Labor Management. NOW Simple.

As a manager, your main value to your company is your influence. Good managers influence their company far more than average employees by trickling ideas both down and up the ladder. Mary Kay Ash once said, “People are definitely a company’s greatest asset. It doesn’t make and difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps.”

If people are the greatest asset of a company, then a good manager is invaluable. Here are four ways to help you be the best manager you can be:

1. Pay attention to improving your company’s competitive advantage. Remind employees that the first law of business is “take care of the customer”. Encourage your employees to innovate and create to prevent your competitors from having better ideas than you. In the hospitality industry, it’s easy to get caught up in the mundane repetitiveness of day-to-day activities. Spice it up by incorporating a “new ideas” segment into weekly staff meetings. Quality of product, quality of service, and overall quality of experience must be exemplary in the hospitality industry in order to prevent loss of your customer base to a competitor. Ensure rewards for employee efficiency.

2. Diversify! To make sure your company has a solid ladle of the melting pot, hire people of every age range, race, ethnicity, and gender. By 2060, half of the American population will be made up of ethnic and racial minority groups. Also, familiarize yourself with global cultures, especially if your company plans to expand internationally. It is important to diversify your employee pool in order to not only keep up with your customer base, but also to ensure the organizational strength of your company by maximizing the diverse contributions that you will only get by having a diverse employee pool.

3. Technology is your friend , use it! Spending on retail software will exceed $20 billion by 2014. Technology has transformed industries and changed the very nature of business. Minimally, e-business practices will reduce your cost of communication. If used effectively, e-business technologies can have a far greater positive impact on your profit margin through accelerated decision making, broadened communication, expedited handling of employee and store issues, more thorough hiring practices, and the many benefits project and employee management software can offer. If you incorporate the right management software in your business, scheduling, tracking, communication, and hiring employees can be faster, easier, and considerably more efficient financially.

4. Don’t forget yourself. While managing in the fast paced hospitality industry, it can be easy to compartmentalize your life – home life and work life need not intertwine. This can be beneficial to your sanity, but it can make you feel like two different people. When making decisions at work, be sure to remind yourself who you are and what your ethics dictate. In today’s high pressure climate in one of the most competitive industries, the need to meet quotas and deadlines can leave you facing some major ethical dilemmas. Consider the implications of your decisions, and whether the decision fits into your life plan. Be sure that your company’s culture fits your compass of ethics, as it can be difficult to juggle bosses, subordinates, your daily workload, and two conflicting sets of rules.

Related articles or pages

• TimeForge Scheduling Features List
• TimeForge has Fingerprint Scanning for Punching In and Out
• TimeForge for Liquor Stores
• Six Management Tips from RSPA
• Scheduling Salaried Staff

According to the National Retail Federation, turnover within the restaurant, retail and hospitality industry has been approximately 60%-200% over the past five years. Low pay and young staff members are major contributors to the problem, but what can businesses do to improve their turnover and, thereby, their labor costs? Employers should improve their recruiting strategies and their ability to retain employees. TimeForge’s labor management products can assist with strategies to hook the enthusiastic and hard-working Gen Y-ers, in addition to keeping them happy, informed, and fulfilled by their work.

Using college and high school campuses to recruit talent is an excellent way to reach Gen Y-ers in their element. Individuals who are part of Generation Y are especially peer-influenced, so recruiters should be close to their age, and advertisements should appeal to their interests. It’s important to highlight your businesses philanthropy and responsibility during recruiting, because, as we mentioned in Part One, Gen Y-ers are especially concerned about the environment, social justice and various conservation and humanitarian issues. It’s important to contribute toward (and emphasize to prospective employees and the community) the kind of charities that hit home with Generation Y.

An understanding of Generation Y’s appreciation and attachment to technology will help you better recruit and manage members of this demographic. The online and interactive labor management TimeForge provides is easy to use and appealing to Gen-Yers, who have grown up comfortable with computers. In addition to the appeal of online schedule viewing, shift-swapping, training/certification reminders and more, when it comes to applying for jobs, Generation Y prefers to submit their resume/application online. TimeForge’s applicant tracking systems make it easy to compile and store online applications with our applicant tracking systems, which will have you onboarding the most qualified applicants with minimal time and effort.

