Boost Employee Productivity with Workforce Optimization Tools

Workforce optimization is more than cutting costs or squeezing more out of every hour. It’s about aligning people, processes, and technology to ensure the right work gets done, efficiently and effectively. When done well, it leads to stronger performance, better scheduling, and more satisfied employees.

Large businesses today face labor shortages, turnover, changing consumer demand/expectations, and escalating labor costs that erode margins. Workforce optimization addresses these challenges by identifying inefficiencies, optimizing performance, and engaging employees.

By integrating demand forecasting, labor optimization, and AI-powered scheduling into their operations, companies can reduce inefficiencies and boost productivity.

Legion’s Workforce Management (WFM) solution combines intelligent automation, AI-powered forecasting, and employee-centric scheduling to drive workforce optimization, helping businesses unlock greater labor efficiency and operational performance.

From Chaos to Clarity: How Legion Delivers True Workforce Optimization

Workforce optimization results from AI-powered solutions that align labor planning and automated scheduling with accurate, precise demand forecasts—outcomes that Legion makes possible through its advanced workforce management solution.

Demand Forecasting

Accurate forecasting is the foundation of effective workforce management. Legion uses historical trends, real-time data, and external signals—such as promotions, holidays, weather, and local events—to predict future labor needs.

By planning ahead with accurate forecasts, businesses can avoid understaffing, reduce overspending, and prepare for peaks and valleys in activity.

When executed together, demand forecasting, labor planning, and AI-powered scheduling enable businesses to anticipate needs, execute staffing plans precisely, and adjust quickly when conditions change.

Unlike traditional workforce management systems, which require manual input, platforms like Legion intelligently connect all these components, delivering results in a fraction of the time.

An optimized labor plan starts with an accurate, precise forecast, but the secret sauce is the labor optimization process.

Labor Planning

Determining how many hours— and which roles —are needed to meet projected demand ensures that labor budgets are aligned with sales targets, operating costs, and service goals. When tightly integrated with demand forecasting and scheduling, labor planning becomes a powerful lever for cost control and productivity.

Legion Labor Optimization empowers businesses to create compact, efficient labor plans by aligning roles and hours with forecasted demand, budget constraints, and compliance rules. It automatically creates granular, down-to-the-minute task-based labor modeling across all channels, ensuring precise execution and seamless integration into automated scheduling.

Scheduling

The perfect schedule strikes the ideal balance between business priorities and employee skills and preferences. Powered by precise demand forecasts and an optimal labor plan, Legion seamlessly incorporates labor standards, employee data, preferences, productivity, and compliance rules—while factoring in real-world constraints like budgets and staffing levels.

Legion AI supports all scheduling methods, including static, dynamic, shift patterns, and self-service scheduling. It automatically generates best-fit schedules based on all inputs. A weighted Schedule Score helps managers assess whether a schedule meets their objectives. With dashboards and tools, managers can see if their edits improve or reduce the quality of the schedule.

Moving forward, based on a better understanding of manager edits and changes, only modifications that enhance the Schedule Score and do not violate configured rules will be incorporated.

How Optimization Fuels Performance, Not Just Productivity

When labor is aligned with demand, both performance and efficiency improve.

AI-powered optimization reduces overstaffing and creates the most streamlined labor plan possible. It minimizes cost without sacrificing the ability to meet demand.

Optimization platforms calculate productivity and then create schedules based on that, so your top performers are scheduled at peak times.

Legion’s labor optimization engine generates optimized, cost-effective labor plans while improving overall output. Businesses have reported:

• 13x ROI through improved scheduling and retention
• Up to 25% reduction in labor overages
• 5 hours saved weekly per manager

Optimization isn’t just about working harder—it’s about working smarter.

Perfect Schedules, Happier Teams: Key Features to Look For

Choosing the right employee scheduling software means finding tools that balance operational efficiency with employee engagement.

The best workforce optimization platforms go beyond basic scheduling to deliver features that improve accuracy, transparency, and user experience.

Below are the essential capabilities to prioritize in a modern workforce optimization solution.

AI-Powered Demand Forecasting

Legion synthesizes historical and current information about how customers buy, understanding and incorporating the impact of demand drivers and future events such as weather or holidays to automatically generate precise, short- to intermediate-term demand forecasts with unique models and forecasts for every driver and location.

Accurate forecasts at several levels—channel, location, or SKU—in 15-minute, 30-minute, or daily increments—give businesses the precision they need to plan ahead with confidence.

Optimized Labor Plans

Legion automatically translates demand forecasts into optimal labor hours using your labor standards, ensuring staffing levels align with actual demand. This reduces inefficiencies, minimizes costs, and maximizes productivity by eliminating filler hours and creating the most streamlined set of labor hours possible.

