September 11, 2008
BrainTrust Query: Can Workforce Management Systems Bring Qualitative as Well as Quantitative Benefits?
By Bill Bittner, President, BWH Consulting
In its Wednesday, Sept. 10 edition, The Wall Street Journal reported on the increased use of workforce management (WFM) systems by retailers. The article takes an interesting perspective of the challenges a company faces when implementing a quantitative approach in the qualitative environment of individual retail stores.
One of the great advantages of computers is their ability to collect and manipulate huge amounts of data. The expansion of the internet “cloud” and smart devices has allowed retailers to monitor operations down to the individual employee and store. But currently, when it comes to WFM systems, retailers are still confined to the traditional measures that focus on recorded sales.
It’s not hard to imagine how these limitations in current data collection capabilities might lead to morale problems in the store. The WSJ article presents both the quantitative and qualitative perspectives on WFM. On the one hand, it reports that system vendors claim retailers experience a 5 percent reduction in labor costs and a 15 percent increase in productivity. On the other hand, many of the employees interviewed for the article expressed concern about the short shifts and inconvenient assignments that often come from the system. Whereas before the implementation, it may have been typical for managers to accommodate workers’ personal situations, using WFM scheduling makes that difficult. “Computers aren’t very forgiving when it comes to an individual’s life,” one employee said.
From a total operations perspective, there are many preparation tasks that are not measured. Someone who is good at straightening shelves, rotating product and restocking the assortment is not recognized by the quantitative data reflected in sales per employee hour. This is where basing individual compensation on the limited statistics that are captured becomes a problem.
Discussion Questions: What are the risks of implementing Workforce Management solutions? Is there an approach that can achieve both the increased sales per employee hour and preserve quality in the work environment? What kind of challenges does a WFM system create for local supervisors when they are trying to get employees to complete “unmonitored” tasks?
[Author’s commentary] Probably the most difficult position in retail is that of the Store Manager. The SM is literally the “person in the middle.” They don’t set policy but, as the local face of management, they are expected to implement it. Probably the biggest tool they have for building employee devotion is the work schedule. Pay grades and wages are usually established by the central office, so the key way for the SM to accommodate a part-time workforce is through flexible scheduling. I am not sure all the WFM implementations acknowledge this or allow for such accommodations.
I understand the desire to get more productivity from the store workforce. Everyone understands that labor is the number one controllable expense, but it is also necessary to “build a team” in the store. It does not help the situation to have the “alpha dog” be an impersonal scheduling system that pumps out worker assignments from some remote bunker.
Using the computer to grind the data and indicate when employees are needed is a good thing, but it also needs to accommodate the special needs of a part time workforce and it must be clear to the workers that the local management is both able and willing to help them cope with their specific needs. This includes things like allowing employees to remotely access their schedules, allowing them to exchange hours with “qualified subs,” put in black-out times when they are not available, etc.
It also means that it might still be too soon to tie earnings directly to the quantitative data that is available. Maybe there can be a “bonus portion” that applies to the store as a whole, but until every single task which is required for a successful store operation can be monitored, there is no way to properly reward total contribution.
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WFM reveals a conflict that is in many of the retail systems. We want motivated, thinking associates and, oh, by the way, this WFM system will tell when and what to be motivated about. Think and be motivated, but only as the system tells you. Good for systems, bad for people, and horrible for high performers. High performers are the ones with the best options to leave.
In many implementations, WFM is designed to control and trap the least motivated of our associates. Unfortunately, our most motivated associates are required to toe the same line. Winning WFM implementations SERVE the associates at their levels of play. The winners get freedom and support, the losers get a career opportunity at your competitors.
Achieving this nirvana is only available by trusting DMs and Store Managers with flexibility–the exact opposite goal of many implementations. No, I haven’t seen a chain get there yet, but some are on their way. The key at this current-state-of-the-art is to understand a WFM system can only get 70% to 85% of the way to a full schedule. The other 15% to 30% must be a matter of local judgment. In current implementations, judgment usually requires tact to handle the blowback from the corporate system wonks. (Did you ever notice the best managers have mastered this skill?)
