“On average, we save the value of a BMW every year on administration alone!”

As part of Germany’s third-largest supermarket chain with a broad customer base, the EDEKA Safa store in Berlin-Tegel, managed by Mouhammed Safa, is always looking for gaps to close. “I’m not only a big fan of the new products we offer in our store, but also a big fan of innovation, and I try to optimize every process, including shift scheduling and time tracking!” says Mr. Safa.

This matters above all to offer customers a wide variety of products and to create a pleasant workplace for employees. How does Mr. Safa juggle it all? Simple: he takes off his hat and hands it to a software system that merges scheduling and time tracking and optimizes the admin work along the way. Hats off! Anyone who would like to take their hat off too should keep listening to Mr. Safa’s story.

Mr. Safa took over as store manager of the EDEKA Safa store after many years as deputy store manager. With ten years of experience in the store, he had spotted plenty of room for improvement. With the company wanting to enlarge the store, offer more vegan and organic products and attract a younger clientele, it was essential to improve wherever possible. “It’s very important to me that employees can identify with the company and its products, so they can pass that on to our customers,” Mr. Safa says about the core values of his business. That takes smooth operations, from administration to shift changes.

“With the combination of Dyflexis and EDEKA Safa, the administrative workload melts away like snow in the sun and processes get optimized”

Store expansion

The market is constantly changing, and you have to keep up. At the EDEKA Safa store, vegan and organic products in particular practically sell themselves. More customers also means more employees to deliver the expected quality. Asked how his EDEKA store has developed in recent years, Mr. Safa replies that both the number of employees and their “competence and attitude” have increased.

That made it all the more important to solve the old problems with time tracking and staff scheduling efficiently. An all-in-one workforce management system was the ideal solution.

“Once the employees started working with the app and saw the user-friendly options Dyflexis offered them, everyone was enthusiastic and in agreement!”

High employee satisfaction

That is the motto of Mr. Safa, who puts great emphasis on the engagement and satisfaction of his staff. “On the one hand, the store should be a good platform for customers, and on the other hand a good workplace for our employees,” says the store manager. He achieved strong staff engagement by delegating more responsibility to employees.

At the EDEKA store, employees actively help shape the schedules, for example with an innovative app that always gives real-time insight into the current schedule and upcoming changes. Leave requests, which are often hard to coordinate, can also be handled simply and clearly in the employee app. For Mr. Safa, this means much less work for department management, and for the staff, a better balance between private life and work.

“Dyflexis helps us organize our store and employees quickly and effectively, plan attendance and absence, and manage the hours worked”

Complicated scheduling? Old news!

The optimized, innovative scheduling saves Mr. Safa not only a lot of effort and headaches, but also quite a bit of money. Before Dyflexis, staff scheduling and administration took a good 13 hours a week. Today, it’s all done in 30 minutes. Mr. Safa credits this mainly to the simplified, digital administration that handles availability, working hours and balances. “There’s almost no direct communication needed anymore about scheduling, leave and balances (hours worked, plus and minus hours, allowances and vacation entitlement),” Mr. Safa says happily.

This also matters for the company’s competitiveness, because innovation and optimized processes help it stand out from competitors. Taking the leap toward more digitalization has definitely paid off. It saves headaches, money and, above all, time, which every business leader can always use.

“On average, we save the value of a small mid-range BMW every year on administration alone!”