Labor Management. NOW Simple. » Labor Management for Restaurants and Retail

Recession-Proofing with Forecasting

evangilder — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:11:37 +0000

Want to apply TimeForge’s forecasting to recession-proof your business? Peter Navarro published an article titled Recession-Proofing Your Organization in this Spring’s MIT Sloan Management Review. Navarro outlines a strategy to anticipate the downturns in the business cycle and steps to take competitive advantage of downturns.

Among his suggestions, trim the workforce and inventories to cut costs when leading into a recession. As the economy expands in good economic times, cherry-pick new hires before your competitors and boost inventory. There is no need to to be an economist to become your own business-cycle forecast; Navarro provides a simple forecasting formula and points you to Moody’s Economy.com website for data.

Moody’s won’t forecast your business’s sales or inventory, but TimeForge’s forecasting system provide additional insight into your business. Manager’s can track actual sales and theoretical projections made by staff members, and projections can be forecast with TimeForge to predict staffing levels, upcoming schedule needs, and are useful for tracking inventory turnover.

Visit TimeForge to sign up for a free trial of the most powerful labor scheduling system on the market!

Ignoring Labor Regulations Will Result in Heavy Fines

apresley — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:46:32 +0000

In many locales, labor laws for the service industry severely limit the number of hours that a non-exempt employee can work. Hours worked can be limited by the industry, age, job description (position worked), hourly rate, holiday, length of shift, or even the day of the week. If your business works with service unions, these rules can become even more complicated, requiring that managers spend time tracking breaks and meal periods and indicating whether or not employees wanted to take their break. Some states and insurance companies perform regular Labor & Industries audits, imposing heavy fines or insurance premium increases for non-compliant businesses.

Example: A sandwich restaurant in California employs three sandwich specialists, all of which are scheduled to work less than 8 hours a day, six days of the upcoming work week. On the first day of the schedule one of the employees fails to show up for work and is terminated by management. The remaining two employees must work work the additional 28 hours at the business to cover the terminated employee. Neither employee receives a day off during the work week. Under California law, each of the employees must be paid 1.5x overtime for more than 8 hours of work in a given day, and 1.5x overtime for more than 40 hours per work week. Additionally, the two sandwich specialists will receive 1.5x , 2.0x overtime on the 7th day of their work week, as neither employee will receive a break this week. Failing to pay these increased wages is grounds for a lawsuit and an investigation by the state. Insufficient staffing may cost this California business several thousand dollars , in a single week!

Careful managers schedule around these frequently changing and complicated rules, ensuring that their business is compliant with all applicable labor regulations. However, businesses can inadvertently land themselves in hot-water when employees fail to show up, quit, or are terminated for otherwise legitimate reasons. Inexperienced managers, overburdened by other areas of schedule creation can forget about these rules, which are not core to the “making money” aspect of their business. Stiff fines and lawsuits are the result of failing to be in compliance.

In uncertain economic times managers must be able to schedule labor correctly in a consistent manner, keep employees happy, and reduce fines imposed by legislative authorities, such as the Department of Labor. Businesses should seek to use cost-effective computer systems, such as TimeForge, to ensure that proper scheduling techniques are utilized. Effective scheduling software will be able to schedule meal and break periods, accurately calculate overtime costs, and archive previous schedules for managerial review.

Example: The general manager at a car wash business needs to ensure that one manager is always on duty, as well as a number of attendants to apply soap to the vehicles before vehicles enter the automated car wash machinery. Each attendant is required to receive a number of breaks during their shift, and this particular business prefers to hire employees who are minors to fill “holes” in the schedule. During a normal work day, between five and seven employees are working. By not carefully scheduling the break and meal periods and minor rules, the manager may end up with a shortage of staff as multiple employees take breaks (or leave for the day) at the same time and minor employees leave for home. During the labor shortage, customers will not be serviced appropriately. Alternatively, the manager may choose not to send employees homes or allow breaks to proceed , grounds for heavy fines, a lawsuit, and/or increased insurance premiums.

Labor & Industries (L&I) audits are common in some US states (California, Washington, Oregon, and New York are especially common) in restaurant, food-service, retail, construction, and hospitality-related industries. These audits are performed by the state or by insurance companies to verify that the business has complied with all applicable regulations. Audits focus on unpaid overtime, minors working too late or too early, break and meal periods that are not properly documented, and other violations. Rule infractions can be punished with stiff fines and/or insurance premium increases.

Make sure that all employees are aware of the applicable rules for the city, county, and state / province. Follow federal / national rules (where applicable), corporate rules, and insurance regulations (if applicable). Where possible, automated scheduling systems should be utilized to enforce these rules reducing the administrative burden placed on managers – allowing management to work on other pressing issues such as training, customer service, and management tasks which cannot be automated by cost-effective technology solutions.

Increase Profits with Improved Cost Controls

apresley — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 04:10:13 +0000

Save Thousands Through Better Scheduling of Labor , Reduce Turnover and Headaches

Lubbock, TX , April 20, 2008 , The slowing United States economy is having a negative impact on sales within the restaurant and retail industries and operators are seeking creative methods to improve profit margins at their companies. In the absence of growing sales, a common strategy is to focus on stronger inventory and labor controls to increase profits. It’s a strategy that will not only pay during tough economic times, but will continue to reap returns when the good times return. Well-chosen technology can help operators manage both cost centers without incurring great expense or time. One such example is TimeForge, a labor scheduling product that tightly controls employee labor costs by providing a simple-to-use solution for scheduling employees.

The TimeForge software program, available at http://www.TimeForge.com, ensures that managers spend more time “on the floor” and less time in the back office scheduling employees. The most recent version, released on April 20th, 2008 includes a number of improvements to the software and continues to build on TimeForge’s success as a quick, simple, and affordable scheduling solution for businesses of all sizes.

In many cases the new version of TimeForge can drastically increase operator efficiency and reduce the errors caused by ineffective scheduling techniques. Managers without labor scheduling tools, such as TimeForge, commonly spend more than $12,000 a year in management time (based on a national salary average of $62,500) building and managing the labor schedule! The latest version of TimeForge.com turns employee scheduling into an automated task that can be performed in a few minutes every week , improving store profits by thousands of dollars every year for the store.

Some advantages of the new TimeForge include:

TimeForge can manage meal and break periods for the schedule, and now includes break worksheets!
Costs for schedules now include overtime, including 1.5x, 2.0x, and California Overtime and exemptions!
TimeForge can be integrated with a number of software packages, reducing operator data entry
New multi-location reports
Many other improvements!

Making a great schedule every week is often a painful managerial chore for businesses of all sizes. The increased store profits, lower turnover, and improved employee morale make employee scheduling software a worthwhile investment. Many hospitality and retail owners have discovered how properly managing labor saves time and money for the business with a free trail of TimeForge.

About TimeForge.com
TimeForge.com is the premier employee scheduling software, designed to provide fast ROI benefits to the business, and to meet the growing demands of the work force. TimeForge.com is affordable software that works with both independent and chain operations in retail, hospitality, and many other industries. For more information about TimeForge.com, and to sign up for a Free Trial, visit the website at http://www.TimeForge.com

How long does it take to make a labor schedule for your workforce? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your motel, bank, school, restaurant, bar, club, or retail business.

Labor Management. NOW Simple. » Labor Management for Restaurants and Retail

Recession-Proofing with Forecasting

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Ignoring Labor Regulations Will Result in Heavy Fines

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Increase Profits with Improved Cost Controls

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