The amount of retailers accepting online applications has increased exponentially within the past 5-10 years, so if your business isn’t offering a digital application process, it’s likely that you’re losing out on potential job candidates. In a 2007 pilot program, McDonald’s installed computer kiosks to accept employee applications in 40 of its restaurants. The number of applicants at those restaurants jumped by as much as 100 percent. At one McDonald’s in College Station, Texas, the employee turnover rate also was reduced by more than 20 percent, according to an article by Andrew Tilin. By using TimeForge, your business could enjoy similar turnover reduction and employee retention.

Gen Y-ers appreciate the ability to apply quickly, easily, and impersonally while in casual clothes. Offering online application and resume submission also eliminates a great deal of the necessary paperwork that comes with accepting applications and hiring new employees, which not only makes things simpler for management and corporate (where applicable) but it’s a start towards Generation-Y-luring “Green” initiatives. TimeForge can drastically reduce the need for paperwork with our online products that feature document/certification uploading and storage, employee on-boarding, and employee management to assist in a transition to a more “Green” company.

It’s also important to recognize that more Gen Y-ers have goals of opening their own businesses one day, than in previous generations. Learning what they need to know in order to accomplish this is another intangible benefit your business can offer to Generation Y (and other) staff members, and TimeForge’s labor management system is a great way for inexperienced individuals to gain experience and understanding of what managing people is like. In order to find future entrepreneurs, recruit and advertise near hospitality-geared high school classes and university colleges (ex: Texas Tech’s Restaurant, Hotel and Institutional Management college,) and give your Generation Y employees as much room for education and higher placement as possible, in order to allow for growth and continued interest.

TimeForge can help your business better appeal to Generation Y, which can help increase your number of applicants, reduce your turnover, and allow you to better manage your entire labor staff, regardless of generation.

Related articles or pages

• Going Green is Good for Profits
• Easily Manage Labor with Innovative Staffing Reports
• Labor Management Software Update Simplifies Employee Scheduling
• Generation Y Part One: Marketing
• Is Employee Scheduling Complicated? Not Anymore!

One of the features that makes TimeForge easier to use and more efficient than other labor management platforms is our newly released, visually-demonstrated weekly schedules. The new weekly schedule charts allow business owners and managers in the retail, restaurant and hospitality industries to save time and capital when scheduling staff, keeping businesses ahead of their competition.

While building an employee schedule, a comprehensive daily graph is visible to demonstrate an interactive version of the day’s schedule. While managers are building their staff schedule they can view a weekly staffing chart to see a visual representation of employees’ schedules, by position and times, in an organized, color-coded chart to make scheduling staff members easier than ever.

Easily Schedule Staff by Looking at the Weekly Schedule

TimeForge founder Anthony Presley sought to solve some of the problems business owners often experience with employee scheduling:

“TimeForge has had daily staffing graphs and visualization for years, allowing managers and owners to quickly and easily visualize their staffing load throughout the day. Our new weekly graph extends this one step further, providing one click schedule validation and visualization. Managers can spot holes in the schedule where their business may be under or over-staffed.”

Take a look at our press release about the latest TimeForge features.

Sign up for a free trial of our labor management tool today!

Related articles or pages

• Part Two: Recruiting and Retaining Gen Y Employees
• Easily Manage Labor with Innovative Staffing Reports
• Generation Y Part One: Marketing
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 2)
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 1)

The TimeForge team has been hard at work adding to the TimeForge software product, making employee scheduling simple, and time and attendance monitoring easier.   We now offer Biometric Fingerprint scanning to all TimeForge Max users.   We have partnered with M2SYS to offer an out-of-the-box and affordable solution to all users, and are proud to be listed on the M2SYS partners page.

A joint press release about our partnership was recently issued, and can be found on the M2SYS website in full.   The interesting tidbits for TimeForge users include:

According to Anthony Presley, Founder of TimeForge, “Our customers already schedule their employees online, but many continue to use traditional time clocks to track when employees punch in and out at their business. The M2SYS biometric product allows our customers to easily track time and attendance data and compare it to existing schedules — providing important and accurate payroll information. By eliminating the need for passwords and employee identification cards, it should significantly reduce buddy punching, which will save our customers up to 5-7% of their annual payroll expenses.”

