The Total Economic Impact™ Of Legion Workforce Management

Scheduling Optimization

Evidence and data. Before investing in Legion, interviewees described their forecasting processes as lacking intelligence and often producing misaligned schedules. After investing in Legion, interviewees used more accurate, data‑driven demand forecasts to better align labor schedules with actual business needs. By reducing staffing volatility and giving managers greater confidence in system‑generated schedules, they improved labor utilization while spending less time manually adjusting schedules.

After investing in Legion’s AI-driven forecasting, the senior director of workforce management in the retail industry reported that, “Legion’s forecast [accounted for] local and macro events [and achieved a] 300-point base increase in MAPE (forecast accuracy).” This improved accuracy let managers better optimize staffing levels, reducing overtime hours by 20% versus pre-adoption trends, and operations leadership commented that they had never been able to measure labor better.  

• The senior data analyst in the retail industry said: “Our primary objective was to simplify coverage as much as possible. We sought a tool that provides robust demand and labor forecasting, eliminating volatile scheduling spikes. Instead, we aimed for a smooth curve that aligns with our sales patterns, helping to clarify staffing needs and shift overlaps. This approach garnered significant support from our store leadership team, and we’ve found that it now takes us only 2 to 3 hours per week to create and manage schedules.” In addition, this interviewee noted that actual labor usage stayed within 0.2% of budgeted hours versus a 1% to 2% variance before implementing Legion.

• The DVP of retail innovation and operations in the retail industry noted that store managers spent an average of 47 minutes each week building schedules before Legion. After adoption, this dropped to 16 minutes — a nearly 66% reduction in scheduling time. He said: “Our managers are more present on their sales floor, interacting with customers and providing coaching, training, and feedback to associates versus being holed up in an office trying to complete a complicated Sudoku puzzle that is the schedule.”

• The people technology and product leader in the hospitality industry discussed how forecasting and scheduling were previously manual and simplistic. “In our restaurants, understanding how long a task takes is an important driver in turning a good labor model into a great one. Legion helps us understand the inventory of tasks and the time required to complete them. Then, based on the rate of the ask times, the multiplier is applied, and it figures out whether we need another person or a subset of 5 hours. The task management approach to labor modeling is modern, especially in today’s restaurant industry. Prior to that, you just had time and motion studies and did step table assumptions; Legion has taken that a step further within the industry.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite employs 15,000 total employees.

• Approximately 12,750 employees (about 85%) are hourly, frontline workers whose schedules are directly impacted by forecasting accuracy.

• Hourly employees work an average of 15 hours per week.

• The average fully burdened hourly rate for an employee is $16.

• Before Legion, the composite’s labor forecasts were 87% accurate, reflecting interviewee descriptions of legacy tools that produced volatile demand curves, frequent overrides, and regular overstaffing or understaffing.

• After deploying Legion, forecast accuracy improves to 96% by Year 2 due to smoother demand curves, tighter alignment to workloads, and reduced variance to labor budgets.

• The composite experiences an 8 to 9 percent increase in accuracy.

• Forrester assumes 75% of the forecast improvement translates into reduced overstaffing, recognizing that organizations still maintain some intentional buffer for flexibility and service levels.

• Applying this portion of improved accuracy to the hourly labor base results in a 6% to 7% reduction in scheduled labor hours.

Risks. The results may vary depending on:

• The size and type of business, which drives the total number of hourly employees.

• The hourly rate for employees.

• The degree to which Legion is deployed across an enterprise.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $21.1 million.

Savings From A Reduction In Employee Turnover

Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that improved employee experience, schedule flexibility, and visibility into work schedules positively influenced employee engagement and attendance behaviors. Improved employee engagement — driven by greater schedule flexibility, transparency, and control — serves as a leading indicator of reduced voluntary turnover, as employees are more satisfied, more reliable, and more likely to remain with an organization.²

Before implementing Legion, employees lacked visibility into schedules and had limited control over their work-life balance, which contributed to frustration and disengagement.

