Labor Management. NOW Simple.

• Communication between staff members is the key to a good schedule. Shift swaps, staffing minimums, requests for days off, changes in availability, upcoming business requirements (private parties, birthdays, etc…) will all demand more from the staff than any one person will know.   Coordination is key to ensuring a smooth workday.

• Ensure that staff members have any necessary certifications, and that the certifications are current. An employee working without the right certifications can cost your business thousands in fines by various policing authorities, and in some locales, can land the manager on-duty in jail.

• Copying a schedule from the previous week is a quick way to make a schedule for the upcoming week. But this method of employee schedule creation assumes that the previous schedule was “good“. How would you know?   Use various metrics to identify whether the schedule worked for your business – actual vs. theoretical, how many shifts changed, were employees satisfied, how many no-shows occurred, was the actual payroll within an acceptable margin of the actual sales (or customer throughput)?

• Cross training is an excellent management technique to ensure that when the unexpected happens, your business is prepared.   Employees who have been cross trained are able to perform more than one job duty.   When staff members fail to show up to work, or an emergency happens at the business, the workforce is prepared to handle the situation.

• Early clockins and late clockouts can drain the profits from your business. Every employee that clocks in early, or clocks out late is using up precious profits that could be going to fund expansion, provide raises, and pay bills. Watch out for employees who ride the clock by monitoring the employee schedules, and comparing clock in and clock out times to scheduled work times.

• Managers spend hours messing with and creating the work schedule every week. Keep staff members happy and use TimeForge to make the employee schedules.   Employees stay happy because employee’s know what is going on, and managers are content because they can build an employee schedule in seconds.

TimeForge labor management software is used by owners and operators of restaurants, retail stores, bars, grills, and other service-oriented businesses to increase profits, reduce turnover, and improve retention.

Related articles or pages

• TimeForge Attendance Improvements
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 1)
• TimeForge Workforce Scheduling is now listed in FindApps.com
• Spend Less Time Scheduling Labor – More Time Managing Your Business
• Schedules are Theoretical Time, Time and Attendance is Paid Time , Manage Both

At TimeForge we are continuing to innovate employee scheduling and labor management – always making employee schedules easier to build and maintain.   And we recently introduced Employee Schedule Snapshots … a new and easy way to save, restore, and perform “What If” scenarios on your employee work schedule.

What can you use Employee Schedule Snapshots for?

Schedule Snapshots are useful for performing point-in-time saves.   TimeForge schedules are automatically saved anytime any field is modified, but sometimes it is useful to save the current schedule before making any modifications – so that you may come back to it if necessary.   Schedule Snapshots allow you to archive the current version of the schedule, along with some quick stats about the number of shifts, and the cost of the schedule.

At any point in time, a previous Schedule Snapshot can easily be restored.   Simply choose which snapshot you’d like to restore, and your employee work schedule will immediately roll back to the previously saved Schedule Snapshot.

Employee Schedule Snapshots are available on the Schedule Detail page, and are very useful for:

• Integrating newly hired staff members (Identifying which shifts can be moved around to accommodate the new employees)
• Locating shifts that can be removed or modified to reduce labor costs
• Viewing the effects of a shift swap or drastic schedule change prior to actually “doing it”
• Rolling back to a previous version of the current employee schedule
• And other “What If?” scenarios with the work schedule and staff members

What do you think of our Employee Schedule Snapshots?   We’d love to hear from you!

TimeForge labor management software (employee scheduling software, attendance software, and others) is used by owners and operators of restaurants, retail stores, bars, grills, and other service-oriented businesses to increase profits, reduce turnover, and improve retention.

Related articles or pages

• TimeForge v2.4.5
• Supercharged Scheduling from Nations Restaurant News
• Spend Less Time Scheduling Labor – More Time Managing Your Business
• Simple Employee Scheduling – Version 1.8.5 (Part 3)
• Simple Employee Scheduling – Version 1.8.5 (Part 2)

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!

Related articles or pages

• Restaurant Business Article on Workforce Problems
• Updates to Employee Scheduling and Time and Attendance Software
• TimeForge v2.4.5
• Spend Less Time Scheduling Labor – More Time Managing Your Business
• Increase Profits with Improved Cost Controls