Regarding the Ann Taylor experience as related in the WSJ article, it sounds as if they used WFM to implement a culture change—moving from manager’s judgment to reward/schedule associates to a pure metrics, sales-per-hour basis. This is a leadership issue with a WFM wrapper. The Ann Taylor leadership should have educated associates to the need to drive sales staff scheduling by sales-per-hour and also as to how to win under the new metric. The article gives no indication this was done. Associate acceptance is a critical success factor in implementing WFM. Different people accept innovations in different ways and WFM requires selling the system as much as it does implementing the system. Few accept change when it is dumped in their laps as the WSJ article makes it sound. On the other hand, the WSJ article focused on the losers in the new system. There had to be some winners–where were they?
WFM can be a winner. Walmart claims a 12% bump in associate productivity. But I doubt Walmart tried to change the culture with the system.
A side note; the hottest thing in WFM is Task Management, a security blanket for the home office staff. Implemented correctly, it is helpful. However, there must be hours available in the stores for the tasks assigned from the home office to be completed. Currently, reconciling the two is an immature process that is often pushed down for store managers to deal with.
Most of my clients use some kind of computerized scheduling system. I’ve seen small single units to multinationals use WFM. From a quantitative perspective, using WFM is a great idea.
Here is my issue: the schedule has become the last thing a manager can really control in the store. We are moving to a situation where ‘the computer says to do this’ and that takes a bit of the humanity out of the job. What if my top performer can’t work a certain Saturday or the incoming order was bigger than we thought? There has to be some flexibility and WFM does not take into account that the only constant in retail is change!
I think it is important for labour to be tracked closely, but I would rather my managers work within a set amount of hours or dollars. Any good store manager will know the pulse of the store and should know where and when to put people on the floor.
It sounds like there might be some Hawthorne Effect working here. When people’s performance is measured, it is important to understand why the improvement has been generated.
The system “created shorter shifts–part of its push to more closely align staffing levels with customer traffic. The system, for example, showed that many stores had too many people starting at 9 a.m., and not enough on hand at peak hours, such as 2 p.m. and later in the afternoon.” (WSJ) This sounds fairly elementary. Could Ann Taylor not have been matching their workforce to their traffic? And, if “You could be a wow-wee associate who does great, but if you’re not available during peak times, you won’t get scheduled” (WSJ) at all? How good can a system be that doesn’t schedule a “wow-wee” associate at all?
And, why would a system change schedules from one week to the next? Are the daily traffic patterns different from the first week of the month to the second?
Many, if not most of the people who work the floor in retail sales, work because it fits into other things that are scheduled around their lives. School, a primary job, child care, etc. There is nothing wrong with the retailer wanting the best people at the store during the most critical hours. There is nothing wrong with a retailer not wanting to over-staff during slow hours. But, that retailer must understand that scheduling without regard to the needs of the employees puts the retailer at a competitive disadvantage to other retailers in finding the best people.
Today’s WFM systems can handle all of the “negative” items discussed in the article provided they’re implemented and used correctly.
The Store Manager can edit and then accept the auto-generated schedule.
Employees can request time off or on with different levels of commitment (Can’t work, prefer to not have this shift, etc.).
Employees can be graded (qualitatively) by management. Task Management can then match the best people to ensure the work gets done.
Like most tools, it’s how you use it that determines your ROI.
As has been noted, bad or good scheduling can be made by Store Managers or WFM systems. To paraphrase Dick Vitale, “It’s all about the judgment/parameter, baby.”
No surprise about how the Ann Taylor-installed system created major heartache when one of their execs was quoted as saying words to the effect that, “We gave the system a name (ATLAS). That way they (i.e. the store team members) can hate the system, not us.”
As a SME on WFM and its applications referenced in the WSJ article (Ann Taylor), it was obvious that the metrics utilized were not the most effective at optimizing the workforce or cultivating a retail culture. Shame on the consultant who advised them.
WFM is real and has shown incredible benefits when properly implemented taking into account the retail culture and its attributes. Properly implemented, WFM helps to optimize the budgeting process, tying it directly to some level of operational standards for process efficiency.
I can go on for hours on this subject but the point I wanted to make was that the consultant implementing WFM needs to understand the marginal relationships to sales effectiveness vs. just saving SG&A dollars.
Most labor scheduling systems allow users (like store managers) to manipulate to cover certain tasks as needed. The next generation includes integrated task management systems that automatically account for the tasks that are not directly associated to sales.
