Archived Presentation Hours in Softlines?

[RightArm]

So, here's my curiosity.... How many of you who work VA's in softlines get actual "presentation" hours to set POGs or do transitions? I don't know about other stores but in our store softlines is often the ugly stepchild. Plano is sent all over HL and they do everything except sales planners for hardlines while softlines often gets shafted and has to pull it together to somehow reset areas that Plano just couldn't get to. IMHO, when this happens our team should get "presentation" hours. Because we do not, here's what happens when hours get cut. They take our "Go backs" (Reshop) people OFF the clock and then expect us to do two hours of pushing go backs in the morning before we can even start setting and then they ask us "Why isn't it done?" >< Well.... augh.

I just figured that if they'd give us "presentation" hours when we're setting that they could then make sure our hours went to our "Go backs" person so we didn't have to come in first thing and use the time we have for setting on putting things away. Just makes no sense to me at all...

So, how is this handled in your store?

 

[Ajax11]

Softlines Adjacency hours are not part of planogram's workload so they are supposed to come from Softlines hours unless they are adding that time to POG. The only thing in Softlines that POG should own is Infant Basics, Shoes, Jew/Acc, B/G basics, Men's basics.

 

[likethewind]

Ugh, let me tell you something about our POG team. They have once before refused to set shoes and demanded I do some aisles because they were too busy to do so. All of this, under SL hours, and of course me not being available to help in SLs means it falls apart very fast. And this is also coming from the same TL who lets his people go in to shoes, dummy tie pogs, and abandon it that way, leaving me to come in scratching my head wondering why there is an unsightly gap that has appeared out of the blue.

-_- Hate our POG team.

 

[ISM Master]

At my store they schedule softline's brand team members under presentation to set the adjacency and softline planograms (tables, convertibales, ...). Although this work doesn't fall under presentation's workload it is still on the adjacency calendar for the week. All the hours that is shown on the adjacency calendar is given as presentation hours.

 

[RightArm]

Softlines Adjacency hours are not part of planogram's workload so they are supposed to come from Softlines hours unless they are adding that time to POG. The only thing in Softlines that POG should own is Infant Basics, Shoes, Jew/Acc, B/G basics, Men's basics.

That's not what I was talking about. Let me clarify. When the planogram team says: We are NOT going to be able to set shoes, or men's basics, or accessories, etc; and YOU are going to have to do it for us, shouldn't our hours THEN come from presentation? Of course, I feel that VA's should be part of presentation, not necessarily planogram's workload. This is not so much about WHO is doing it but HOW the hours are logged. When they cut SL hours they cut those people vital to making VA's possible - ERT people and those who push Go Backs - and that means before we can even touch VA's we have to pick up that workload on top of ours. It'd be like telling the planogram team that they have to push all the HL go backs every single day before they can start presentation and that's NOT something they're going to do.

 

[RightArm]

Ugh, let me tell you something about our POG team. They have once before refused to set shoes and demanded I do some aisles because they were too busy to do so. All of this, under SL hours, and of course me not being available to help in SLs means it falls apart very fast. And this is also coming from the same TL who lets his people go in to shoes, dummy tie pogs, and abandon it that way, leaving me to come in scratching my head wondering why there is an unsightly gap that has appeared out of the blue.

-_- Hate our POG team.

Oh geez. Ours are not that bad; but our planogram TL is always trying to shove SL workload onto SL team members instead of having his team do it while at the same time taking care of every single HL reset without batting an eyelid. It's annoying. This last time he asked me if I was going to do the reset on shoes - TOTAL reset, not salesplanners (which is something I am supposed to do) - and I told him he'd have to talk to my ETL. If she tells me to do it, then I'll roll up my sleeves and get started. Otherwise, not. ><

But I still wonder why HL TL's only have to set salesplanners on their side of the store and never have to touch the runs or change product locations and yet on the SL side we are expected to do all of that. Still, I wouldn't complain if they'd call it presentation like in ISM Master's store. Again, it's not really about who does the work but about how the hours are logged. If they'd log VA's as presentation then we wouldn't lose those people that make it possible for us to get right to it the way the planogram team does.

 

[dek067]

pog is responsible for aisles. infants aisles. boy/girls aisles. shoe aisles. jewelry. accessories. every hardlines aisle. it specifically says in bp that visual adj belong to softlines along with the tables, which is part of the adj, and endcaps belong to the tl of the dept, with the exception of mmb, which belongs to a specialized tm. these hours come from the salesfloor. how your store does/doesn't allocate their payroll based on bp is their business and is probably contributing to the animosity between your workcenters.
don't be hating on the hardlines tl. i have been a tl on both sides of the store. when you have 80 salesplanners in domestics/home decor, or heaven forbid, market/cosmetics/hba/stationery, it's a much larger workload than setting a sl adjacency on an average week. heavier stuff, more pulling/bs. the best part of the softlines workload is that their workload hours are inflated, so when we do set softlines, we finish much earlier and can use the payroll to help us with the hours we were shorted by our stl.
until you've walked a mile in a hltl's shoes, or pog's, don't criticize. it's a lot harder than you think. just market alone still haunts my nightmares...

