I can’t work my shift.

TEAMS: Workforce Management, Leadership Engagement app , TLC

At a glance

I designed a call-out request flow for retail employees that replaced informal texts with a routed message that gave managers shared visibility and a trackable record. Manager adoption was strong post-launch, however low employee adoption pointed to a harder challenge: competing with the simplicity of a text.

The problem

If an employee cannot work their shift, they are required to notify a manager for approval. How do they reach the right manager?

• There is no phone system in the stores.
• Employees do not have access to store schedules and do not know which manager is working.
• Most stores have multiple leaders, so reaching a manager who has the day off is probable.

This led to misrouted messages, delayed awareness of absences and confusion around “no call, no show” situations.

“A really huge issue is not knowing what manager is on duty. We think we’ve got a no call, no show–four hours later we find out they contacted the manager who was off.”

Framing the opportunity

There was a communication gap and a coordination failure.
• Managers lacked shared visibility
• Employees relied on guesswork
• There was no system of record

The challenge was to improve coordination without disrupting existing HR approval processes or eroding trust between employees and leaders.

Design objectives

• Enable employees to reliably reach the manager on duty
• Provide shared visibility across leaders
• Create a trackable record of call-outs and their status
• Preserve the human, trust-based nature of call-out interactions

Solution: Call Out Request

The Call-Out Request is a structured message initiated from an employee’s scheduled shift in the employee app. Submitting a request routes it to managers who are actively working and surfaces the request in the Leadership Engagement app, where all leaders can view and respond.

By anchoring the request to the employee's schedule and routing it to on-duty leaders, the experience replaces informal texts and removes guesswork about which manager is available. It was also the first time a message initiated in the employee app (Connect) surfaced directly in the leadership app (LET) — connecting two previously separate experiences into a single coordinated workflow.

Designing for trust, not just efficiency

The early concepts prioritized efficiency through automation, but leader feedback revealed a constraint: call-outs needed to preserve human judgment and care.

What we learned
❌ Leaders did not want an automated process that removed opportunities for human care
❌ There was concern that lowering friction could unintentionally increase call-outs
❌ Approval needed to feel explicit, not implied
✅ Shared visibility across leaders built confidence

“I love the idea. I just worry it takes the human side of care out. When someone calls out or is late, I reach out and see if they are ok.”

Design response

To avoid the perception that a call-out was automatically approved we added:

• Clear language to reinforce that a manager approval is still required
• A link to the absence policy for clarity
• An acknowledgment step before submission

The goal wasn’t to make it harder to submit a call-out, but to maintain clear expectations, accountability, and trust.

Challenging the next step

Posting an open shift to the billboard directly from a call-out was positioned as a natural extension of the workflow. Before moving forward, I wanted to understand whether this step reflected how call-outs were actually handled in stores.

What research revealed

Employees already had multiple ways to gain or reduce hours, and the billboard was not the primary way call-outs were resolved in practice. Leader interviews showed that staffing gaps were typically addressed through on-the-floor adjustments or market-level coordination.

Posting an open shift from a call-out ultimately moved forward due to broader business priorities, but the research reframed it as a low-confidence extension rather than an assumed win.

Journey map: ‘Leader maintaining a (published) schedule' — Timing surfaced as a consideration. The closer to a shift start, the less likely a leader would attempt to fill the gap, shifting their decision from replacement to a floor coverage adjustment.

What moved forward

Implementing the ability to post an open shift from a call-out required close collaboration with the TLC team to support real-time access to schedule data.

Flow: Posting an open shift from a call-out

Outcome

Following launch, 23% of callouts were initiated through Connect. Of those, 65% were actioned by a leader — validating that the routing and shared visibility design was working on the management side.

Reflections

This project began as a communication problem and surfaced a trust problem. Solving it required listening closely to leaders and incorporating their feedback so the experience aligned with how they actually support their teams. Leaders were more comfortable adopting the solution because they could see their input directly shaping the design.

Post-launch behavior revealed a harder problem: changing a habit as ingrained as texting. Some stores had their own email systems to manage call-out communication, a workaround that showed the need was real but adoption wasn’t universal. If I were to continue this work, I’d focus on the employee side and making the new experience easier than the existing behavior, not just better.