Corporate-initiated work accounts for 35 to 40 percent of activities performed by store labor. But traditional labor planning relies primarily on sales forecasts to calculate required staffing levels and does not account for the additional store workload that comes from corporate initiatives. Reflexis Workload Optimizer is the first solution that allows retailers to forecast corporate initiatives in addition to the forecast sales demand, creating an accurate, consolidated labor forecast. The Solution enables a retailer to coordinate long-range planning at the corporate level, optimize workloads sent to the stores, and maximize employee productivity. Workload Optimizer bridges the gap that occurs when store operations, human resources, merchandising, finance, and other departments do not integrate long-range planning and shortrange execution. Corporate planners can allocate the labor required to complete marketing, merchandising, loss prevention, and other projects months ahead of time and later assign specific tasks as additional detail information becomes available.