At the end of the week, employee attendance and times worked will be complied to determine payroll and wages for the usual “work week”. A side-by-side analysis of the actual labor schedule (time and attendance values) and the theoretical labor schedule will show numerous metrics that can be used to manage the staff. This process of comparing the actual schedule against the theoretical labor schedule is generally called “Actual vs Theoretical” or “AvT”. Using an AvT, you can analyze data such as:

• Which workers consistently show up for their shifts on time? Consistently dependable staff members are valued employees, showing up at work on time, and are the genuine workhorses of the company. Be certain to reward them for their hard work.

• Which workers are constantly tardy for their shifts? This can cause a labor shortage during shift changes, and can cause disarray among other staff members. These workers may need to experience corrective action to avoid continued habitual lateness.

• Which workers are constantly early for their shifts? This raises the payroll cost, lowering profit for the company. Preventative actions may be necessary with these staff members for the reduction of your labor costs.

• Which workers neglect show up for their shifts, or regularly call in? These staff members may need to be informed that they risk being let go, as they are fickle in their work habits and reduce morale for other employees and managers.

• Which workers are always free when another worker fails to show up? These staff members are willing to come in on their days off – and should be rewarded for their hard work to keep the establishment running.

• Which positions tend to have higher turnover? Turnover is immensely costly to a business, and pinpointing areas with high turnover is the first step to take to lower turnover and improve the bottom line.
  

• Which employees are most tenured? Tenured staff are devoted team members and should be rewarded for their hard work. Every effort should be made to boost the tenure of reliable employees while lowering turnover and raising profits.

• Which is more expensive, the theoretical or actual schedule? How much difference is there between the two?
  • If the theoretical schedule is costlier, management is over-scheduling the work force and may be letting employees off early without reason. This frequently leads to exasperated workers and much higher turnover – lowering profit for the company.
  • If the actual schedule is costlier, management is not scheduling enough work beforehand, and is then forced to call staff members on their days off. This scenario can also create exasperated workers and higher turnover. It frequently results in gratuitous over-time costs and reduced profit.
    

The perfect work environment has a 0% AvT ratio – staff members worked when they were scheduled and management precisely identified the establishment’s needs.

Labor, particularly in hospitality and retail industries, is the greatest expense which companies personally control. Analyzing metrics such as Actual vs. Theoretical labor costs gives management the ability to keep control of the business, therefore boosting profit. Very basic metrics can be analyzed manually using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, but advanced scheduling software such as TimeForge can determine advanced metrics swiftly and smoothly.

Are complicated employee scheduling practices taking up precious time at your business? Are you making the best possible labor schedule? How much turnover is created because of bad or late schedules? Did you know that TimeForge can reduce turnover, improve retention, and increase profits at your business? Sign up today for a no risk free trial!

Employee scheduling is a perfect example of the impact which careful attention can have on your bottom line. Dance studio labor management is difficult. Not only do each of your employees have a unique set of skills, availabilities, accrued PTO’s, and class time requests, but you also need to consider the necessity of adequate class coverage during times which are appealing to your students. An efficient labor schedule can be the difference between a successful studio with happy instructors, and total chaos with maximum turnover, so it’s important to invest in your employee schedule. However, it can be extremely difficult to create the perfect schedule when there are so many factors to consider and so little time.

If you over staff, you waste money. If you under-staff, you lose students.

You could easily spend several hours in an office, building a somewhat balanced, fair, and cost-effective schedule. Inevitably, however, an employee will have a last minute shift swap, illness, or time-off request, and you’ll need to start over. Then, after re-doing the entire scheduling process, you’ll need to notify all the employees about their shifts and classes (a second time), then monitor employee attendance (which is, in itself, a major energy drain) and field questions about the next week’s schedule.

TimeForge can literally reduce your labor management paperwork time from hours to minutes.

TimeForge enables you to build and manage schedules for one or many studio locations, schedule instructors and employees with specific skill levels in specific time slots, monitor attendance, and forecast future labor costs. All of these tasks can be done quickly and securely through TimeForge’s easy-to-use software, which you can access wherever you are, 24/7, from your computer, smart-phone, or social network account (like Facebook). TimeForge can increase dance studio profits by 3-5%.