The purpose of these systems was never to eliminate the human perspective. It was to provide the store manager with timely data and propose recommendations that might shave off hours in schedule creation, so they could actually spend some more time managing on the store floor. Imagine that!
Will we ever learn to let go? The only living thing in all of nature that doesn’t effortlessly and naturally reach it’s full potential is a human. The very phrase “Workforce Management System” drains the soul out of you.
Can we find efficiencies in our supply chains through technology? Of course. Can we get that magical ‘presence’, that energy through which sales people literally make wonderful things happen by having machines micro-manage them? Not a chance.
Look, there are three playing fields. At the bottom is the “Mechanistic” level made up of “imitators.” These are the ones who buy into WFM and run around looking for best practices because they have no innovative ideas of their own. They treat people like machines. I’d say 93% of retailers live here.
Above them is the “Visionary” level made up of the “innovators.” These are the ones with the best practices, who are always thinking and looking for a better way. 6% of retailers live here.
Then there is the “Infinite Possibilities” level made up of the “inspired.” These are the ones who understand how the energy of the universe works, who trust their intuition, who see things others do not and see profitable opportunities where others wring their hands. Only 1% live here but they are the ones who will lead “the quantum shift” in how retail serves its customers.
The Store Managers? They have one primary job…inspire people to greatness.
I don’t know. I think there are a lot of myths out there about WFM, and not all of them have a basis in fact. A lot of the issues described in the article exist not because of the systems themselves, but because of how companies have chosen to implement those systems. I’ve seen multiple examples of where “store manager conventional wisdom” when it came to scheduling led to more dissatisfied customers and lost sales because SMs weren’t scheduling enough or were over-scheduling when they didn’t need it–leaving them short at the end of the week, when they needed more people on the floor anyway.
These systems are perfectly capable of setting constraints like, “Schedule only in a minimum of 4-hour blocks.” They are also perfectly capable of placing greater weight on employee preferences for scheduled times–and yes, for capturing employee preferences in the first place, if the retailer chooses to implement that feature. These systems are also capable of facilitating shift swapping–without involving the store manager.
Which leads me to my last point. Don’t over-romance the store manager’s relationship with the schedule. It may be the one piece they most directly influence, but it is also the bane of many store managers’ existence. It’s political, it’s time consuming, it’s never done, and it’s never fun. If employees and store managers both aren’t happier after a WFM implementation, I would say look first at the configuration decisions, and look second at the change management plan. And neither of those are “the system’s fault.”
I notice at the time of this writing that there are no “somewhat” opinions represented in the poll. That’s probably as it should be, as workforce management is a core issue that drives retail success and/or failure. Manage your workforce correctly, and you have success, manage otherwise you have an undesirable result. It’s one thing to have a production-centered environment rigged up to operate from a computer model, and it works well. Every day the same tasks are performed in the same way. Barring any major catastrophes, nothing changes.
And that’s why retail cannot succeed simply by generating a schedule based upon a computer model. Nothing is ever the same way twice. New packages of guaranteed result programs are constantly being developed, changed, remarketed and redeveloped on an ongoing basis. but none of them ever offer an ongoing satisfactory result, and that’s because none of these programs ever evaluate the human portion of the equation.
We schedule two cashiers from X time to X time, and expect a certain result. What happens? Either the store’s dead, and you’ve wasted what meager payroll hours have been budgeted upon a cashier dusting the keyboard, or you’re flooded with unexpected sales, and wind up with grumpy customers because there were only two cashiers and they had to stand in line. Or you’ve scheduled five people to unload a truck at 8 AM, and the driver calls at 7:45 saying he’s broken down and can’t make it. And then there’s the reset where a certain product needs to be set a certain way, but the signage didn’t show up, the shelves are too small, or there isn’t enough product to fill the space.
So the risk involved in implementing a computer driven plan, schedule or whatever you wish to call it, especially if that plan is generated from parameters developed from an external source who has no knowledge, and receives no input from a “local source” or store manager, is that you may end up with a resulting environment where the staff becomes unwilling, or even hostile towards the company management, destroying any chance of real success.
Human beings are not statistics. We’re not a number in a computer model. We react differently to different stimulus than other humans. This may lead to results that vary greatly from results proposed by that computer model.