• The senior director of workforce management in the retail industry noted: “I can’t say enough about the efficiencies the mobile app created. To get their schedules, employees [used to have] to call stores and play the telephone game. Now, we have a mobile app that lets employees view their schedules in real time. This helps with work-life balance and manager communication and provides better scheduling because they can input their availability and time off, swap shifts, and pick up open shifts. Employees love seeing their schedule and syncing it to their calendar. It’s a net positive experience for sure.”

In addition, adopting features such as Legion InstantPay improved employee satisfaction and contributed to high Net Promoter Scores.³

• The senior director of workforce management in the retail industry observed measurable behavioral improvements tied to engagement, including increased adherence to schedules: “Employees enrolled in the Legion InstantPay program call off less and arrive on time more often. When an employee follows the schedule, they can access their shift. If they’ve deviated, the store manager must approve that shift for payment — so it’s a carrot for the employee to show up when they should to get paid. We’ve seen a 10% lift in schedule adherence.”

Legion also improved transparency and trust in timekeeping and payroll processes. Employees gained visibility into their timesheets and edits, reducing disputes and strengthening confidence in the system. These improvements demonstrate how Legion enhanced the employee experience and reliability, which interviewees’ organizations associated with reduced voluntary attrition over time.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite employs 12,750 hourly employees.

• The composite’s retail stores experience an 85% turnover rate before Legion.

• After deploying Legion, the retail stores experience a 10% reduction in turnover directly attributed to the platform.

• The average cost of replacing an employee is 15% of their annual salary.

• Seventy-five percent of hourly employees adopt the Legion solution in Year 1, which climbs to 100% by Year 2.

Risks. The savings from a reduction in employee turnover vary depending on the following:

• The turnover rate and other factors driving turnover at an organization.

• The hourly rate for an employee.

• The average cost of recruiting and training an employee.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10% yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $11.0 million.

Reduction In Overtime Pay

Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that improved forecasting accuracy, proactive scheduling capabilities, and enhanced visibility into labor performance reduced their reliance on overtime. Improved labor alignment, driven by more accurate demand forecasts, real-time scheduling insights, and better managerial control, serves as a leading indicator of reduced overtime costs and improved store performance, as organizations can staff appropriately, avoid last-minute adjustments, and maintain tighter control over payroll spend.⁴

Before implementing Legion, organizations lacked tools to manage labor allocation proactively and optimize schedules in real time, limiting their ability to control overtime. The senior director of workforce management in the retail industry explained, “In the prior system, we could not react or be proactive in scheduling behaviors.”

After implementing Legion, interviewees’ organizations gained improved visibility into labor demand and stronger tools to align staffing with business needs, enabling more proactive scheduling and tighter labor control.  

• The senior director of workforce management in the retail industry noted: “We’ve used Legion to manage better and be proactive at scheduling in stores. … We have seen a reduction in overtime.”

• The DVP of retail innovation and operations in the retail industry said: “Between 2024 and 2025, we did have a 16% reduction in overtime hours, which was a focus for us. The biggest thing was visibility into overtime and the ability to flag it directly in the UI and in other reporting we had created. We also give Legion’s schedule generation tool credit because it does a great job of basing the schedule in a way where the store has coverage while avoiding overtime when possible.”

These improvements resulted in measurable reductions in overtime usage, with one interviewee reporting a significant decline compared to prior trends.

• The senior director of workforce management in the retail industry quantified the impact: “In our prior system, we could not be proactive in scheduling behaviors. Legion has a schedule score that measures how well the published schedule aligns with the workload. If you’re at 100%, it means you have the right number of people in the right roles. Fifty percent says you’re not staffed correctly. We’ve used Legion to better manage and be proactive about scheduling in stores, and the manager reviews and ensures we’re in balance. Operations managers say we’ve never measured labor more effectively than we do today, and we have seen a reduction in overtime. We are down 20% from pre-COVID trends. We run lean on overtime, surprisingly now closer to 1.5% or 1.6%.” In addition, improved labor visibility and scheduling performance enabled stronger overall payroll control.

