VICTORIA, British Columbia — By automating its labor scheduling for front-end employees, Thrifty Foods, a 20-store chain here, has been able to reduce the overtime hours incurred by its payroll department, said Sheryl Bruell, Thrifty’s director of front-end operations. “The payroll department did a lot of overtime to process 3,500 employees,” she told SN. “But this summer we were short two [payroll] employees due to illness, and we still managed to get by with minimal overtime.” In May, Thrifty completed its rollout of the Workforce Central time-and-attendance/labor scheduling system from Kronos, Chelmsford, Mass. Previously, Thrifty’s store managers hand-wrote schedule information, which the payroll department then had to key in by hand.

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