No program on the market today can encompass all of the millions of variables that affect the retail operation. Corporate level managers should learn from the lessons learned from the field and should encourage, or in fact require accurate and timely input from the store level in any plan that involves scheduling or allocation of store level resources. To be honest, this input will almost never agree with what some statistical analysis may state for any given plan. But if a planner does not have accurate and timely information, they should not expect nor demand the results these computer driven analyses may suggest.
To require results based solely upon a suggested model will only result in failure of the plan. These models should be relied upon for little more than a planning aid, and not an ironclad set of instructions, demanding the expected results, with “or else” being the final, usually unspoken command.
WFM in the retail workplace is a tool that needs to be used thoughtfully by executives and their managers. The issue that makes it so sensitive is turnover. Retailers lose 34.7 percent of their workforce every year, according to the Department of Labor, more than twice the rate of other industries.
If WFM is used on a straight “increase productivity by these metrics” basis, that doesn’t necessarily create a better workplace. It won’t automatically improve the turnover rate. Create a more engaging workplace, measure the performance within it effectively, and you have a good model.
Imagine this hypothetical exchange between a customer and a salesperson at a CE big box:
Customer: “I’d like to do a little research on this and then come back and see you. When are you going to be here?”
Salesperson: “I’ll be here Tuesday and Thursday between 5pm and 8pm, Wednesday from 2pm to 5pm, Friday between 10am and 5pm and Saturday from 12pm to 7pm.”
Excuse me?
I spend most of my time working with small and independent retailers and they understand the importance of the connection that a skilled salesperson can make with a customer. To them, their salespeople have never been and never will be pieces on a chess board, an expense item to be minimized, optimized or dehumanized. To them, their salespeople are their most critical asset.
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WFM reveals a conflict that is in many of the retail systems. We want motivated, thinking associates and, oh, by the way, this WFM system will tell when and what to be motivated about. Think and be motivated, but only as the system tells you. Good for systems, bad for people, and horrible for high performers. High performers are the ones with the best options to leave.
In many implementations, WFM is designed to control and trap the least motivated of our associates. Unfortunately, our most motivated associates are required to toe the same line. Winning WFM implementations SERVE the associates at their levels of play. The winners get freedom and support, the losers get a career opportunity at your competitors.
Achieving this nirvana is only available by trusting DMs and Store Managers with flexibility–the exact opposite goal of many implementations. No, I haven’t seen a chain get there yet, but some are on their way. The key at this current-state-of-the-art is to understand a WFM system can only get 70% to 85% of the way to a full schedule. The other 15% to 30% must be a matter of local judgment. In current implementations, judgment usually requires tact to handle the blowback from the corporate system wonks. (Did you ever notice the best managers have mastered this skill?)
Regarding the Ann Taylor experience as related in the WSJ article, it sounds as if they used WFM to implement a culture change—moving from manager’s judgment to reward/schedule associates to a pure metrics, sales-per-hour basis. This is a leadership issue with a WFM wrapper. The Ann Taylor leadership should have educated associates to the need to drive sales staff scheduling by sales-per-hour and also as to how to win under the new metric. The article gives no indication this was done. Associate acceptance is a critical success factor in implementing WFM. Different people accept innovations in different ways and WFM requires selling the system as much as it does implementing the system. Few accept change when it is dumped in their laps as the WSJ article makes it sound. On the other hand, the WSJ article focused on the losers in the new system. There had to be some winners–where were they?
WFM can be a winner. Walmart claims a 12% bump in associate productivity. But I doubt Walmart tried to change the culture with the system.
A side note; the hottest thing in WFM is Task Management, a security blanket for the home office staff. Implemented correctly, it is helpful. However, there must be hours available in the stores for the tasks assigned from the home office to be completed. Currently, reconciling the two is an immature process that is often pushed down for store managers to deal with.
Most of my clients use some kind of computerized scheduling system. I’ve seen small single units to multinationals use WFM. From a quantitative perspective, using WFM is a great idea.
Here is my issue: the schedule has become the last thing a manager can really control in the store. We are moving to a situation where ‘the computer says to do this’ and that takes a bit of the humanity out of the job. What if my top performer can’t work a certain Saturday or the incoming order was bigger than we thought? There has to be some flexibility and WFM does not take into account that the only constant in retail is change!
I think it is important for labour to be tracked closely, but I would rather my managers work within a set amount of hours or dollars. Any good store manager will know the pulse of the store and should know where and when to put people on the floor.