“Companies in the retail and hospitality industry are quickly recognizing the benefits of using biometrics, including the reduction of buddy punching and an overall improvement in time and attendance data accuracy,” states Michael Trader, President of M2SYS Technology. “We are excited about being chosen by TimeForge, and look forward to a long-standing relationship with them and their customers.”

For more information about pricing, or how to get a Fingerprint scanner, contact the TimeForge sales department.

Can you build a schedule in less than 10 minutes? How many thousands of dollars do you spend making schedules every year? Did you know that TimeForge can minimize costs and increase profits through effective employee scheduling at your restaurant, pizzeria, hotel, club, bar, or retail business. Sign up today for a free trial!

Related articles or pages

• Updates to Employee Scheduling and Time and Attendance Software
• Time and Attendance Made Easy
• Time and Attendance – Improved in TimeForge
• Grocery Stores
• TimeForge Newsletter , November Edition (Part 1)

We just got back from four full days in sunny Houston, TX. We exhibited at the 2008 Southwest Food Expo, hosted by the Texas Restaurant Association. TimeForge occupied booth 1546 right next to the franchise pavilion and we had a great time in Houston! Throughout the show we became friends with many of our neighbors, dined on wonderful food, and spoke to a number of restaurateurs, hotel and retail owners , most need help with employee scheduling.

We really enjoyed spending time with our neighbors from Del Mar College and Ctuit.

• Del Mar is a wonderful establishment, and Chef Mark (heading their program) knows what he’s doing, with years of experience “on the floor”. Anyone looking to enter the hospitality industry , or needing to hire talented graduates , should contact Del Mar College.
• Ctuit is a leading provider of above-store reporting software that integrates with several different kinds of Point of Sale, Accounting / GL, Time and Attendance, and other software packages. Reports are sent to a central location and can be reviewed by corporate, regional, or district level managers. Thanks for demonstrating your product to us!

Next to us was the Franchise Pavilion, and it included reps from Boston’s Pizza Restaurants, Pollo Campero, Which Which, Dunkin Donuts, Baskin Robbins, Huddle House, and Franchise Times. It seemed to be a tough show for finding franchisees, but many of them kept the show very entertaining for us. If they (or their franchisees) need labor scheduling, they’ll know TimeForge can help!

Lance, Mike, and the rest of the Focus POS crew were on site, dressed down in their bright orange brand and ready to help restaurant owners find the right Point of Sale system. Of all of the Point of Sale vendors, Focus POS has one of the most full-featured labor scheduling systems. They understand that employee scheduling is hard – and try to make it easy for operators to build schedules. It was good to see them again.

Gary Peek, president of Intura stopped by and spoke with us about TimeForge and its applicability in international markets. I spent some time in the Intura booth on Tuesday learning about their mapping software and their ability to do sales analytics based on geographical sales locations. Very cool technology!

More TRA Expo highlights coming ….

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 improve profits and minimize costs through effective employee scheduling at your restaurant, hotel, bank, school, bar, club, or retail business.

Related articles or pages

• Texas Restaurant Association Show (Part 2) — 2008
• Texas Restaurant Association Show — 2008
• Congratulations TimeForge!
• Accuvia , Labor Scheduling Systems
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 2)

Lubbock, TX , May 28, 2008 , Making a great work schedule week after week is often a painful managerial chore for businesses of all sizes. However, the increased store profits, lower turnover, and improved employee morale make employee scheduling software a worthwhile investment. Many operators in the restaurant, retail, and hospitality industries create labor schedules by hand using pen-and-paper methods that can consume up to seven hours a week in managerial time , an expense of more than $12,000 per year in manager time building and managing the labor schedule! Operators using spreadsheets still spend at least two hours a week scheduling labor.

Well-chosen software solutions can help operators control labor and increase profits, without incurring great expense. For example, TimeForge, a web-based labor scheduling product tightly controls employee labor costs and reduces turnover 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 May 27, 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. According to Michael, the proprietor of Tiara Cafe in California, “The TimeForge scheduling system has not only increased our efficiency tremendously; decreased the errors in what is normally an error prone environment; it has also saved us ten times what it costs us each month.”