Authorized users can make precise adjustments to desired locations, channels, and drivers, and labor is automatically optimized or constrained against the revised forecast.

Employee Self-Service

Let workers define when, how much, and where they want to work and update their preferences anytime. They can also swap shifts and claim open shifts from their mobile devices. On-Demand Shift Offers give qualified employees real-time, personalized access to open shifts—based on their skills, availability, and preferences, with built-in compliance to ensure fairness and accuracy.

Built-in Compliance

Legion uses pre-built compliance templates to help ensure that every schedule complies with labor laws and company policies. Labor rules are automatically enforced, and managers receive real-time notifications to prevent violations when making manual edits.

Compliance templates are pre-loaded and automatically applied by region, so your compliance framework scales seamlessly across locations.

Why Great Scheduling = Great Retention

Employee retention is a business imperative, and scheduling plays a critical role. Today’s workforce values predictability, autonomy, and respect for time. An optimized workforce creates a framework that meets these expectations, giving employees more control and creating an environment that encourages loyalty and long-term engagement.

From a management perspective, great scheduling can also increase topline revenue and decrease costs while maximizing employee engagement.

Optimized schedules drive employee satisfaction. There are several key factors in retaining talent.

Schedule Stability

Reduce absenteeism and stress by offering predictable, fair shifts that employees can plan around.

Autonomy and Transparency

Empower employees with control over their schedules and visibility into upcoming shifts.

Reduced Over / Understaffing

Match workloads to real demand, preventing overstaffing—which is costly when trying to control labor costs—or understaffing, which can create employee fatigue and decrease customer satisfaction.

With Legion, companies create a scheduling experience that respects employees’ time while meeting business needs.

Happy employees, profitable business owners, everybody wins.

Workforce Optimization in Action: Real-World Industry Use Cases

But how does it work in the real world? Large companies across various industries are optimizing their workforce to solve unique operational challenges. The following examples show how different industries leverage Legion to achieve measurable gains in efficiency, labor cost control, and employee satisfaction.

Retail

ALDO Group has modernized its retail operations by adopting Legion’s AI-powered Workforce Management Platform across its North American stores.

ALDO Group used Legion to replace manual scheduling, improving efficiency and the employee experience. Associates now access schedules, request shifts, and communicate through Legion’s highly-rated mobile app. Managers can also use automated tools to create optimized schedules quickly.

The company also introduced Legion InstantPay to support employees’ financial well-being. Legion InstantPay provides real-time access to earned wages in the same app that employees use to check their schedules and record time off.

These changes have helped ALDO Group streamline operations and support frontline flexibility.

Hospitality

A leading international mountain resort with over 300 locations uses Legion to manage complex, seasonal staffing demands.
Facing unpredictable surges tied to weather, holidays, and local events, the resort relies on Legion’s AI-powered Demand Forecasting to place the right staff in the right roles at the right time. Automated scheduling matches business needs with employee preferences, reducing manager workload and improving flexibility for seasonal workers, many of whom hold multiple jobs.

The resort also uses shift swap tools, mobile communication, and real-time labor insights to maintain engagement, reduce overtime, and ensure a consistent guest experience.

Convenience Stores

A national convenience store chain adopted Legion’s modern workforce optimization platform to streamline scheduling and reduce manual work across 700+ locations.

With high employee turnover and 24/7 operations, the chain used automation to cut schedule creation time by 66%, enabling shift swaps and schedule visibility through Legion’s 4.9-star-rated mobile app.

Managers gained tools to stay compliant and reassign staff across stores, helping maintain coverage during disruptions. The result was faster scheduling, improved communication, and higher employee engagement.

These examples show how workforce optimization adapts to unique operational realities across industries.

Choosing the Right Tool to Power Your Workforce

With so many options on the market, selecting a workforce management solution can feel overwhelming. The right choice should meet today’s challenges and scale with your business as it evolves. Whether you’re managing a single location or hundreds, what considerations should you make when deciding on your workforce optimization strategy?

• Does the tool offer AI-driven forecasting?
• Does it automatically consider all necessary factors when creating a schedule? Measuring and factoring in productivity is often the missing piece.
• Is it intuitive for managers and employees?

Legion combines these features in a platform that helps businesses unlock workforce value and scale operations intelligently.

Ready to Build a More Productive Workforce? Start Here!

Workforce optimization creates better businesses and better workplaces. When businesses align labor with demand and give employees more control over their schedules, performance improves across the board.

Investing in workforce optimization sets the foundation for long-term success. It will empower your team and drive continuous operational improvement.

Discover how Legion helps leading businesses optimize productivity, reduce costs, and improve employee satisfaction. Schedule a demo today.