It sounds like there might be some Hawthorne Effect working here. When people’s performance is measured, it is important to understand why the improvement has been generated.
The system “created shorter shifts–part of its push to more closely align staffing levels with customer traffic. The system, for example, showed that many stores had too many people starting at 9 a.m., and not enough on hand at peak hours, such as 2 p.m. and later in the afternoon.” (WSJ) This sounds fairly elementary. Could Ann Taylor not have been matching their workforce to their traffic? And, if “You could be a wow-wee associate who does great, but if you’re not available during peak times, you won’t get scheduled” (WSJ) at all? How good can a system be that doesn’t schedule a “wow-wee” associate at all?
And, why would a system change schedules from one week to the next? Are the daily traffic patterns different from the first week of the month to the second?
Many, if not most of the people who work the floor in retail sales, work because it fits into other things that are scheduled around their lives. School, a primary job, child care, etc. There is nothing wrong with the retailer wanting the best people at the store during the most critical hours. There is nothing wrong with a retailer not wanting to over-staff during slow hours. But, that retailer must understand that scheduling without regard to the needs of the employees puts the retailer at a competitive disadvantage to other retailers in finding the best people.
Today’s WFM systems can handle all of the “negative” items discussed in the article provided they’re implemented and used correctly.
The Store Manager can edit and then accept the auto-generated schedule.
Employees can request time off or on with different levels of commitment (Can’t work, prefer to not have this shift, etc.).
Employees can be graded (qualitatively) by management. Task Management can then match the best people to ensure the work gets done.
Like most tools, it’s how you use it that determines your ROI.
As has been noted, bad or good scheduling can be made by Store Managers or WFM systems. To paraphrase Dick Vitale, “It’s all about the judgment/parameter, baby.”
No surprise about how the Ann Taylor-installed system created major heartache when one of their execs was quoted as saying words to the effect that, “We gave the system a name (ATLAS). That way they (i.e. the store team members) can hate the system, not us.”
As a SME on WFM and its applications referenced in the WSJ article (Ann Taylor), it was obvious that the metrics utilized were not the most effective at optimizing the workforce or cultivating a retail culture. Shame on the consultant who advised them.
WFM is real and has shown incredible benefits when properly implemented taking into account the retail culture and its attributes. Properly implemented, WFM helps to optimize the budgeting process, tying it directly to some level of operational standards for process efficiency.
I can go on for hours on this subject but the point I wanted to make was that the consultant implementing WFM needs to understand the marginal relationships to sales effectiveness vs. just saving SG&A dollars.
Most labor scheduling systems allow users (like store managers) to manipulate to cover certain tasks as needed. The next generation includes integrated task management systems that automatically account for the tasks that are not directly associated to sales.
The purpose of these systems was never to eliminate the human perspective. It was to provide the store manager with timely data and propose recommendations that might shave off hours in schedule creation, so they could actually spend some more time managing on the store floor. Imagine that!
Will we ever learn to let go? The only living thing in all of nature that doesn’t effortlessly and naturally reach it’s full potential is a human. The very phrase “Workforce Management System” drains the soul out of you.
Can we find efficiencies in our supply chains through technology? Of course. Can we get that magical ‘presence’, that energy through which sales people literally make wonderful things happen by having machines micro-manage them? Not a chance.
Look, there are three playing fields. At the bottom is the “Mechanistic” level made up of “imitators.” These are the ones who buy into WFM and run around looking for best practices because they have no innovative ideas of their own. They treat people like machines. I’d say 93% of retailers live here.
Above them is the “Visionary” level made up of the “innovators.” These are the ones with the best practices, who are always thinking and looking for a better way. 6% of retailers live here.
Then there is the “Infinite Possibilities” level made up of the “inspired.” These are the ones who understand how the energy of the universe works, who trust their intuition, who see things others do not and see profitable opportunities where others wring their hands. Only 1% live here but they are the ones who will lead “the quantum shift” in how retail serves its customers.
The Store Managers? They have one primary job…inspire people to greatness.
I don’t know. I think there are a lot of myths out there about WFM, and not all of them have a basis in fact. A lot of the issues described in the article exist not because of the systems themselves, but because of how companies have chosen to implement those systems. I’ve seen multiple examples of where “store manager conventional wisdom” when it came to scheduling led to more dissatisfied customers and lost sales because SMs weren’t scheduling enough or were over-scheduling when they didn’t need it–leaving them short at the end of the week, when they needed more people on the floor anyway.