 

[RightArm]

pog is responsible for aisles. infants aisles. boy/girls aisles. shoe aisles. jewelry. accessories. every hardlines aisle. it specifically says in bp that visual adj belong to softlines along with the tables, which is part of the adj, and endcaps belong to the tl of the dept, with the exception of mmb, which belongs to a specialized tm. these hours come from the salesfloor. how your store does/doesn't allocate their payroll based on bp is their business and is probably contributing to the animosity between your workcenters.
don't be hating on the hardlines tl. i have been a tl on both sides of the store. when you have 80 salesplanners in domestics/home decor, or heaven forbid, market/cosmetics/hba/stationery, it's a much larger workload than setting a sl adjacency on an average week. heavier stuff, more pulling/bs. the best part of the softlines workload is that their workload hours are inflated, so when we do set softlines, we finish much earlier and can use the payroll to help us with the hours we were shorted by our stl.
until you've walked a mile in a hltl's shoes, or pog's, don't criticize. it's a lot harder than you think. just market alone still haunts my nightmares...

I can accept that up to the point where you said VA hours are inflated and you use the overhead to do other stuff in SL. What happens in my store is that they cut all the people that make it possible to get to VA's and still expect them to finish in the time allotted on the VA book while we are running around pushing Go Backs and fixing the zone that wasn't completed the night before. Didn't actually consider how many EC's are in HL and for that I'll take the dogging... but the other side of that coin is until you know how things are in another store you can't exactly tell someone to not criticize. One of the things our ETL's are lacking in is logistics training and sometimes common sense. I've had to say a few times that when we get the hours required by the VA to do the VA then the VA will be done. As long as we continue to get interrupted by other tasks that take priority we will continue to be set back on when it gets done. And don't get me wrong. I do understand that the zone needs to be done and the FR has to be clean and tidy at the beginning of the day. I'm not complaining about having to do those tasks on top of VA so much as I am about having the ETL/STL breathing down our necks because we can't miraculously do those things and the VA at the exact same time.

And in reality I wasn't "hating on the HL TLs" I was trying to understand why things seemed to be "one way" only and not equal across the board.

 

[Ajax11]

Not to say there aren't bad POG tl also, but one thing we've had to deal with lately is super low hours.

Last week the workload was around 380 hours for POG, but we only were given 275 hours. So there is a point when we sometimes have to ask for help from other departments. Unless you have a very strong team and good planning it's impossible to make up that 100 hours.

 

[likethewind]

Not to say there aren't bad POG tl also, but one thing we've had to deal with lately is super low hours.

Last week the workload was around 380 hours for POG, but we only were given 275 hours. So there is a point when we sometimes have to ask for help from other departments. Unless you have a very strong team and good planning it's impossible to make up that 100 hours.

I agree with that, and would have no problem doing so, but tell me how it's fair to take their workload when we (softlines) already have next to no hours. Apart from that, the POG team at my store constantly go into softlines and dummy tie things, and when they've had slow weeks, all they do is mess around all day while observing us drowning in our workload, yet I never hear a peep out of them about helping out and taking one for the team.

 

[Bullseyes]

I've done everything in the store and NOTHING is worse than pushing those softlines tables. The hours softlines are inflated... To an extent everything is. It depends on the team member and their level of perfection. The SL brand team member At my store will complete all her workload, mine and can correctly set an adjacency in 1/4 of the time of any other tm. It depends on who you have and how hard they work. Softlines POGS tend to be easier because they are never actually being set correctly. At least the stores I've visited and nobody cares because frankly nobody cares about softlines. Do you set the early? This could help you balance all your activities, and maybe schedule 1 person to only do the adjacency and have them come
In earlier?

 

[stupid rules]

The same thing you're *****ing about happens everywhere else, only in our store it's done to hardlines.
This is an example for us.
Hardlines - HLTL you have sales planners in 65 sales planners due this week. You can't do them on the weekend and you need to be done by 11 each day (it doesn't matter that we don't come in until 10 or 11). Of course you can not get any extra hours or change your schedule, the needs of the business dictate when you work.
Softlines - Oh, you have an adjacency due? Here are the allotted hours for you to complete it. Of course your brands will still get enough hours to complete the 6 sales planners and 3 tables that are due. Sure you can alter your schedule to come in at 4am to complete the adjacency. I will trade you the HL workload for the SL workload any time.

At the end of the week guess who has their **** done and who doesn't. HL is complete while SL is whining about something, and don't get me started about the GSTL who was *****ing up a storm about having to due 7 checklane endcaps within a week.

