Retailers across the UK are navigating some of the most turbulent market conditions in decades. A combination of surging labour costs, a cost-of-living crisis, and increasingly complex regulatory requirements has left many retail leaders questioning how to maintain profitability without compromising service or severely cutting and alienating their workforce.
Yet amidst this uncertainty lies an opportunity: to reimagine how labour is planned, managed, and deployed. Our new eGuide, Retail in Crisis: A Perfect Storm for UK Retailers, explores retailers’ challenges and introduces a smarter, AI-powered path forward.
Mounting Pressure, Shrinking Options
The financial burden on UK retailers continues to grow. Rising National Living Wage and Minimum Wages, inflation, and increasing National Insurance Contributions are adding billions to payrolls, with forecasts suggesting over £5 billion in additional wage costs and as many as 160,000 retail jobs at risk.
But it’s not just about the numbers. Retailers must also grapple with shifting workforce expectations. The next generation of frontline employees values flexibility, financial well-being, and digital tools to manage their working lives. Unfortunately, legacy systems haven’t kept up. Many retailers still rely on outdated spreadsheets or static scheduling tools that can’t support today’s complexity or pace.
It’s a scenario in which traditional approaches to workforce management are no longer fit for purpose, especially when compliance violations, disengaged employees, and poor forecasting can compound to erode margin, reputation, and performance.
Six Ways to Win with Intelligent Workforce Management
Here’s a snapshot of how Legion’s intelligent Workforce Management Platform helps UK retailers take back control:
- Precision Forecasting: AI-driven demand models that react to local conditions like weather, traffic, events, and promotions in real time and can combine and consider historical data for seasonality, trends, and demand.
- AI-Powered Scheduling: Instantly create optimized rotas based on productivity, labor rules, budget constraints, compliance rules, and employee skills and preferences.
- Budget Control at Scale: Model “what-if” scenarios to plan and protect margins months in advance without guesswork and automatically enforce budget constraints in schedules.
- Built-in Compliance Templates: Avoid fines and errors with automated enforcement of Working Time Directives, age bands, break rules, and more.
- Employee Empowerment: Give staff the flexibility to self-swap shifts, pick up open shifts more easily, and access wages early—all from a highly-rated mobile app.
- Fast ROI: Most retailers see measurable impact in months, not years post-deployment—including reduced absenteeism, higher productivity, and better retention.
These capabilities already deliver real-world value for global retailers navigating the same storm and could transform your workforce management.
The Future of Retail Starts With the Workforce
The UK retail sector is at a crossroads. With costs rising and workforce expectations evolving, the question is no longer whether change is needed but how quickly it can happen and what difference it can make.
This new eGuide argues that retailers could benefit from pivoting away from cost-cutting and towards intelligent workforce optimisation. Doing so can boost productivity, maximise labour efficiency, and empower employees, future-proofing their operations for the challenges ahead.
Download the eGuide today to explore the UK retail crisis—and how innovative workforce strategies can turn disruption into opportunity.