These systems are perfectly capable of setting constraints like, “Schedule only in a minimum of 4-hour blocks.” They are also perfectly capable of placing greater weight on employee preferences for scheduled times–and yes, for capturing employee preferences in the first place, if the retailer chooses to implement that feature. These systems are also capable of facilitating shift swapping–without involving the store manager.
Which leads me to my last point. Don’t over-romance the store manager’s relationship with the schedule. It may be the one piece they most directly influence, but it is also the bane of many store managers’ existence. It’s political, it’s time consuming, it’s never done, and it’s never fun. If employees and store managers both aren’t happier after a WFM implementation, I would say look first at the configuration decisions, and look second at the change management plan. And neither of those are “the system’s fault.”
I notice at the time of this writing that there are no “somewhat” opinions represented in the poll. That’s probably as it should be, as workforce management is a core issue that drives retail success and/or failure. Manage your workforce correctly, and you have success, manage otherwise you have an undesirable result. It’s one thing to have a production-centered environment rigged up to operate from a computer model, and it works well. Every day the same tasks are performed in the same way. Barring any major catastrophes, nothing changes.
And that’s why retail cannot succeed simply by generating a schedule based upon a computer model. Nothing is ever the same way twice. New packages of guaranteed result programs are constantly being developed, changed, remarketed and redeveloped on an ongoing basis. but none of them ever offer an ongoing satisfactory result, and that’s because none of these programs ever evaluate the human portion of the equation.
We schedule two cashiers from X time to X time, and expect a certain result. What happens? Either the store’s dead, and you’ve wasted what meager payroll hours have been budgeted upon a cashier dusting the keyboard, or you’re flooded with unexpected sales, and wind up with grumpy customers because there were only two cashiers and they had to stand in line. Or you’ve scheduled five people to unload a truck at 8 AM, and the driver calls at 7:45 saying he’s broken down and can’t make it. And then there’s the reset where a certain product needs to be set a certain way, but the signage didn’t show up, the shelves are too small, or there isn’t enough product to fill the space.
So the risk involved in implementing a computer driven plan, schedule or whatever you wish to call it, especially if that plan is generated from parameters developed from an external source who has no knowledge, and receives no input from a “local source” or store manager, is that you may end up with a resulting environment where the staff becomes unwilling, or even hostile towards the company management, destroying any chance of real success.
Human beings are not statistics. We’re not a number in a computer model. We react differently to different stimulus than other humans. This may lead to results that vary greatly from results proposed by that computer model.
No program on the market today can encompass all of the millions of variables that affect the retail operation. Corporate level managers should learn from the lessons learned from the field and should encourage, or in fact require accurate and timely input from the store level in any plan that involves scheduling or allocation of store level resources. To be honest, this input will almost never agree with what some statistical analysis may state for any given plan. But if a planner does not have accurate and timely information, they should not expect nor demand the results these computer driven analyses may suggest.
To require results based solely upon a suggested model will only result in failure of the plan. These models should be relied upon for little more than a planning aid, and not an ironclad set of instructions, demanding the expected results, with “or else” being the final, usually unspoken command.
WFM in the retail workplace is a tool that needs to be used thoughtfully by executives and their managers. The issue that makes it so sensitive is turnover. Retailers lose 34.7 percent of their workforce every year, according to the Department of Labor, more than twice the rate of other industries.
If WFM is used on a straight “increase productivity by these metrics” basis, that doesn’t necessarily create a better workplace. It won’t automatically improve the turnover rate. Create a more engaging workplace, measure the performance within it effectively, and you have a good model.
Imagine this hypothetical exchange between a customer and a salesperson at a CE big box:
Customer: “I’d like to do a little research on this and then come back and see you. When are you going to be here?”
Salesperson: “I’ll be here Tuesday and Thursday between 5pm and 8pm, Wednesday from 2pm to 5pm, Friday between 10am and 5pm and Saturday from 12pm to 7pm.”
Excuse me?
I spend most of my time working with small and independent retailers and they understand the importance of the connection that a skilled salesperson can make with a customer. To them, their salespeople have never been and never will be pieces on a chess board, an expense item to be minimized, optimized or dehumanized. To them, their salespeople are their most critical asset.