TimeForge is an essential (and easy-to-use) labor management software for dance studio managers, but if you’re still not convinced, read what other TimeForge users say about the time and money they’ve saved with this easy to use staff scheduling software… or sign up today for your free trial and experience TimeForge for yourself!

Read more about TimeForge Scheduling, TimeForge Attendance, TimeForge Human Resources, and TimeForge Daily Log.

TimeForge provides over 30 reports that enable you to follow labor costs in real-time and predict future labor costs accurately.

TimeForge can also reduce your paperwork time from hours to minutes by streamlining the labor management process through our automated software. Creating a correctional officer duty roster can be a hassle. You coordinate 24/7 shifts, multiple employees, required skill sets, major and minor shift, each officer’s availability, accrued PTO, and meal breaks. While juggling this officer information, you also need to ensure that all posts are adequately covered, but also minimize overtime. Once you are finished, an officer or employee will inevitably request unexpected time off or a shift swap, so you’ll need to restart the entire process.

Without the right tools, notifying everyone about the finished schedule (and any schedule changes that arise) can be frustrating for everyone involved. Failure to communicate effectively can lead to staff shortages when an officer or employee misses a shift, which unfairly encroaches on the personal time of other employees who unexpectedly need to cover that shift. Unexpected schedule changes (like fills for missed shifts) lead to negative job satisfaction and increased turnover.  TimeForge addresses high turnover at the source: miscommunication. You can notify officers about the schedule and any changes through TimeForge automated text message, email, or through social networking sites (like Facebook).

Much like communicating the schedule, attendance monitoring is often dreaded by correctional facility managers. Monitoring attendance is a hassle. It can feel like you’re babysitting your employees, and requires a lot of your time. However,  it is absolutely necessary in order to control labor costs. TimeForge can help with your attendance monitoring needs by preventing early clock ins or late clock outs, preventing staff from buddy punching, and equipping you with the power to see who is (and who is not) clocked in… whether you’re on site or at a remote location. You can monitor attendance through your TimeForge website account, from your smartphone, or through a social networking account (like Facebook).

TimeForge is an essential (and easy-to-use) labor management software for correctional facilities, but if you are still not convinced, read what TimeForge users are saying here.

Read more about TimeForge Scheduling, TimeForge Attendance, TimeForge Human Resources, and TimeForge Daily Log.

What do you do at TimeForge?
I work mostly on GUI design and testing, doing enhancements for documents, presentations, GUI prototypes as well as testing software from a client/end user perspective.

How long have you been working with TimeForge?
I have been working like 2 years

What’s your favorite part of working at TimeForge?
I like doing prototyping, making and improving the existing or new “view” of what we want to show the clients and users. I always try to have the best user experience by moving/changing/adding/removing stuff from the “view”. I have learned very cool tools while working on  TimeForge, which allowed me to make several interesting things.

How do you make the lives of TimeForge customers better?
I always try to make them happy. I’m don’t know too much programming, which helps me to think more in the user side, IE how easy/hard is a part for the user. Timeforge is a big system and has a lot of cool features, however, we have to present them so that they will be really easy for the client to use. It doesn’t make sense if the system is hard to understand or work with, we always try to get it simpler and easier to use

What was your first hourly job (what did you do, what company)?
I started working directly in Timeforge.

What was your first restaurant or retail job (what did you do, what company)?
I didn’t work in any of those jobs

What’s your favorite hobby?
My favorite hobby is to listen to music (a lot of music), and play the drums. I like the piano too, but I don’t know too much of it.

What’s your favorite sports team?
I don’t really have a favorite sports team. I like some of the European soccer teams, like Manchester United, Barcelona and Inter.

Any pets?  What kind, and what are their names?
Don’t have any currently. I used to, but its very sad when they get lost or die, so we decided to stop having pets.

Labor management is boring, time-consuming, and necessary for any successful clinic or health care office. TimeForge can eliminate the frustrations of employee scheduling. TimeForge enables medical office managers to cut scheduling and attendance management time from hours to minutes! With TimeForge, you can easily and securely create or modify your labor schedule and monitor your labor costs and overtime in real-time, 24/7,  from your computer, smart phone, or social networking account (like Facebook). By streamlining your labor management, you can better forecast future labor costs and potential staffing shortages to avoid roadblocks well in advance.