• The senior data analyst in the retail industry said: “We invest about a billion [dollars] per year in store payroll, and we were within 0.2%. [We have] tremendous management by our field teams, but I feel very strongly that our tools have set those leaders up for success. There are very clear expectations. The system always generates a schedule that’s within their budget. It’s optimized for demand. It’s optimized for the budget.”

Together, these improvements demonstrate how Legion enhances labor planning precision and operational control, allowing organizations to reduce unnecessary overtime hours and better align labor spend with demand.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization saw an average of 3 hours of overtime pay, or 20% of average weekly pay, per location per week before Legion.

• After Legion, the composite organization sees an average of 0.24 hours of overtime pay, or 1.6% of average weekly pay, per location per week.

• Overtime pay for hourly employees is 1.5 times their regular pay.

• The composite has 700 retail locations.

Risks. The reduction in overtime pay may vary depending on the following:

• The number of retail locations within an organization.

• The number of overtime pay hours per location.

• The overtime pay rate at an organization.

• The speed of Legion adoption into an organization.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $1.6 million.

Manager Productivity Improvements

Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that improved scheduling automation, streamlined payroll administration, and reduced administrative burden enabled meaningful gains in manager productivity. Increased efficiency, driven by automated schedule generation, simplified payroll processes, and enhanced system usability, allowed managers to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on value-added activities such as customer service, coaching, and operational execution.

Before implementing Legion, managers spent significant time manually creating schedules, handling payroll-related administrative tasks, and navigating inefficient processes, limiting their ability to focus on in-store operations.

• The people technology and product leader in the hospitality industry explained: “When we think about our managers today, we try to analyze it by hard savings and some soft savings. Managers were spending around 7 hours a week on schedule creation and maintenance. With Legion, we were able to reduce this to about 3.5 hours. We saw about a 50% reduction in time to schedule.”

• The senior director of workforce management in the retail industry described payroll-related inefficiencies, saying, “Managers would close out payroll for the week … and then they’d have to call the payroll department, be on hold, and communicate changes.”

After implementing Legion, managers benefited from automated scheduling and more efficient payroll administration processes, significantly reducing the time required to complete scheduling and payroll-related activities.

• Regarding payroll administration improvements, the senior director of workforce management in the retail industry stated: “Now it can happen in the system. … The manager can go in and make edits — there is good control and record keeping. … Before Legion, we had around 1,000 retro edits a week. … Now it is a small fraction of that.”

• The same interviewee highlighted the broader impact on daily work: “The biggest win [for managers] is less time being in the office. Retail is won or lost on the shop floor. It’s being out there where they can do things tangibly and be productive — stocking, merchandising, customer service, coaching, and training employees.”

Together, these improvements demonstrate that Legion reduces the administrative burden on store-level managers across scheduling and payroll, enabling them to reallocate time to higher-value business activities.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization has 700 retail locations.

• Each location has one unit manager responsible for scheduling, 75% of whom adopt the Legion platform in Year 1, with 100% adoption in Years 2 and 3.

• Each manager saves 7 hours per week on scheduling tasks with the Legion platform.

• The average fully burdened hourly rate for a store manager is $35.⁵

• Forrester conservatively estimates that 50% of the total time saved per manager is applied directly back to value-generating tasks, and it is therefore included in the benefit calculation. Individual managers may apply additional time savings toward professional development, training, and work-life activities, which were not included in the benefit analysis.

Risks. Manager productivity improvements may vary depending on the following:

• The number of retail locations within an organization.

• The number of unit managers responsible for scheduling within an organization and their productivity rates.

• The fully burdened hourly rate for a store manager.

