Working time organisation in retail: risks and opportunities in the context of digitalisation and skills shortages

 Background and Objectives

A key element of decent work and a prerequisite for overcoming the skills shortage is an employee-oriented organisation of working time. However, in local service sectors such as in-store retailing, the location and extent of working hours are strongly influenced by customer requirements and fluctuations in demand. Balancing the needs of employees and employers is therefore particularly challenging, and has often been to the detriment of employees - with negative consequences for work-life balance (high demands for flexibility on the part of employers), health (atypical working hours) and material security (mini-jobs, on-call work). New working time models and trends which, in principle, give employees more control over their time - such as home working or trust-based working time - come up against structural barriers. The trend towards shorter working hours is also at odds with the goal of securing a livelihood due to the often low level of remuneration.

At the same time, the digitalisation of the world of work supports a further flexibilisation of personnel deployment strategies on the part of employers: constant accessibility via mobile devices, digital shift planning apps or digital platforms open up alternatives for companies to more regulated forms of internal (working time accounts) and external flexibility (temporary work). On the other hand, digitalisation can also be used to take greater account of workers' wishes (e.g. by blocking time slots in shift planning apps). At the same time, the current labour shortage in principle gives employees and their representatives a stronger bargaining position to negotiate employee-oriented working time arrangements. This means that there are opposing trends at work - the interaction of which has been little researched, but which opens up scope for action.

Core research question

The central question of the study is whether and how companies are currently responding to the dual challenge of digitalisation and labour shortages by adapting their working time organisation, and whether and how new scope for action is emerging that can be used to benefit employee-oriented working time organisation.

Approach

The study is exploratory in nature. In addition to analysing collective agreements and company agreements in the retail sector on working time, a survey of works councils in a large retail company will be conducted and analysed.