Designing a Costco employee app (2024)

I’ve worked in the retail business for over five years now for two very big corporations. And over the years, one thing that I’ve noticed is a lack of innovation, especially in the area of technology. While working at my first job, they didn’t have an employee app and when they did initially implement one it barely worked. The second job I worked at did not have an employee app. Instead, what they had were several websites for employees and the central site used by employees was not user friendly at all.

That will be the challenge I will tackle today. Creating a useful mobile app for retail employees.

Specifically I will be looking at creating a retail app for Costco employees.

There may be one question rattling your brain, and that is WHY? Why do we need an app? Why is this important, what is wrong with the websites we have? I was asked this question by two different employees; they both wondered why I would be interested in designing this product. One person had mentioned that they didn’t notice the decrepit shape that the sites were in and that they didn’t seem that bad.

In addition to talking with Costco employees I also had the pleasure of talking with an auditor from Costco and a Sr. UX Designer. The auditor mentioned that designing a digital product for employees would be too expensive and cause prices to rise. The UX Designer and he put the auditors words at rest. Redesigning the Costco websites as an app would be beneficial to employees and offset the cost, ultimately saving money.

After talking to over a dozen or so users there seemed to be only a few main problems

• Lack of notifications when the users schedule is updated
• The site is not mobile friendly
• The user has to sign in several times

“It’s more secure than my bank app!”

One employee said.

As more research was done I discovered that there were several websites for the employees and each site was centered on a different thing. Some of them were mobile friendly and others like I mentioned were not. The most important site to the employees, the site where they can access their schedule info was not.

Employees were never told when they would be logged out. Supervisors would change schedules without telling employees and scold them saying:: “you should check the website everyday”. This was very frustrating when using the Employee Self Serve website.

This is a problem that could easily be automated with push notifications

Small user flows as the user is introduced to the app via slideshow in the employee break room (my chicken scratch below)

User flow for once inside the CEE app with initial touch points

This gets the users introduced to the application. It shows them the basics of what the app will do. It incorporates the info from several of the websites into one

Once the user gets past the onboarding they are then introduced to the home page where they have:

1. News

News feed allows for relevant news and updates to be sent to the user whenever they sign in. News section is handled by warehouse management. It gives info from a corporate level and also relevant warehouse updates

2. Safety training videos

Proper company procedures and training

3. Job bank

New job postings

4. Shoutouts

Helps to boost morale and find out interesting thing going on in the company like Costco connection or photography contests

Paraphernalia, forms, appendices etc

The most important website to the user is the ESS, Employee Self Serve. This site allows the users to access their schedule

Taking a look at a Walmart app ( competitive analysis ) several design were made:

Walmart’s scheduling app was very mobile friendly and easy to use

Figure A) allows for an overview of the month and by clicking a particular day employees are granted several options

Figure B) is a close up of the current week and presents a very mobile friendly interface

This would only require a one — time sign in. Additionally, the user would be notified when they’re about to be timed out.

Once the clock/schedule was designed a breakpoint arose. In the initial website (ESS) you have to go to a different page that will allow the user to see how many hours they have. Once there, they have to read their pay stub which is a 11.5 x 8 in piece of paper that the use has to use their fingers to zoom in on. That’s not mobile friendly in any form. Then finally once they struggle trying to zoom into that piece of paper they can now decide if they want to call in.

This was too much of a hassle

The decision was made to incorporate the users sick and vacation time into the Clock and Schedule sections in addition to having it available in the Payroll section

In effort to make the app mobile ready I had to redesign the paystub from scratch, taking into account what the users are mainly looking for.

The user can see their entire paystub or take a quick look at the important things.

The Benefit Section is a larger animal. It’s a separate site that links to even more sites some of which do not even have the Costco branding on it. The journey map for benefits was different as you land in many external sites and perform different tasks than you do on the ESS.

Instead of having a super-menu for Benefits like on the website there would be a designated page, and inside of it would be a page which containing all of the proper info.

1. Benefits overview so that employees can see what coverage they have and can look at all of the other benefits.
2. Just like Costco members have a digital version of their card available in their phones, employees could access the digital version of their health care cards.

If Teledoc is available through the app, it negates the need for the card and erases the need to verify your identity over the phone. The fact that you’re calling the doctor through the app would mean you’ve successfully logged in as an employee.

This reduces the amount of paper

Some of the names are changed

• Mrs. Tasha — likes the diversity of people in the onboarding
• Mr. Sopas — likes the idea tracking of both positive coachings and negative marks. He also mentioned the managers may not like the call in option as it might be abused by employees
• Ms. Lee — disliked first set of color choices for the onboarding section

Looking in the grand scheme of things, yes, starting this project would be expensive, but it would benefit the company by creating a better experience for the employees.

1) Less money would be lost because employees are notified of their schedules and are less likely to miss shifts.

2) Employees become aware of more of their employee benefits.

3) Less paper being used for schedule shifts forms and time-off requests .

4) Employees could more easily see their paystub and be provided with less confusion. They could also see as to how much they should be paid right away instead of having to search for it.

5) Understand whats going on in their store just a little bit more which in turn will help them better as they deal with members.

I believe this app will be beneficial for the company as it will allow Costco to save time and money. No more scheduling discrepancies, employees will know when they work which will reduce the amount of missed shifts.

There will be less paper as time-off requests have the option of being digital.

Employees can keep track of their positive and negative marks which will encourage them to stay in good standing and keep them from being blind sighted by a negative mark,

There are many improvements that can be made to this. But I think it’s a great alternative to the current products.

This is my first case study and also my first article. Thank you for reading, hopefully this the first many articles and studies.

*Some artwork copyright Aetna Health*

(In May I had a different project)

Some inspiration for this project was this article here