Labor Management. NOW Simple.

A salaried staff member is one who is paid a set amount each week, month, or year, rather than being paid per hours worked. Though putting an employee on salary (or declaring them exempt) can have major benefits for both your business and for the employee, there are some analytical problems that are created by having salaried employees.

Labor percentages, which compare the budgeted (scheduled or theoretical) cost of labor to the actual (clock ins/outs or attendance) cost of labor, can be complicated by salaried employees because the amount they get paid each pay period can fluctuate from the scheduled cost (estimate), due to vacation time and other variations in work time. Salaried employees can also make daily labor reports complicated because their fluctuating hourly wage is variable based upon the number of hours that they work.

TimeForge can help you accurately track your labor percentages even if you have salaried employees by simply changing a couple of settings.

Labor Percentages with Salaried Staff

Below is an example of a salaried employee and the analytical problems that are related to salaried employees. Salaried employees can make weekly labor reports complicated because their weekly pay rate can fluctuate. Imagine:

• John gets paid $52,000 annually, which breaks down to $1,000 per week. ($52,000 annually, divided by 52 work weeks in a year, is $1,000 per week.)
• But what if John takes two weeks of vacation this year, so he only works 50 weeks this year? Well, then we can say that John gets paid $1,040 per week. ($52,000 annually, divided by 50 work weeks this year, is $1,040 per week.)

So does John cost $1,000 per work week or does he cost $1,040 per work week? This 4% difference could skew your business’ labor percentage reports.

Salaried employees can especially make daily labor reports complicated:

• So, if John works 52 weeks per year, and he is scheduled for 40 hours per week, we can say that he is paid $26 per hour.
  ($1,040 per week, divided by 40 hours, is $26 per hour.)

• But, what if John is only scheduled for 20 hours one week? Then we can also say that he is paid $52 per hour, for that week. ($1,040 per week, divided by 20 hours, is $52 per hour.)

So how much money should be reported as John’s labor costs? Does John cost $26 every hour he is at work, or does he cost $52 every hour he is at work? This could really skew your daily labor percentages!

You can see why salaries can cause so much trouble with labor percentages. So, how do you deal with these problems, so that you can accurately track theoretical vs. actual labor costs?

Scheduling Salaried Staff

You need to decide whether you want to see John’s hours in your labor percentages. You can choose not to see them at all, or your can modify the way that you see the hours so they aren’t as variable.

Consider whether your salaried employees clock in when they are at work. If they do clock in, you can set their pay rates as hourly rates instead of salaries – regardless of how you pay your staff (that’s a separate function). This way, fluctuating hourly wages would always be a set amount, so you wouldn’t need to worry about a surprise high cost in your labor percentage reports. If your salaried employees don’t clock in, you can set the hourly rates to $0, or change your option settings to automatically copy a salaried employee’s scheduled hours to his or her attendance.

TimeForge Labor Management can improve your profits by 3-5%, often paying for itself in the first week alone, offering instant ROI for your business! Sign up for your free trial of our employee scheduling software today!

Still not convinced? Read what other TimeForge users are saying!

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The average company saves over $7,000 for each staff-member idea that is enacted, according to a Fun Factz article. That should make you, the business owner, want to build a giant employee suggestion box! It is imperative that you keep your employees happy, and keeping the lines of communication open is a big part of that.

Rypple recently reported on a study from McKinsey, whereby 64% of surveyed employees felt that they didn’t receive frequent recognition from their managers.   For a novice manager, remembering to praise your staff can be a hard thing to do, while worrying about all of the day-to-day needs required to keep moving the business forward.

One way to ensure that communications, and money saving ideas continue to flow from staff to management is to use TimeForge.   TimeForge labor management software helps you stay in touch with all of your staff simply and effectively through easy-to-use messaging and notifications.   TimeForge Notifications keep your employees up to date with the latest schedule and schedule changes through email, text message, and Facebook messaging, so you never have to worry about any confusion related to the schedule again.

TimeForge Messaging allows you to broadcast a message to all of your employees or to specific staff members. You can send information about upcoming sales events, company policy reference guides, encouraging information about recent sales figures, or a welcome “Good job!”

Satisfying employee time off requests with TimeForge is very easy – staff members can log in to their own TimeForge account and enter requests or availability changes, and you can approve or deny the requests at your convenience! While building a schedule, TimeForge will let you know when you are manually scheduling an employee during an approved requested time off.

By keeping your employees happy, you can increase productivity (and subsequently your sales figures), reduce the cost of turnover (check out 7 Ways Turnover Costs You and Your Business), optimize communication between these happy employees (and very happy managers), and therefore improve overall workplace performance all around.

Sign up for a free trial of our labor management software to see how happy your employees can be!

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Do you own or operate a retail or restaurant company?   Perhaps your store sells collectibles, health food products, cell phone accessories or curtains and rugs.   Regardless of the goods being offered, tightly controlling your labor expenses in the current economic climate is crucial to generate a profit.   Relevant employee expenses including payroll costs, training, and turnover should be properly managed.   With the proper procedures and a set of tools to assist with the complex chore of managing labor, your business can increase profitability.

One key to managing a labor force properly is to schedule part-time and full-time employees before they are needed for work (a theoretical work schedule), and then track the scheduled work against when employees clock-in and clock-out (the actual worked hours), a process known actual vs. theoretical, or AvT.   Good managers reduce the difference (variance) between the Actual hours worked and the Theoretical schedule, while maximizing the sales for the business.

Improper labor scheduling will lead to one of two circumstances for your business:

1. Too many employees are scheduled to work, increasing payroll costs, and reducing profits.   Alternatively, employees are sent home (or cut from the schedule) without working hours they were promised on the schedule.
2. Too few employees are scheduled to work, decreasing the number of sales that are made, and reducing profits.