With TimeForge, you can schedule the staff members with strong skill levels or necessary certifications during high volume shifts, automatically export attendance to your existing payroll system, and automatically notify employees about the upcoming schedule through email, text message, or their social networking account (eliminating missed shifts). By automating these processes and streamlining your labor management processes, you’ll find that you have much more time to attend to the other matters that require your attention. In fact, you’ll probably find that the time saved during the first week alone pays for the investment.

TimeForge is an essential labor management software for healthcare managers, but if you are still not convinced, read what TimeForge users are saying… or sign up for a free 10-day trial today to discover for yourself how easy to use and time-saving it really is.

Read more about TimeForge Scheduling, TimeForge Attendance, TimeForge Human Resources, and TimeForge Daily Log.

Market changes affect the way organizations employ workers. In the current economy, when hiring and developing seasonal help, what should you be focusing on? Simply put, no matter what type of business or which industry, concentration should be centered around customer service.

Why Customer Service ?

Customer service is imperative, now more than ever. It’s a war zone out there, with businesses fighting for their fair share of consumer spending. Overall spending has decreased due to a variety of factors, most importantly being that unemployment is still high and consumer confidence is low. Studies show that almost half of all consumers have altered their previous loyalties to certain brands in favor of cheaper, more cost-effective competitors. What studies also show is that brand loyalty increases when companies take steps towards becoming tech-savvy. This can be in products and services that are offered, digital options such as innovative websites or apps, behind-the-scenes business tools, as well as with knowledgeable and customer service-oriented employees.

Hiring for Customer Service

Consumers not only want to know they are getting a good price, they want to be sure they are getting a good product for their money. When hiring new staff, the ability to show up on time is no longer Criteria #1. In today’s workplace, hiring managers should be focusing on intelligence and attitude: Are they smart enough to learn the business and do they have the temperament that will allow them to make the customers happy? Advertise, interview, and use these two questions as candidate disqualifiers.

How Does this Apply to Seasonal Help?

Holiday and temporary workers are notorious for being inexperienced and uninformed. For a majority of these workers, it’s not their career and it’s probably not even in their field of experience (or interest). Seasonal jobs also do not come with the pay, incentives, and benefits of a permanent position. These issues can combine to create a ticking time bomb for eventual consumer dissatisfaction. There is no shortage of customer horror stories, especially during the holiday season.

What Can You Do?

Hire right and train relentlessly – it doesn’t get more straightforward than that. Select employees, staying as stringent to the intelligence and attitude traits as you possibly can, and train them to be as helpful to consumers as they possibly can be. The probability that customers will be satisfied with the service these workers provide, and therefore remain loyal, will be directly proportional to the amount of effort hiring managers put into attaining and developing additional staff.

Retention

Recruitment and training both have substantial associated costs. Retaining permanent employees, as well as part-time and holiday season workers, is the obvious solution to cut these expenses. Estimate the overall price tag related to the hiring and selection process for your organization. The cost of turnover will probably surprise you. Consider applying some of that expense towards incentives for quality seasonal employees. Why waste time on recruitment when a bonus or perk could keep your best temporary employees returning each year?

Focusing on customer service, whether internal or external, is important to every business, especially in today’s market. Online and in-person, customers want to know they are getting the most bang for their buck – not just in product quality, but in the service they receive. Technology has created the ability to communicate at lightening speed. If one ill-trained worker causes a bad experience for a consumer, it’s not just the one customer that your business stands to lose. You may also lose the hundreds or thousands of potential customers that get online and read the bad review or the comments and blog posts that were written against you. Online shopping has not eliminated the need for customer service. If anything, technology’s affect on the way we communicate has produced a need for increased customer service skills when meeting consumers face-to-face. Increase your organization’s level of customer service by hiring your seasonal help to mirror your permanent staff.

For assistance with hiring, see How to Hire for the Holiday: 3 Ways to Get it Right.

Use the TimeForge products – Scheduling, Attendance, Human Resources, and Daily Log, to easily manage your staffing needs during the holidays.  With TimeForge’s innovative online software, business owners and management are always at the top of their game. TimeForge makes quick work of painful tasks, like onboarding new employees – saving business owners valuable time and effort.  Try TimeForge today!

Crunch the Numbers

Depending on the size of your organization and your area of responsibility, determining whether or not to hire extra help for the holiday season may be relatively easy. If you’ve been established for a while, you should have production and/or sales data from previous years. Taking into consideration positive or negative year-over-year trends, calculate the increased percentage of the holiday season in comparison to the rest of year. Use this number to forecast the estimated workforce necessary by considering the employees most affected by the increased activity.

