Productivity Podcast 2.0
The ReThink Productivity Retail Report 2026 and NotebookLM
4th May 2026
We gave Notebook LM our first ReThink Productivity Retail Report
NotebookLM digs into why shops can look perfectly staffed and still fail you at the checkout or on the shop floor, then trace the problem back to how retail measures efficiency. We use the ReThink Productivity Retail Report 2026 to show how a push for 100% utilisation creates a capacity cap that burns out colleagues and leaks sales
• The £6.25bn annual opportunity hidden inside “wasted” labour time
• How the efficiency index is built and why 80% is healthier than 100%
• the capacity cap and why small disruptions collapse service
• Demand-led rotas that protect peak trading hours and use quiet periods well
• Security tagging as a labour cost that can exceed the value it protects
• Omnichannel services that add seconds which turn into queues
• Self-checkout friction and why design beats blame
• Pragmatic tech wins like electronic shelf labels that lift morale