Neither option is desirable, and the key to avoiding both situations is to monitor and refine the AvT at your business.

Smart managers constantly balance employee satisfaction against the needs of the business in an effort to keep payroll costs down, reduce turnover, and increase profits.   Turnover is extremely expensive, and a 2004 study by the Employment Policy Foundation found that the average turnover cost of a single full-time employee is $13,355.   To recover from the effects of the turnover of a single full-time employee, a retail store would need to sell more than 3,000 pairs of khakis priced at $35 each.   A restaurant would need to sell more than 7,613 children’s combo meals at $2.50 each.

One way to reduce turnover at your store is to implement a labor scheduling tool such as TimeForge, an online employee scheduling solution.

Peter Edwards, owner of Zeb’s General Store in North Conway, New Hampshire knows that proper employee scheduling is key to managing a retail business, especially a seasonal business.   Peter chose TimeForge to help him manage full-time and part-time shift labor at his store. reducing employee turnover and lowering labor costs.   Peter uses templates in TimeForge to rapidly build schedules for his business, and TimeForge automatically emails and text messages the schedule to his employees on a daily basis , notifying employees of their upcoming work schedule and keeping his staff happy.

Peter had this to say about TimeForge:

I own a retail company.   We employ 15 full time employees, and between 5 and 15 part time employees depending upon our season.   I signed up for the 90 day trial period and have been using the TimeForge program for about 45 days.   I have found the program to be easy to use and it hits the mark with respect to our staff scheduling needs.   The email notification aspect of the program is a great feature that I am sure our employees will like.

The most important aspect of TimeForge is the incredible customer support.   Responses to the help menu item are emailed within 24 hours, and a live person actually answers the phone to respond to your questions.   I look forward to using TimeForge and would be pleased to talk with any prospective user of the scheduling program.

If you would like to see what TimeForge can do for your restaurant, hospitality, or retail business, then please sign up today for a free trial or contact our sales department for more information about TimeForge.

How long does it take to make an employee schedule for your employees? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that TimeForge can minimize costs and increase profits through effective employee scheduling at your pizza, restaurant, hotel, bar, club, or retail business. Sign up today for a free trial!

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In a recent entry, we discussed where improper labor scheduling led to very poor customer experience at a local Taco Bell store. In addition to upsetting their guests, the labor shortage caused several other problems within their store , many of which will have long-term negative consequences for the restaurant.

What did the labor shortage cost them?

1. Guests were unhappy. This includes myself and the man in front of me, at a minimum. The guests inside were not very happy either. Will they come back? There is no way to know, but Taco Bell has two direct competitor’s (Mexican QSR food) less than two blocks away.
2. Employee Satisfaction. There is no doubt that the employees were upset because of the increased workload, pressure, and the guest dissatisfaction. The labor shortage was likely a management decision, which has directly affected the employee morale.
3. Increased Turnover. Most QSR employees have prospective jobs within a few yards, and this fast-food concept is no different. While sitting in the drive-thru, I could spot at least six other businesses that would readily hire any of the Taco Bell employees.
4. Reduction in sales. One customer every six minutes? Assuming that this restaurant concept averages $1.00 in net profit per customer, they are making only $10 per hour in profit. How did we calculate their profit? 60 minutes / 6 minutes per customer = 10 customers served. $1 per customer = $10 in profit per hour. By improving their serving time to 1 customer per minute, they could have made $60 per hour!

What could they have done to properly allocate their work-force?

1. Could they have chosen a more skilled cook to work alone as the line cook? A skilled worker may be hundreds of times faster than an un-skilled worker. (TimeForge can assign employees to shifts using skill levels!)
2. Could the drive-thru order processing and the front-counter clerk duties been merged to one person? This would have put a second body in the kitchen, potentially more than doubling their kitchen output. (TimeForge can track labor costs, helping managers decide which job functions can be combined)
3. Could they have scheduled a fourth employee? This would have increased their labor cost, but the extra worked could be sent home after their sales and labor peak passed. (TimeForge can schedule additional employees with a single click).
4. And many other options!

It might be time for the management of the store to look for a cost-effective scheduling tool, such as TimeForge!

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

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Do you want to reduce your turnover by at least 5 percent?
Do you want to improve employee satisfaction?
Do you want to build a schedule in just a few minutes?
Do you want to be doing something other than making the labor schedule?

TimeForge labor scheduling software has been upgraded to the latest version, version 1.8, at no charge to our customers, and this release includes a number of new features to make scheduling even more simple. Some of the latest features include:

1. Schedule by Department / Position or by Time. Wok shifts can be grouped together by position, or ordered by time, or both! When using the position / department groups, each group will display the total cost for the group, the number of shifts, and the total number of hours being scheduled. Schedule how you want to!
2. Employees can view the schedules of other employees. To enable this feature, login to TimeForge, click on “Setup“, and then choose “Settings for this Location“. In the “TimeForge Configuration” section, you will see a question which reads: “Do you want to allow your employees to view other employee’s schedules and contact information?” Make sure this option is set to “Yes“, and then save your settings. Any employee who logs into TimeForge.com can click on their “Schedules” tab, and then click on “Other Employee’s Schedules“. Employees can view the times, phone numbers, and assigned employees for all of the published labor schedules at your business.
3. Requests and Availability can be filtered by position or employee. For example, you can view the requests for only “Joe“, or you can look at all of the requests from your “Server” staff. To use this feature, click on the “Employees” tab, and then choose “Edit employee requests / availability“. Once on that screen, you can change the “Requests for:” drop-down to display specific requests, and then click on “Show” to actually see that information.

In addition to these new features, several bug fixes and speed improvements have been added to make TimeForge the premiere online employee scheduling package.

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

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• Reduce Turnover with Shift Scheduling Software
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