• The speed of Legion adoption into an organization.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $9.1 million.

Avoided Labor Compliance Penalties And Legal Exposure

Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that improved compliance automation, real-time monitoring, and built-in regulatory controls reduced exposure to labor-related penalties and legal risk. Improved compliance, driven by automated labor law enforcement, digital attestations, and real-time schedule and timekeeping validation, allowed interviewees to avoid financial penalties and reduce legal exposure by ensuring adherence to complex, evolving regulations.

Before implementing Legion, interviewees’ organizations lacked visibility into the drivers of labor compliance issues and had limited ability to enforce compliance consistently, resulting in unnecessary penalties and legal risk.

• The senior director of workforce management in the retail industry explained: “In [our previous system], we knew when schedules changed but not why. Schedules changed due to employee-initiated changes, but we couldn’t collect the reasons. We had to assume we would pay the penalty for schedule deviations because we couldn’t provide a reason not to. Legion dynamically assesses why it changed, and employees had to attest to it. We saw a dramatic change — 90% of schedule changes are employee-initiated.”

After implementing Legion, their organizations gained the ability to track, justify, and automatically enforce compliance rules, significantly reducing unnecessary payouts and mitigating legal risk.

• The senior director of workforce management further described broader compliance improvements: “They can dynamically assess the penalties versus the hours that employees may have worked. … They have helped us stay very compliant, which was a major issue that cost us millions of dollars previously.”

In addition, interviewees discussed eliminating exposure to noncompliance fines under labor laws, such as meal and rest break requirements. The DVP of retail innovation and operations in the retail industry gave two examples of how Legion enhances compliance visibility, automates labor law enforcement, and reduces both direct penalty costs and broader legal exposure.

• The interviewee said: “In California, there are strict rules around meal and rest breaks at different points in a shift. There’s a lot of nuance, but at clock out, employees may choose to skip certain breaks voluntarily. Legion prompts them to attest whether they skipped a required break and, if so, whether that was at the employer’s request or their own choice. If we failed to provide the opportunity or asked someone to skip a break, we owe a penalty. Legion uses that response, confirms the break was not taken, and automatically adds the premium to the shift. Now we have a digital record showing that we followed the law and paid the appropriate premiums.”

• They continued: “In Oregon, if you don’t have a schedule posted 21 days out, you owe a premium to the associate. And if you modify their schedule at the employer’s request within those 21 days, you also owe a premium. It’s a one-hour premium if we ask them to change it. If they change their own schedule, we don’t owe the premium. Legion understands those rules, so as changes are made to a published schedule, we’re no longer stuck trying to prove when it was posted. Legion digitally pushes out the schedule, providing us with a record and automatically calculating and paying any required premium when changes are made. I know we have not had any unfavorable time and attendance lawsuits since going live with Legion.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization experiences 10 schedule changes per week per store before Legion.

• The composite has 700 locations.

• After Legion, the composite experiences 70% fewer fair workweek payouts at $15 per incident.

• The composite’s adoption rate of the solution is 75% in Year 1 and 100% in Years 2 and 3.

Risks.

• The number of retail locations within an organization.

• The number of schedule changes that an organization experiences before Legion.

• The penalties an organization must pay for a fair workweek violation.

• The speed of Legion adoption into an organization.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $7.8 million.

Payroll And Workforce Administration Labor Savings

Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that improved system automation, streamlined data management, and reduced manual processes enabled meaningful productivity gains for corporate payroll and workforce administration teams. Increased efficiency, driven by routine task automation, improved system integration, and reduced reliance on manual intervention, allowed organizations to reduce administrative effort and operate more efficiently at scale.

Before implementing Legion, interviewees’ organizations relied on manual, time-intensive processes for payroll and workforce administration, including data uploads, budget management, and user administration. After implementing Legion, their organizations automated and streamlined payroll and workforce administration processes, significantly reducing the time required to complete routine administrative tasks.

