Shoddy Staffing Plans Hurt Store Performance

Staffing concerns at the register and on the sales floor continue to frustrate many front-line retail workers, as retailers still struggle to align their labor planning with actual store needs, new research from Logile has found. The result: missed revenue opportunities and low associate morale, says Logile’s 2025 Labor Planning & Optimization Report.

Logile gathered data for the report via a survey of 500 U.S. store workers by third-party platform Pollfish. The goal was to better understand how scheduling gaps and workforce management challenges are impacting frontline performance.

The findings show that retailers’ labor planning, forecasting and execution actions often fall short, leading to staffing mismatches, associate stress and operational inefficiencies.

Key findings include:

• 80% say unpredictable schedules and short-staffing add stress to their jobs, with 82% feeling regularly overwhelmed at work.
• 77% of retail workers say their store regularly loses sales due to poor scheduling or staffing decisions.
• 74% of frontline associates say they’re open to automated, traffic-based scheduling tools, but say adoption hinges on trust—systems must consistently deliver accurate, fair schedules that earn buy-in over time.
• 51% report their store is short-staffed during busy periods most of the time, with 25% saying this happens almost every time their store gets busy.
• 31% of frontline workers are actively considering quitting due to poor scheduling or lack of hours, with another 22% saying they’re close to that point if conditions don’t improve.

“There’s a clear disconnect between plan and practice. Retailers have made meaningful strides in prioritizing workforce initiatives, but our research shows that many are still missing the opportunity to fully connect their planning efforts with store-level reality,” said Purna Mishra, Founder and CEO of Logile, which provides AI-powered connected-workforce technology. “By integrating real-time demand data and modeling store-specific labor needs more accurately, retailers can close the loop between planning and execution—improving service, supporting staff and strengthening the bottom line.”

Click here for more from the Logile study.