CommunityAid is a nonprofit organization operating seven thrift stores with a workforce of 500 employees. Part of the organization’s mission is to support other nonprofits in the community. Funds from thrift store sales help support that mission.

The organization struggled to balance thrift store labor costs with maximizing funds for its nonprofit work. Confusing financials told a story of an uncertain future for the organization, so they turned to TurboExecs for help.

The biggest expense in any retail operation is labor. This was the case with CommunityAid’s thrift stores.

In its effort to provide quality jobs, CommunityAid offered more full-time positions at its seven thrift stores. That resulted in overstaffing. They also struggled to find the right balance between full-time and part-time employees. And they didn’t have a handle on the full-time equivalent (FTE) perspective.

Leadership lacked a clear picture of how many employees each store needed to provide the customer experience they envisioned. They were also missing a comprehensive view of labor costs’ impact on revenue. And more revenue meant more dollars invested in local nonprofit partners.

TurboExecs’ first step to help CommunityAid was to create forecasting models. These models provided insight into the future by focusing on which actions would have the biggest impact on revenue.

We also created revenue benchmarks and dashboards for each thrift store to highlight where some of the issues could be hiding. It was clear from the expense side that the number one controllable item was spending on labor.

The next challenge was to make this “financial” information tangible for the store managers and HR decision-makers. We did that through monthly labor trend dashboards for each store.

Monthly financial dashboards transformed CommunityAid’s ability to manage labor costs by revealing insights into several critical areas.

Full-time vs. Part-time Staffing.

A well-performing retail establishment needs both full-time and part-time employees. Before financial dashboards, CommunityAid believed that part-time employees were the less expensive staffing solution. But that perspective was limited to short-term, first-level costs. The dashboard revealed the hidden costs of relying too much on part-time employees, such as ongoing recruitment efforts and strained HR resources. The dashboards gave leadership a more complete picture and helped them understand the trade-offs between the two types of staffing options.

FTE Perspective.

CommunityAid had never looked at its workforce from the perspective of “How many FTEs do I need and how am I going to get that?” The dashboards gave leadership insights into how many employees each store needed. This helped them better understand the FTE perspective. The data also showed how many FTEs they used each month and the breakdown by full-time or part-time staff. This helped clarify the true cost of labor, beyond headcount and provided insights into staffing efficiency.

Labor Cost Management.

The number one lever impacting CommunityAid’s profitability was labor. The dashboards turned HR data into financially relevant information. Management used that information to lower labor costs in relation to revenue and increase the bottom line.

Employee Longevity and Turnover.

One data point on the monthly dashboards was the average service length and turnover rates by store. The insights on training and retention were key for HR and managers. They showed the costs of turnover and the benefits of investing in employee development.