• The senior data analyst in the retail industry described the magnitude of improvement: “Just loading our budgets each week would be a 4-hour process to get all of this together. With the way we set up our Legion environment and the integrations we built, we were able to push it into Legion in less than 5 minutes. It was a gigantic administrative burden lifted off our team.”

• The DVP of retail innovation and operations in the retail industry highlighted inefficiencies in workforce data management: “At least 2 hours of an administrator’s work was going into user management every week. They pulled a CSV file from [the HRIS system] and uploaded that to [our legacy workforce management system] to keep users in sync. Now that’s been eliminated.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Employees located at the corporate headquarters of the composite spend 4 hours uploading budgets before Legion.

• After Legion, corporate employees spend 5 minutes uploading budgets.

• Two administrators are responsible for uploading budgets and have an average fully burdened hourly rate of $45.

• Before Legion, the composite created an average of 20,000 payroll tickets annually.

• After Legion, the composite creates 44% fewer tickets.

• Employees spend an average of 30 minutes addressing payroll tickets.

• The composite’s adoption rate of the solution is 75% in Year 1 and 100% in Years 2 and 3.

• Forrester conservatively estimates that 50% of the total time saved per manager is applied directly back to value-generating tasks, and it is therefore included in the benefit calculation. Individual managers may apply additional time savings toward professional development, training, and work-life activities, which were not included in the benefit analysis.

Risks. The payroll and workforce administration labor savings may vary based upon:                

• The methods used to upload budgets before deploying Legion.

• The frequency in which an organization uploads budgets.

• The number of administrators responsible for uploading budgets.

• The fully burdened hourly rate for an administrator.

• The number of payroll discrepancies an organization experiences.

• The speed of Legion adoption into an organization.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $220,000.

Unquantified Benefits

Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:

• Improved attendance and coverage support higher revenue through team selling. Interviewees reported that improved attendance and shift fulfillment enabled more consistent floor coverage, supporting higher conversion rates by ensuring sufficient staffing for team-based selling. The DVP of retail innovation and operations in the retail industry said: “We saw a 19% year-over-year reduction in absenteeism. We’re finding that when associates contact others to fill shifts, those shifts don’t count toward the absenteeism rate. We just completed a full study of an activity-based labor model. What was fascinating to us in the luxury retail space was that our conversion rate when a customer only interacts with one associate is around 11%. And when they interact with more than one associate, it’s around 26%. So you’re talking more than double the conversion rate because a customer interacted with two people. If we don’t have enough associates on the sales floor to provide that team-selling experience, we know we’re cutting our conversion rate in half. It is detrimental to our business.”

• Centralized workforce data improves visibility into scheduling, performance, and labor allocation. Interviewees reported that AI-driven automation streamlined workforce management processes, reduced manual effort, and improved decision-making. Prior to implementation, scheduling and administrative tasks were largely manual and time-intensive, requiring significant managerial intervention. After adopting Legion, interviewees described scheduling as almost completely automated, with its AI-enabled tools generating optimized schedules that managers only needed to refine. Automation also embeds business rules and compliance requirements directly into workflows, with one interviewee noting that the system “understands all of the compliance thresholds for overtime and staffing rules” and aligns schedules with demand and employee availability. In addition, organizations expanded their use of AI over time to support more advanced optimization, including using employee performance data and KPIs to place associates where they would be most valuable.

• Improved usability and adoption from a modern user interface. Interviewees reported that Legion’s modern, intuitive user interface improved ease of use across frontline employees and administrators, accelerating adoption while reducing training requirements. They emphasized that its clean design, intuitive workflows, and mobile accessibility reduced friction in daily workforce management tasks and increased engagement. Interviewees consistently linked the “fresh” interface to rapid adoption and minimal training needs. The DVP of retail innovation and operations in the retail industry said: “This is probably one of the easiest things I’ve ever launched in terms of an associate perspective. Even from the day of launch, Legion consistently received incredibly high marks from associates, who were just thrilled with the intuitiveness of using the app, receiving their schedules, and clocking in and out. It’s something that just came really naturally. Now we’ve got 92% of our hourly workforce using the Legion mobile app on their personal device, and the level of engagement is astonishing to me.”

