For multiple retailers, expanding to new locations can expose a problem that didn’t exist when there was just one store: The original employee management system no longer works. 

Each location may use separate schedules, approval processes, and communication channels. This makes it difficult for regional managers to see where employees are working, identify coverage needs across stores, and maintain consistent workforce practices without taking away the decision-making local managers need to run their stores. 

This guide provides a practical starting point for managing employees and staffing across locations. You’ll learn how to standardize the processes that need consistency across locations while giving store managers the flexibility to handle day-to-day decisions. We’ll also look at how you can bring scheduling, attendance, and labor data together to continuously improve your processes.

The guiding principle: Standardize or localize?

The first thing to ask when you expand is: Which parts of staffing should be standardized across locations, and which decisions should stay with store managers?

The answer: Standardize the systems and processes that create visibility, and localize the decisions that affect each store’s operating conditions.

Standardization means creating consistent records, rules, and processes across all stores. This gives regional managers a reliable view of who’s available, where employees can work, what they’re qualified to do, and how many hours they’ve worked. 

When you localize processes, you give store managers the authority to make decisions based on what’s happening at their site. A store manager should be able to decide how many people they need for a busy Saturday, which shift needs cover, or whether they can release an employee to another store without leaving their own team short — subject to regional manager approval when needed.  

This distinction becomes critical as employees start working across locations. Manny Soto, Director of Operations at Burning Daily, shares:

“In one store, managers understand everything personally. They know all the employees who worked extra hours or called off for any reason. This applies successfully to one store. The moment you have two places, it fails.”

And Chris Bajda, Managing Partner at GroomsDay, has seen the consequences of not standardizing basic practices like scheduling:

“We had a double-booked packing shift because a swap request sat in my inbox for four days while I was buried in opening the new location. Cost us a scrambled Saturday and nearly cost us an employee who was fed up with the confusion.”

But creating consistency across stores doesn’t mean forcing every store to operate the same way. Instead, it’s about creating shared rules that give store managers enough flexibility to manage their own site conditions.

What should you standardize?

Start with anything where inconsistency could make it harder to identify available employees, coordinate cover, manage labor costs, or maintain accurate records.

As a starting point, standardize:

• Basic employee records
• Time tracking and schedule approval procedures
• PTO management 
• Callout and overtime rules
• Cross-location cover processes 
• Hiring, onboarding, and training 

What should you localize?

Once you’ve decided the central rules, give store managers the authority to make decisions that depend on what’s happening at their location.

This includes: 

• Local staffing levels
• Shift patterns and allocation
• Daily tasks and priorities
• Same-day staffing adjustments 
• Local hiring

For example, a store with heavy weekend traffic may need a different shift pattern from another location that’s generally busy on Wednesdays. Or a store that’s expecting a delivery to arrive early in the morning may need to move employees away from the day or evening shifts. 

How to allocate employees across locations

Now we’ll see how regional and store managers can allocate employees across locations without leaving any store understaffed.

1. Identify the staffing need and define the cover needed

The store manager with the staffing gap should start by defining their labor requirements. This includes identifying:

• Shift date and time 
• Role, skills, or qualifications needed
• How many employees are required
• Whether they need extra staff for a few shifts or to address a wider staffing shortage 

The regional manager should have visibility into staffing gaps across assigned stores. This allows them to see whether other locations have available coverage and whether the same staffing problem is occurring across multiple stores.

Use the following as a template for what details regional and store managers should be able to see to make these decisions.

Information	Store Manager	Regional Manager
Unfilled shifts	Own store	All assigned stores and employees
Cross-location shift offers	Own store’s requests	All assigned stores and employees
Cross-location assignments	Assignments in own store + own employees assigned elsewhere	All assigned stores and employees
Shift coverage status	Own store	All assigned stores and employees
Coverage-related schedule conflicts	Employees assigned to own store + own employees assigned elsewhere	All assigned stores and employees

2. Find employees who can work at the store with the staffing gap

The store manager should now look for employees who meet the requirements, starting with workers who’re approved to work at that location.