TimeForge 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 now includes the ability to track employee tips, which can be entered when an employee clocks out, or later by management!
• Schedules and templates can be organized into departments (similar to folders) to easily differentiate between “Front of House” and “Back of House” schedules.
• New attendance reports are available for supervisors and managers.
• Managers can easily see why an employee cannot be scheduled , regardless if the employee is already scheduled at another location or in a conflicting shift, or if the employee is unavailable.
• Locations / stores / units can be organized into a Corporate Hierarchy so that managers can monitor scheduling practices for groups of locations.
• Many other improvements!

Independent and chain operators alike can benefit from the many time saving and profit improving features of labor scheduling systems such as TimeForge. Get back on the floor today!

About TimeForge
TimeForge 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, and to sign up for a free trial, visit the website at http://www.TimeForge.com

Related articles or pages

• Off Topic: Inventory Managment for Restaurants
• Employee Labor Scheduling: Interview with TimeForge.com's Anthony Presley
• TimeForge Labor Management, a quick background ….
• Reduce Turnover with Shift Scheduling Software
• Increase Profits with Improved Cost Controls

There are literally hundreds of trade shows every year that are relevant to our users in one way or another: retail products, loss prevention, HACCP safety, forecasting sales and inventory, temperature and humidity monitoring, human resource best practices, and more!

Some of the upcoming trade shows that may be relevant to TimeForge customers include:

• National Grocer Association Convention, Feb 5 , 8 (Las Vegas)
• International Restaurant Show, National Bar and Nightclub Show, and HotelWorld Expo , Las Vegas, Feb 24 , 27 (Vegas)
• International Restaurant & Foodservice Show of New York, Mar 9 , 11 (New York)
• International Pizza Show 2008, April 1 , 3 (Vegas)
• New England Foodservice & Lodging Expo and Conference, April 6 , 8 (Boston)
• Northwest Foodservice Show, April 27 , 28 (Portland)
• National Association of Convenience Stores (NACStech), May 5 , 7 (Grapevine)
• National Restaurant Association 2008, May 17 , 20 (Chicago)
• Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition & Tradeshow , HITEC 2008, June 16 , 19 (Austin)
• Southwest Foodservice Expo, June 22 , 24 (Houston)
• Loss Prevention Conference & Expo, June 23 , 25 (Orlando)
• Texas Food & Fuel Expo, July 20 , 22 (Grapevine)
• National Food Service Security Council, July 27 , 30 (Grapevine)

What shows will you be attending this year?

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

Related articles or pages

• International Restaurant Show
• Weekly Schedule Templates: New in TimeForge
• Time and Attendance – Improved in TimeForge
• Templates and Weekly Templates Sorted – Improved in TimeForge
• Posting of Schedule Changes – Improved in TimeForge

Entitled A Look Into the Leading Chains of the Casual, Fast Casual, Quick Serve, and Family Restaurant Segments, Chain Store Guide (CSGIS) recently published an whitepaper describing Point of Sale (POS) systems currently being used by various national restaurant chains.

There is some interesting information in the whitepaper, which is an examination of the data that Chain Store Guide has been collecting for years, and makes available in some of their products. The paper looks at the average age of POS hardware and POS software in use at the top five restaurants for several segments of the hospitality industry, including:

• Fast Casual (Panera Bread, Chipotle Mexican Grill, P.F. Chang’s China Bistro, Boston Market, Captain D’s, etc…)
• Casual (Applebee’s, Chili’s, Outback, Olive Garden, T.G.I Friday’s)
• Quick Serve (McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, Subway, Pizza Hut)
• Family Restaurant (Denny’s, Cracker Barrel, Golden Corral, Bob Evans, Waffle House)

According to their data:

• The top 5 fast casual chains have Point of Sale hardware that is almost 7 years old, and Point of Sale software that is just over 5 years old (on average).
• The top 5 casual chains have Point of Sale hardware that is about 6 years old, and Point of Sale software that is right at 9 years old (on average).
• The top 5 quick service chains have Point of Sale hardware that is right at 4 years old, and Point of Sale software that is just over 3 years old (on average).
• The top 5 family chains have Point of Sale hardware that is just over 7 years old, and Point of Sale software that is more than 9 years old (on average).