For example, suppose ABC Restaurant has 10 production cooks, four waiters and five other employees. Overall sales and production volume increases an average of 15% from October to January. If allowing overtime isn’t an option, ABC Restaurant will need to bring on two to three FTE workers to supplement the business, assuming the workload of all employees is affected during these months. If only production workers were affected, one to two additional workers would be needed.

FTE stands for full-time equivalent, so this would mean any number of workers whose hours equal that of one full-time employee. ABC Restaurant could hire four to six part-time employees to meet their needs. However, if overtime is an option for your staff members, ABC may not need to hire any staff at all. As few as five extra hours per week for each employee may cover the busy time. For your business, it may be a matter of walking the labor scheduling tightrope. Without the expenditures of recruiting, hiring and training, the cost of overtime pay for these employees may be negligible.  And, even better, the existing employees may love the additional hours!

Obviously there are a number of other factors that would need to be assessed, especially when dealing with much larger companies. If customer service is key to the success of your organization, be sure to over estimate labor needs, rather than under estimating customer service requirements.

Plan Accordingly

Once you’ve decided upon the number of temporary employees you’ll need to hire, (if any) allow yourself the opportunity to adequately prepare for the onboarding process. Begin the process a minimum of five weeks before the anticipated start date for new hires. Keep costs down by advertising only where necessary. Ask current employees for referrals and interview all potential candidates. Be prepared for an arduous process as staffing seasonal help can be difficult, and the new hires may not all show up on day one.

For further assistance in the hiring process, see How to Hire for the Holidays: 3 Ways to Get it Right

Use the TimeForge products – Scheduling, Attendance, Human Resources, and Daily Log, to easily manage your staffing needs during the holidays.  With TimeForge’s innovative online software, business owners and management are always at the top of their game. TimeForge makes quick work of painful tasks, like onboarding new employees – saving business owners valuable time and effort.  Try TimeForge today!

As businesses convert to paperless (or reduced-paper) systems, and owners and managers do more of their work remotely, an electronic fax system is becoming a must-have. Traditional fax machines require you to be physically near them to receive (or send) a fax, but electronic faxes can be sent and received by email or through an internet connection. You can send or receive faxes on your home computer, laptop, smart phone, or fax machine. TimeForge users will definitely understand the advantages of remote access!

There are many efax services available for business owners. ChooseWhat is a great review/comparison site for small business owners. Here’s their page about online fax services.

By sending and receiving faxes electronically, you can reduce the amount of paper and ink (money) you waste, and you’ll have instant electronic records of purchase orders, contracts, employee notes, disciplinary action forms, etc. Perhaps the most budget-friendly aspect of efaxing is the ability to use the system as an ideal (and cheap) scanner/copier. (TimeForge HR users can understand the human resource ease-of-use implications here!)

What’s your name?

What do you do at TimeForge?
I do mostly programming. I’m involved of several core parts of the timeforge system, which includes development in several languages and technologies. I also participate in the design and specifications of the stuff that Timeforge requires.

How long have you been working with TimeForge?
I’m working like 5 years, until now.

What’s your favorite part of working at TimeForge?
Well, the best part of working at Timeforge is learning new stuff. Almost every day I learn at least one new thing. I’m proud to say that I have participated and did at least some part of any of the TimeForge features, and I have learned several tricks and practices. I have worked with several smart people and tried to get the best of everything and everybody.

How do you make the lives of TimeForge customers better?
My goal is to have something that will be useful for the user. In these several years, I have seen and modified a bunch of functionality to have the user happy. We have redone and revamped several of the core functionalities of Timeforge, but sometimes is really difficult because something may be good or cool for a user, but not necessarily for another one, thats some of the risks when working with different kind of users and industries, however, I think we are doing this quite good, we are getting more and more clients using timeforge through these years. I really hate when a problem or bug appears in the system, because its a problem for the user and we are here to help the user
not to produce more problems in their lifes.

What was your first hourly job (what did you do, what company)?
Well I started working on Piramide Informatik, I used to do most of the time research about new technologies or tools, once we got something we used to test it in depth and see if it really works.