• Workforce behavioral insights inform the ideal associate profile. By centralizing workforce management data and leveraging robust calculated fields, interviewees gained a deeper understanding of employee behavior patterns. The people technology and product leader in the hospitality industry explained: “This is actually one of those surprise and delight things that we gained by centralizing workforce management with Legion. Now, we understand our workforce’s behavior much better. For example, we can see behaviors like who tends to come in early, who tends to clock out late, and who tends not to take their meal breaks. From this behavior, we can essentially create profiles, and using AI, we can analyze who our ideal associate is.”

• Accelerated deployment reduces time to value. Interviewees reported fast deployment timelines for Legion, even in complex environments, with enterprise-scale rollouts completed in a matter of months. The senior data analyst in the retail industry noted: “We engaged our store teams from the beginning and had store and field leadership involved with the pilot and RFP. We had strong buy-in from our process, and the implementation timeline was very aggressive. We started discovery on December 15, 2022, and we launched across our entire organization by July of 2023.” Although deployment timelines varied by scope, interviewees consistently characterized implementation as quick relative to the scale of the transformation, enabling faster realization of workforce management benefits.

• Legion InstantPay strengthens differentiation in hiring and frontline talent attraction. Interviewees described Legion InstantPay (earned wage access) as a meaningful differentiator in attracting and engaging frontline talent. The senior director of workforce management in the retail industry stated: “I don’t have an adoption goal; I have an awareness goal. I want all employees to be aware that the program is available to them, but whether an associate uses it is unique to each person’s financial situation. We have 30% adoption of Legion InstantPay so far. Employees have expressed high levels of engagement in engagement surveys. It’s a differentiator for us when we hire and helps us stay competitive. Overall, it’s a positive program for the organization.”

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement Legion Workforce Management and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Supports ongoing innovation through new workforce programs and capabilities. Organizations can introduce new employee-facing initiatives, such as on-demand pay (Legion InstantPay) and employee performance and rewards programs, without additional infrastructure investments. The senior director of workforce management in the retail industry noted, “We deployed Legion InstantPay, which wouldn’t have been possible if our energies were focused on keeping the train on the tracks.”

• Enables rapid adaptation of labor models, roles, and organizational structures. Legion’s configurability enables organizations to quickly introduce new roles, departments, and operating models as business needs evolve. The senior data analyst in the retail industry described a program they are close to deploying: “We have the confidence to build a new department at scale. If we want to create a new role, even in a subset of stores, we can do so quickly and confidently. We’re actively working on a project to change the store’s layout from a departmental perspective. We needed to generate the labor model for it, and we completed all the design elements in our test environment within three weeks. We’re just finishing up testing in that environment, and then we’ll start migrating it to production. It’s not just scheduling; it’s people change, it’s human capital management changes. We met the businesses where they were and checked all their boxes without major significant work.”

• Creates a foundation for future data-driven workforce optimization and AI-driven decision-making. Enhanced visibility into workforce behavior and performance enables organizations to move beyond basic scheduling toward more advanced operational decisions. Interviewees described using this data to inform staffing alignment with demand patterns, correlate labor coverage with customer and store performance outcomes, and identify behaviors that contribute to stronger operational results. For example, the people technology and product leader noted the ability to “correlate store performance… with who was clocked in at that time,” providing insight into how specific labor decisions impact business outcomes. This visibility also supports future improvements in peak-hour coverage, scheduling strategies, and labor model refinement, positioning organizations to continuously optimize workforce deployment and pursue more advanced AI-driven decisioning over time.