The posting
At L.L.Bean, we believe the outdoors brings out the best in all of us. We are committed to fostering a culture of belonging and creating safe, inclusive spaces where everyone feels welcome—both here and Outside. We value individual differences and are dedicated to maintaining an inclusive work environment where everyone can bring the best of their experience and talents and truly thrive.
L.L.Bean is seeking a Manager of Retail Workforce Planning & Analytics to join our Retail Home Office team, based at our corporate headquarters in Freeport, Maine.
At L.L.Bean, we’re growing and expanding our retail footprint as we bring new brick-and-mortar stores to more communities across the country. Guided by our belief in the restorative power of the outdoors, we’re creating spaces where people can connect with nature, gear up for adventure, and feel part of something bigger.
Position Purpose:
This role leads workforce planning, labor strategy, scheduling standards, analytics, and related financial planning across L.L.Bean Retail and Outlet Stores. The position owns labor models, budgeting inputs, workforce tools, productivity insights, and G&A planning support, ensuring resources align with customer demand, store workload, operational priorities, and financial targets.
This role is based in Freeport, Maine and is not a remote position.
Responsibilities:
Labor Strategy & Workforce Planning
- Owns the store labor model, including labor hours, staffing mix, store tiering, seasonal strategies, and role-based staffing needs.
- Develops labor standards and resourcing assumptions by store format, volume, season, workload, and operating model.
Workforce Analytics & Productivity
- Owns workforce performance metrics, including sales per labor hour, labor percent to sales, productivity, and labor utilization.
- Analyzes trends and translates insights into reporting that supports operational, financial, and field leadership decisions.
Scheduling Standards & Optimization
- Defines scheduling standards, coverage models, and peak staffing guidelines aligned to demand, workload, and service expectations.
- Creates resources and partners with Store Operations and Field Leadership to improve scheduling effectiveness.
Initiative Impact & Capacity Planning
- Assesses labor, workload, staffing, and capacity impacts of initiatives, including technology rollouts, operational changes, training, and process updates.
- Provides recommendations on labor allocation, timing, workload tradeoffs, and go/no-go decisions.
Budgeting & Financial Ownership
- Leads annual and in-year labor budgeting, forecasting, and reforecasting based on sales plans, workload, workforce trends, and financial targets.
- Partners with Finance to monitor labor spend, support P&L alignment, and evaluate labor investment scenarios.
- Creates and owns G&A budgeting with Finance for all stores and the Retail Home Office.
Cross-Functional Partnership
- Serves as the primary workforce planning partner to Finance, Store Operations, and Field Leadership on labor and G&A budget management.
- Builds feedback loops with Regional, District, and Store Leadership to validate assumptions, identify execution risks, and ground plans in store needs.
- Translates workforce, labor, and G&A insights into actions that support budget management, productivity, and field execution.
Tools & Systems Ownership
- Owns workforce management tools, including scheduling, forecasting, labor planning, and Dayforce-related processes.
- Partners with IS, Store Operations, Field Leadership, and Retail Communications to maintain tools, support adoption, and improve system effectiveness.
- Creates and maintains Excel-based models for ad-hoc labor projections, staffing scenarios, productivity analysis, G&A planning, and decision support.
- Uses SAP to monitor G&A spend, account activity, expense coding, budget risks, and variances.
- Audits workforce data to support reliable forecasting, reporting, scheduling, and decision-making.
People Leadership
- Leads through indirect influence with Finance, Field Leadership, Store Operations, and cross-functional partners.
- Develops peers, partners, and direct reports by building workforce planning, financial, analytical, operational, and leadership capability.
- Manages direct reports through priorities, coaching, feedback, workload management, development planning, and talent activities.
Health and Safety Requirement: Every employee is responsible for contributing to a safe and healthy workplace. Employees are expected to be active participants in health and safety by following all safety policies and procedures, reporting unsafe conditions or at-risk behaviors to leadership, and conducting work in a safe manner. Those in a leadership role are also expected to model safe behaviors, evaluate risk, and ensure that risks are reduced to acceptable levels.
Education Level: 4-Year Bachelors Degree Years of Experience: 5+
Skills and Qualifications:
- Candidates must reside within a reasonable commuting distance of L.L.Bean’s Corporate HQ in Freeport, Maine, and have reliable transportation to support regular on-site attendance.
- Minimum of 5 years in a retail-based role with 3 years’ experience in workforce management, labor planning, or workforce analytics.
- Experience supporting multi-unit store operations, scheduling practices, labor planning tools, and workforce management processes.
- Prior Store Manager, District Manager, or equivalent field leadership experience preferred.
- Strong analytical, forecasting, budgeting, modeling, reporting, and financial acumen.
- Demonstrated leadership, coaching, influencing, collaboration, communication, and cross-functional alignment skills.
- Strong organization and project management skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities.
- Proficiency with Microsoft Office and workforce management, scheduling, forecasting, or labor planning systems; Dayforce experience preferred.
- Understanding of retail store service, safety, risk, and ability to travel as needed.
L.L.Bean uses a market-based compensation approach. The anticipated starting base pay for this position is $98,000 - $130,000. Individual compensation may vary based on factors such as a candidate’s experience, qualifications, education, geographic location, skills, competencies, and proficiency for the role.
If you care about the outdoors, joining L.L.Bean is a great way to feel good about what you do. Our benefits package makes a good thing even better, with programs and perks designed to support your health and financial goals. Plus, maintaining a healthy work-life balance and re-charging outside are all part of the plan.
If your experience looks a little different from what we've identified and you think you'd be great at this role, we'd love to learn more about you! At L.L.Bean, we believe the outdoors brings out the best in all of us. We strive to reflect this every day in our commitments to employees and partners and in our efforts to promote belonging.