You can read the full Chain Store Guide report here.

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

Related articles or pages

• Off Topic: Inventory Managment for Restaurants
• Part Two: Recruiting and Retaining Gen Y Employees
• Florida Restaurant & Lodging Show is Wrapped Up…
• Accuvia , Labor Scheduling Systems
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 2)

On September 6 , 9, we exhibited at the Florida Food & Lodging Show and occupied booth 1506 for three days. Held in sunny Orlando, the show provided access to about 500 exhibitors for approximately 10,000 restaurant, hotel, and club professionals. This year, the show was held in conjunction with Pizza Magazine’s (PMQ) Orlando Pizza Show.

Hopefully, the show was a great success for the many restaurateurs who were at the show, seeking the latest in equipment, operations techniques, food cost controls, employee scheduling software, building leasing, credit card processing, and everything else that owners, operators, and managers in the restaurant, bar, club, and foodservice industries need. We enjoyed meeting everyone who stopped at our booth!

TimeForge was presented to several thousand individuals interested in controlling labor costs, reducing turnover, and making their life easier by using scheduling and labor management systems.

We’d like to thank a few of the exhibiting companies who share a similar passion for the hospitality industry (ordered by physical proximity to our booth):

• Don Edward & Company (Don) , Everything but the food
• Finn Marketing Group , Cutting-edge restaurant equipment
• DinerWare , Feature rich POS systems for the right price
• FishBowl Marketing , The de-facto standard in hospitality e-mail marketing
• PMQ Magazine , Dedicated publications for the pizza industry

Additionally, we met with DinePoint, who had several representatives attending the show. Expect some news from TimeForge and DinePoint in the near future!

How long does it take to make an employee schedule? It should take less than 5 minutes! Did you know that labor costs could be as much as 30% of your expenses? TimeForge can help streamline and minimize labor costs through effective employee scheduling at your restaurant, bar, or club.

Related articles or pages

• Texas Restaurant Association Show (Part 2) — 2008
• Off Topic: Inventory Managment for Restaurants
• Age and Brand Analysis of POS Systems in Foodservice
• Accuvia , Labor Scheduling Systems
• Western Food Expo is a wrap!

Lubbock, TX , August 10, 2007 , Stop wasting time on employee schedules! Labor scheduling, considered a necessary headache by most restaurant industry professionals, consumes between 3 and 8 hours of management time every week; time that can be better spent managing employees, attending customers, and servicing business needs. Today, the industry’s leading labor-scheduling company, TimeForge.com, announced that version 1.7 of the TimeForge software will be released at the 2007 Western Foodservice & Hospitality Expo.

TimeForge’s latest version of the popular employee scheduling software continues to improve on the company’s conviction that scheduling must be as fast as possible so managers and employees can spend more time on the floor. TimeForge clients report that labor schedules can be built in less than 30 minutes, an 80% – 98% savings for many in the hospitality industry.

Western Food Expo has selected TimeForge for this year’s “Onsite New Product Gallery” and will showcase the new features of the software including an enhanced user interface, requests and availability, shift swapping among employees, significant AutoScheduler™ speed improvements, a superior report interface, as well as new time and attendance features. TimeForge has also improved the core of the product: scheduling and notifications. Managers gain more control of automatic schedule creation, and employees have greater flexibility with availability and schedule requests.

No more sticky-notes and no more scheduling spreadsheets! To be competitive in today’s market, electronic scheduling is a necessity. Visit TimeForge.com at the Western Foodservice & Hospitality Expo, booth #2827, to see what you have been missing!

About TimeForge.com
TimeForge.com is the leading online employee scheduling software product. TimeForge provides immediate ROI benefits to the business while meeting the growing demands of the workforce. TimeForge.com is designed specifically for the hospitality and restaurant industries including restaurants (quick-service and table-service), hotels, catering, and other hospitality markets.

Related articles or pages

• TimeForge v2.4.5
• TimeForge Labor Management, a quick background ….
• Labor Scheduling at the TRA Show – 2008
• TimeForge Selected for the Western Food Expo Onsite New Product Gallery!
• Time For a Schedule Change