see time remaining on her break to easily know exactly when to return to work. She’s able to end meal and return to work with a single tap.
 
Jamie’s shift ends at 10:00pm, around 9:50pm, since she’s not using Me@ actively she sees a push notification helping her understand it’s nearing time to clock-out.

Jamie taps the push notification and she is presented with the total time she’s worked during her shift and can choose to dismiss or clock out now. She decides to Clock out.
Jamie sees a Shift Confirmation page that shows details about the day’s shift. She reviews the clocking events to ensure that they are accurate. She confirms and completes her clock out.
She sees a final confirmation thanking her for picking up the extra hours and finalizing the clock out. She can also see that her next shift is scheduled for tomorrow at 2pm.

Impact

Labor cost savings

Support associates in adherence to their schedules with dynamic notifications to prevent hours worked over scheduled hours.

Schedule accuracy

Create/update shifts when associates pick up extra hours to provide accurate views of labor resources for planning and assignment.

Free up manager time

Provide real-time feedback that enables associates to resolve exceptions, reducing leadership time spent managing exceptions.