Check the shared employee records for workers who:

• Are eligible to work at the store 
• Are available during the required hours 
• Have the right role or qualifications 
• Don’t have a conflicting shift 

Then identify suitable employees and offer them the shift, subject to necessary approvals.

The regional manager doesn’t need to approve every employee who’s considered for cover but should step in when the request affects multiple stores or requires an exception. 

For example, Store A needs a till-trained employee for a Saturday afternoon. The store manager identifies an eligible employee in Store B and offers the shift directly. But if several stores are short-staffed at the same time, or if another worker hasn’t shown up for their shift at Store B, the regional manager steps in to coordinate coverage across locations. 

3. Check the impact and get approval 

Finding someone who can technically cover the shift doesn’t automatically mean the employee should be moved. Joel Goldstein, President of Mr. Checkout Distributors, recommends a “hard rule”:

“A shift added at store B has to be approved by whoever owns the labor budget, not just by the manager who needs the coverage.”

For routine cover requests, the store manager of the employee’s home location checks whether:

• Releasing them will leave their store short-staffed
• The cover will lead to double booking or other schedule conflicts 
• The employee is willing to take the shift

If the worker can be released without creating any problem, they can approve the cover directly. But they should escalate it to the regional manager if the move could affect other stores or the larger business. 

For example, the employee may be available and willing to cover at Store A, but they’re already scheduled for 36 hours that week, and adding the cover shift can trigger overtime.

Next, the regional manager:

• Reviews how the move will affect labor costs 
• Confirms if the additional costs are covered in the budget
• Checks if there are other suitable employees who can cover the shift at Store A without triggering overtime 

They then decide whether to approve the move or assign someone else based on the wider staffing and labor impact.

4. Confirm the assignment and communicate the details 

According to Devin Hornick, Co-Founder and Partner at KORE1, scheduling and labor planning are commonly the first processes to break when businesses expand: “But scheduling issues across stores are often resolved by consistent communication between the stores.”

For employees covering a shift outside their home location, the store manager with the staffing gap should provide the instructions they need to work at that store.

Before the shift, inform the employee of:

• The location 
• Shift start and end time
• Their point of contact at the other store
• Expected role and tasks
• Any other store-specific information

The store manager of the home location makes sure the employee’s original schedule reflects the approved change. 

To make sure communication remains clear and timely:

• Give employees a single source of truth for shifts and schedules. Don’t let them rely on a manager’s text message or paper schedule if the official schedule is centrally stored somewhere else.
• Set a clear owner for every type of communication. Employees should know if they need to approach their home location manager or the other manager when they have questions. 

Buddy Punch simplifies schedule communications regardless of where staff is located. The tool sends instant alerts to employees when their schedules are published or updated, and to managers when someone calls out at the last minute or doesn’t show up. 

After the shift is worked, the final step is making sure the hours are attributed correctly.

5. Record the right job at the right location

Record labor at the store where the work actually happened, using standardized department and position names across the business.

The regional manager should set the structure used to record and report labor across locations. This includes: 

• Location labels: Define the eligible stores that workers can be assigned to.
• Department and position labels: Set consistent names for departments and roles in the company’s labor reporting system, such as Sales, Stockroom, Cashier, or Sales Associate.
• Travel time rules: Decide whether an employee’s travel time should be recorded against their home location or to the other store when they’re working elsewhere.
• Correction process: Define who can correct hours that were recorded against the wrong location or role.

The store manager with the staffing gap should make sure all hours are recorded accurately for employees of another store who worked a shift at their location. This includes deciding how to record time against:

• Departments: An employee may spend the first four hours on the sales floor and the next four hours helping in the stockroom.
• Roles: Someone may usually work as a sales associate, but is qualified to act as a keyholder for a particular shift
• Jobs: They may spend part of a shift handling online orders and part serving customers.

On Buddy Punch, you can use Department, Location, and Position codes to keep employee hours tied to the exact job they did during their shift. 