 

[dek067]

pog is responsible for aisles. infants aisles. boy/girls aisles. shoe aisles. jewelry. accessories. every hardlines aisle. it specifically says in bp that visual adj belong to softlines along with the tables, which is part of the adj, and endcaps belong to the tl of the dept, with the exception of mmb, which belongs to a specialized tm. these hours come from the salesfloor. how your store does/doesn't allocate their payroll based on bp is their business and is probably contributing to the animosity between your workcenters.
don't be hating on the hardlines tl. i have been a tl on both sides of the store. when you have 80 salesplanners in domestics/home decor, or heaven forbid, market/cosmetics/hba/stationery, it's a much larger workload than setting a sl adjacency on an average week. heavier stuff, more pulling/bs. the best part of the softlines workload is that their workload hours are inflated, so when we do set softlines, we finish much earlier and can use the payroll to help us with the hours we were shorted by our stl.
until you've walked a mile in a hltl's shoes, or pog's, don't criticize. it's a lot harder than you think. just market alone still haunts my nightmares...

I can accept that up to the point where you said VA hours are inflated and you use the overhead to do other stuff in SL. What happens in my store is that they cut all the people that make it possible to get to VA's and still expect them to finish in the time allotted on the VA book while we are running around pushing Go Backs and fixing the zone that wasn't completed the night before. Didn't actually consider how many EC's are in HL and for that I'll take the dogging... but the other side of that coin is until you know how things are in another store you can't exactly tell someone to not criticize. One of the things our ETL's are lacking in is logistics training and sometimes common sense. I've had to say a few times that when we get the hours required by the VA to do the VA then the VA will be done. As long as we continue to get interrupted by other tasks that take priority we will continue to be set back on when it gets done. And don't get me wrong. I do understand that the zone needs to be done and the FR has to be clean and tidy at the beginning of the day. I'm not complaining about having to do those tasks on top of VA so much as I am about having the ETL/STL breathing down our necks because we can't miraculously do those things and the VA at the exact same time.

And in reality I wasn't "hating on the HL TLs" I was trying to understand why things seemed to be "one way" only and not equal across the board.

i didn't mean just VA hours were inflated, i was talking overall in softlines. everything is. intimate and jewelry are inflated. and accessories? oh my goodness. for example, the mens reset this week---socks/walls/undies. we did that in about... 6 hours total (3 tm, about 2 hours). My biggest concern with sl in my store, as Bullseyes said, our sltl do not set anything correctly. i hate having to go back after them and set if they need help with the VA. or they decide to randomly set a spl in the middle of the wall because they can't find room for it, due to flexing something else in the home location.
i don't know how things are in your store, it sounds like you have some challenges. i was just saying the "mile in another's shoes" thing. everyone is stressed. some teams are horrible at their jobs and are poor performers. the important thing is that all the teams are helping out for a common goal and stop throwing other teams under the bus. friday, for example, it would've been great to get ahead, but instead we pushed truck, backstocked, did the challenge, then finished the softlines VA and pulled all their pulls for them. but i'm sure if we're having a crash and burn day, they would do the same.

 

[tellmeaboutatime]

Everyone feels like they are the stepchild of the store! Teamwork is the only way to go. If there are 18 domestics endcaps to set,partner with the flow TL. If the truck isn't huge, get the end caps set and have flow fill them as they wave through. On the reverse side, if flow gets hit with a really large truck, jump in and do some of the domestic freight. Same as in grocery. If you are resetting frozen end caps, get the POG set and work with the flow TL to have it worked by the truck team. And then THANK the team!!! Most people will work hard as long as it is truly appreciated and they are recognized for it. If teams help each other out when possible it really does improve the morale. We are all stressed. We all are struggling for hours. Truck teams get x amount of hours to finish a truck whether that truck is 2100 or 3000 pieces. POG get x amount (almost always less than what it calls for) and that doesn't include the time it takes to reconfigure when spacing is wrong. For softlines, if you have a good relationship with the team that works the softlines freight, you may be able to have one of them help with an adjacency. It really would be a win/win. You are getting the extra help and they are getting some knowledge that will help them when it comes to working the freight. I keep a running total of what hours my team helps other work centers, only so when the STL tells me I am over by x amount of hours I can speak to why. Team effort as corny as it sounds really is the only way to get through these tough times.

 

[greydot]

If they planned for you to do them, your hours would be under presentation. If its a "we're swamped, we need you to do them" obviously the point is that it is you in your workcenter doing them. Best practice? No, but it happens. It is actually the opposite at our store. They flood softlines with hours for the VA and nothing for the rest of the store.

 

[Barcode]

At my store aisles were all under POG workload. Endcaps/visuals/tables were the TL of that department.. Afaik hardlines does theirs under hardlines hours, front end does them under GSTL/GSA or Cashier hours, etc.