Sales per labour hour is sales revenue divided by the number of staff hours worked in the same period. If a store takes $2,400 in a day with 80 hours worked, the result is $30 per labour hour.
It is calculated using POS sales and timesheet or roster hours, ideally broken down by hour of the day. Pairing it with visitor counts shows whether low productivity comes from too many staff or from too few customers.
Retailers and venues use it to test rosters, compare stores and set staffing guides. A rise in the figure after a roster change can show better matching of staff to demand. Differences between stores can reveal that one site is overstaffed or that another is missing sales because the team is stretched.
The measure has limits. Pushing it up by cutting hours may hurt service, queues and conversion, and some activities such as stocktake, training or prep are necessary but do not generate immediate sales. Stores with different layouts, product mix or opening hours are not directly comparable. Use it as a guide, along with customer-facing measures. Reviewing it by hour of day, rather than only as a daily total, makes mismatches between roster and traffic much easier to see.
It gives managers a simple productivity yardstick and supports data-led conversations about rostering.