Store managers should also review their time records regularly for errors like:

• An employee’s hours being assigned to the wrong store 
• A cross-location shift not being reflected in the schedule 
• A time correction that changes the location or role worked 

The regional manager can then review labor data across stores to identify unusual patterns, recurring coverage needs, or labor costs that need further investigation.

Use the recorded data to continuously improve staffing decisions

Once you’ve accurately captured schedule, attendance, and labor data, you can use that information to see what you had planned versus what actually happened and adjust future staffing decisions.

Store managers can use this data to manage day-to-day staffing at their location. For example, they can see if:

• A shift regularly needs more or fewer employees 
• Employees are consistently staying late to finish work 

The regional manager can then look for patterns across stores that individual store managers might not see. For example, they might find that:

• One store regularly needs employees from another location to cover Saturday shifts. 
• Another store is consistently scheduling more hours than it needs. 
• Overtime is concentrated at particular stores or certain shifts.

Use this data as a simple feedback loop. 

For example, suppose Store A schedules four sales associates for its Saturday afternoon shift. Over several weeks, attendance records show that the team regularly stays late, and actual hours are consistently higher than scheduled. 

If the same pattern appears across several locations, the regional manager may find that Saturday afternoons are consistently understaffed and adjust labor allocations accordingly.

If the same staffing problem keeps appearing, don’t simply keep solving it with one-off schedule changes. Use the data to determine if the business needs to change the larger staffing model, approval process, or allocation of employees across locations.

Review the operating model as you add locations

The workforce model that works for two stores may not work once you expand to 10. As you add locations, regularly check whether managers still have the right visibility, decision-making authority, and processes to manage employees without creating unnecessary central oversight. 

Start with a simple operating model review

Set a recurring review — such as once a year — to check whether your workforce processes and responsibilities are still working as the business grows. 

Adjust responsibilities as the business grows 

Adding locations may require changing who can see, edit, and approve workforce information. Here, Peter Saad, Managing Member of Titan Haven Group LLC/WarRoom Solutions, has a word of caution for regional managers: 

“Once you’re looking at multiple stores, you have to take into consideration that the stores are different. Demographics and location matter. You can’t just look at standardized reporting and assume that two stores should operate the same way.”

For example, if you’ve three stores, you might allow store managers to update employee availability directly. After expanding to 10, it may make sense for store managers to submit availability changes to the regional manager for review so there’s one consistent record.

But the opposite can also be true. If regional managers are approving every minor schedule change across 10 stores, they may be creating a bottleneck. Routine local decisions can then be pushed back to store managers, while the regional manager retains oversight of the information.

Run a workforce audit when you open a new location

Before opening a new store, make sure its employees, permissions, schedules, processes, and reporting are set up correctly from day one. Review: 

• Records: Are employees assigned to the correct home and eligible locations?
• Access: Can the store manager see the information for their own employees and other eligible employees?
• Schedules: Are eligible employees of other stores set up to cover shifts at the new store?
• Roles and qualifications: Are the employees at the new store recorded in the system with the right roles, skills, and training?
• Time tracking: Has the new store been assigned location, department, and position labels?
• Communication: Do employees know who manages the new store, whom to report to, and how to receive schedule and workplace updates?
• Labor reporting: Does the regional manager have access to the new store’s schedules, hours, overtime, and labor costs?

How to get started 

If you’re already managing employees across stores, don’t try to rebuild your entire workforce management process at once. Start with one simple step.

Identify the workforce data that’s being duplicated across stores, such as employee availability, schedules, locations, roles, or hours. Then bring all of this into one central location and standardize the information before you add a new store. This will give regional and store managers one reliable set of employee data to work from and make it easier to see where employees are working, share coverage, and manage labor. 

Contributors 

• Chris Bajda, Managing Partner, GroomsDay
• Devin Hornick, Co-Founder and Partner, KORE1
• Joel Goldstein, President, Mr. Checkout Distributors
• Manny Soto, Director of Operations, Burning Daily
• Peter Saad, Managing Member, Titan Haven Group LLC