Archived working huddles

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is anyone else plagued with several working huddles during the day. starts with re-shop in the morning, then on to (truck days) help push the truck, for 15 minutes that runs into an hour, then on to help plano push, since they are not going to be finished for the day (unless the entire team helps) then on to pushing those so dearly loved ptm.
 
We have the morning freshness friday huddle which takes 20 mins and in the evening we will rarely have ptm huddles which can last from 5-15mins depending on how much instocks was able to get done. But my store is pretty high volume so the with the hours we are given most tasks are done within the specific work center. My first store on the other hand with every huddle it end up with us doing something for about an hour. Superzone this section, massive set up of saleplanners and cant forget ptm's. And we still had to finish on zone. All I can say it suck being a mid.
 
Oh I feel your pain! Our morning huddle that everyone is required to attend is at 8:30. It will last at least 15 minutes. Mulitply that by 20 flow team members and you have just lost 5 hours of payroll. Then we will do a "smart huddle" right after. It will last another 30 minutes. We either work freight, some PTM, zone softlines or Freshness Friday. THEN we walk the ad, the entire ad every morning. Forget best practice. Our STL makes it up day to day.
At 2 we have our midday zone huddle. That is another 30 minutes.
 
Huddles are actually very important.

As a TL, it's a great way to communicate anything your driving, or any changes in the store. Also, when you are TLOD it's great to be able to delegate the task list. :)
 
I hated these things. We would have two a day when all the SF TMs would be required to attend. Customers would complain about being unable to find anyone to help them during these. Did management care? Of course not! So much for guest first.
 
What time do you guys do huddles? We do ours at 8am when the store first opens and around 9ishpm for the closing team. That way basically everyone can attend huddles.
 
Well I don't really agree with the 6:30 one, that is like busiest time of the day. I'd question that.

However, I don't know how your ETL's/TL's are....but at my store..The ETL's and us TL's make it a productive time and also we make it a little fun. :)
 
Our huddles last forever. I die a little on the inside every time we call one.
 
We huddle everyday at 8am at the front of the store by the checklanes...this lasts no longer than 10 minutes. We also huddle again in the evening at 6pm in TSC (we use to do it in Receiving in the back of the store but we always have back-up calls so we do it in TSC closer to the lanes for quick response). Every so often we will have a mid day huddle if things begin to spiral out of control and we need to refocus the team. These are very rare.
 
Oh I feel your pain! Our morning huddle that everyone is required to attend is at 8:30. It will last at least 15 minutes. Mulitply that by 20 flow team members and you have just lost 5 hours of payroll. Then we will do a "smart huddle" right after. It will last another 30 minutes. We either work freight, some PTM, zone softlines or Freshness Friday. THEN we walk the ad, the entire ad every morning. Forget best practice. Our STL makes it up day to day.
At 2 we have our midday zone huddle. That is another 30 minutes.

Our early morning Flow and Backroom teams are not allowed to go to the morning store huddle. We have a one minute Logistics huddle after our first break at 6:15AM.
 
All 4am Logistics BRTMs agree it's a waste of time because we have a lot to do in the back so we don't go to them anymore. As we see it, a break slows us down once we come back. We take our first 15 min between 0800 - 0830 hrs. Around that time, autofills finished, half pallets finished (around this time of year, workload are heavy), and the store's open so we could buy snacks.
 
Our morning huddle is right around 8:30 and afterwards the 4am'ers take their half (the first break of the day, we don't take a 15 beforehand). The second half for 4am is at ~10/10:30. Mid-day at 2ish, Evening huddle at around 5, the LOD/TL's will announce whether they're doing the rest of the pulls on the line while the zone starts or continues. On an early zone night, the team will usually be almost to B.
 
I agree Huddles used to be a great tool. Now all the do is take up our time and then the huddle itself drags on. our huddles always used to be at 7:30. now they are anywhere from 7 to 10 am then all the working (smart) huddles after that in 5 or 8 hour shift, just doesn't leave much time for you to do your work. the TLOD runs it, and they want it done, when you go around the circle and hit the execs, and some of the TL's, they talk and talk, then back track. I have things I need to do. I cannot remember the last time we had a freshness friday huddle. we changed to sterotec (sp) and no one seem to care.
 
flow team and back room do not attend any of it. But yet salesfloor has to help them out. So that puts us all behind. Apparently it ok for Sales floor to be behind and look bad, including PA and POG, they will just pull some unsuspecting sole to help PA and POG get caught up, from the 2 hours we spent in the morning doing "working huddles" times 8-12 TM's. generally 2, instockers, 4 poggers, logistics TL's only, a softlines TM, a TL for hardlines, and myself. most of the time the Exec's walk away. and/or the TL's find something they need to be doing. If we are a team, we all need to be working as a team, and that includes the EXEC'S and TL's all of them.
 
8:30 (flow, BR, salesfloor) Huddle, then working huddle which parts into flow zoning chemicals, salesfloor goes to the fitting room to push re-shop in SL.

10 AM Salesfloor only, either outdates check in Freezer/Cooler or pushing Candy.

12 another

2 pm another

6 pm another

It's a pain in the Butt.

I figured that in a 6 hour work day I am pulled away from doing my tasks approx. 1.5 hours, times that by 5-8 days, which results in 12 hours taken away from my already low hours, with a HIGH hours workload . Seriously!? And when we ask if we can skip one or two huddles we are told "no"?
AND if the food order is big and flow team is low on people, we are made to push the food order as well, which takes another hour on average.
I understand the huddles are important, but I don't need to hear how one ETL's 5th vacation this year was and how much relaxing they got to do, or about the Baseball Results from last nights game. And I actually don't give 4 hoots about our Sales either, because my hours went up for one week and then crashed again, yet we've been making sales for 4 weeks straight, going over by 20,000 a few days.

OH and we are also made to do re-shop every freaking morning which adds another couple of hours per week depending on how sales went.

:disappoint:
 
i so feel that pain. only our "working" or "smart" huddles usually last half an hour to an hour each. again, and they wonder why we cannot get our work done in our own stations. our freezer cooler order we use to bowl out in front of the doors. of course we cannot do that any more, so it takes twice as long, and everyone leaves in the process of it. since we can only bring out about 1/2 a flat bed at a time now. i have yet to understand why with that one. we were getting better timing on putting it away with it being bowled out than to do it this way. re-shop, we have one exec that will consistently leave NO re-shop when they close. it is so nice to walk into those mornings. i am behind in my work center and am told I need to stay on task. well i am pulled from TM's to help them, then for all these huddles. how can you not be behind? give us just a few more hours. We are not a Pfresh store yet. hopefully will come shortly and hopefully with it will come a few more hours. it is just really hard to stay FFF all the time when you are drowning all the time.
 
best practice for smart huddle is to push the instock ptm batches from the day before...doesn't sound like anybody is doing this. If the ptms were small and happened to be pushed by the instocks team, then the LOD should look for aisles in need of PTM or could even pull up the PTM at a glance and shoot stand alones to see if any backroom discontinued product exists...this should all be determined during the morning store walk by the ETLs/srTLs and certainly before huddle.
 
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