What was your first restaurant or retail job (what did you do, what company)?
I started helping my grandmother and mom, in a store we still have. I used to attend it and manage the base part of products, like ordering/selling.

What’s your favorite hobby?
Well, I guess that my favorite hobby is to travel. I had several health problems which took me to know new places….and guess what, there is a whole world out of there that needs to be visited. I have changed several of my ideas, so I now like to travel and know new places.

What’s your favorite sports team?
My favorite team is Aurora, which is a soccer team from Cochabamba-Bolivia, where I’m from. All my family likes this team, and some of my uncles have played there at the very beginning, so since no one is playing there any more, we just like it….

Any pets?  What kind, and what are their names?
Yes, we had 2 dogs, The mother’s name is Winnie, and her daughter is Lola…..However, in the last few days, Lola had 5 puppies, but we are getting new families for them, we have enough with just 2 dogs, lol.

If you are searching for a few easy, helpful hints that will aid you in your quest for seasonal labor, look no further:

1. Don’t focus on the fact that these workers are temporary.

Yes, you are hiring employees that are not intended to remain on staff long after January 1st; however, there are good arguments for methodically running through the hiring and selection process as if it was for a permanent role.

For starters, a lot of those looking for work may be doing so to earn money for the holidays or to qualify for a store discount towards their purchases. If this is the case, you may be able to count on them every holiday season.  How wonderful would it be to have a few “regular” callbacks that you could rely on from October to January?

Second, turnover is unpredictable. Let’s pretend that Anne cannot find a job, so she looks for seasonal work in order to have some sort of income. You hire her and she turns out to be an excellent employee. Derek, one of your best full-time employees, gives his two-week notice halfway through December. Because you took your time in selecting Anne for the position, you now have an easy backfill for Derek’s spot. You have not only ensured a good hire, but you’ve saved thousands, of recruiting dollars in the process.

Third, every hiring manager should know that the number one source of successful hires is through referrals. Great employees typically refer great candidates as people tend to surround themselves with those having similar values and interests. By treating the hiring of temporary help as if they are long-term (i.e. being very selective with who you hire), you may eventually benefit by hiring others through these new workers.

2. Start your hiring and selection process early.

Hopefully, as many retail and service industry businesses do, you have a list of “bench” candidates or part-time workers to choose from. This will provide you with some security before the time comes to advertise for help. Part-time workers are especially convenient as they already know your company and the position you need them to fill.

Depending on the type of company or industry, customers can also be extremely advantageous candidates. Those that know your products because they use them, or understand your business because they frequent it, could make smooth transitions into your workforce. Be sure to process these applicants as you would any other! Not only will this help you avoid potential legal issues for preferential treatment and hiring of your customers, but also, being a great customer does not automatically translate to being a great employee. You may find out during the hiring phase that it wasn’t meant to be. These cases need to be handled delicately as you do not want to lose the candidate as a customer if at all possible.

If you don’t have a list of potentials to draw from, recruitment should start at least a two months before you anticipate a need. It can take one to two weeks to place an ad and screen resumes, another several weeks to interview and a final week to finalize the process, including running a background check and/or drug screening. Assuming the candidate can start immediately upon acceptance, it is still a three to five week process at a minimum.

3. Plan where to advertise and make the job description specific.

It doesn’t have to cost as much to hire temporary employees as it does for permanent hires. As mentioned above, current customers and employee referrals would be a good place to start looking if you do not have a bench or backup list to begin with. Place “Help Wanted” signs in store windows and in any circulars you run. Let current employees know how to handle customers that inquire about open positions.

When placing ads online or in the newspaper, make sure to be as detailed as possible. Take time before posting the advertisement to nail down exactly what you are looking for in a candidate. Make sure this wish list is relayed in the ad so that you have the best chance for applicants that meet the description. However, don’t shoot for the stars so much so that you end up with no candidates – set your expectations at a realistic level.

Following these simple rules should make life a little easier, not only when winter preparations begin, but also when hiring temporary help at any time during the year. In order to determine if you even need to employ seasonal workers, stay tuned for our next post!

Use the TimeForge products – Scheduling, Attendance, Human Resources, and Daily Log, to easily manage your staffing needs during the holidays.  With TimeForge’s innovative online software, business owners and management are always at the top of their game. TimeForge makes quick work of painful tasks, like onboarding new employees – saving business owners valuable time and effort.  Try TimeForge today!