While Wal-Mart Stores Inc aims to improve staffing levels during peak shopping times and offer more certainty over hours for employees, the company said that it has implemented a new system for scheduling workers at 650 U.S. stores.

Its customer service needed to improve as it was hurting sales growth, the world’s largest retailer has acknowledged in the past. Wal-Mart has led major retailers in raising minimum wages to $10 per hour and is investing $2.7 billion on pay and benefits. Others would be prompted to follow Wal-Mart’s new scheduling system.

While the company did not mention any particular time frame, it plans to eventually roll out across the entire U.S. store network the system, called Customer First Scheduling, which was launched in all of Wal-Mart’s 650 small-format Neighborhood Markets in the last week of July.

“If customers are coming in at a different time we have to be there at a different time. We will not last very long if we don’t do that. At the same time … associates have the option to choose what hours they want and see if they are available,” Mark Ibbotson, vice president of central operations, told Reuters.

By taking into account foot traffic and sales data from every department in each store, the electronic system can prioritize scheduling for peak shopping hours. In order of importance, staff is then allocated to the remaining shifts.

With faster checkouts and better-stocked shelves, Wal-Mart began to try and improve customer service last year.

The new system should cut down on the need to schedule employees on short notice and also aims to give employees more certainty over shifts.

Retailers, including Wal-Mart, have been pushed by labor activists, unions and politicians to offer workers more predictable hours.

A fixed schedule with the same hours and days for up to six months for some workers is allowed by the new system. Others with no fixed schedules  will not be expected to be available on short notice and will only be slotted to work when they say they are available.

Allocation of schedules within the times employees say they are available to work is noe the practiced norm for Wal-Mart managers at present.

While it was not immediately clear how it will affect overtime opportunities, an important component of low-paying retail jobs, the new system is ostensibly designed to increase workforce retention.

There were mixed reactions to the new system by labor groups.

The policy makes some improvements by adding fixed shifts and prioritizing peak hours, said Our Wal-Mart, a labor group that focuses on representing the retailer’s employees, in a statement. But the problem of inadequate hours is to addressed by it, the union said.

It was not clear whether the changes will make a material difference in the problem of scheduling, said the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Though it does not count any of the company’s employees among its members, it has worked to unionize Wal-Mart employees.

Last month when Wal-Mart launched a new but different scheduling system in China, workers protested across three cities in China fearing a cut in overtime pay.

(Adapted from Reuters)

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