Labor Management. NOW Simple.

In many states, employees receive paid or unpaid break periods and meal periods according to the law. The TimeForge Breaks Module allows management to enter rules which manage employee breaks and meal periods, letting you easily control and track breaks for on-duty or scheduled employees. After enabling the Breaks Module, you’ll be ready to customize your break and meal period options so they are tailored to best suit your company’s needs.

Scheduling Breaks:

You can add your state, federal, or company mandated “Break Rules” or “Meal Period Rules” and delegate whether the break is paid or unpaid, optional or required.

After adding the necessary breaks, TimeForge can automatically place employees on the schedule and will stagger the breaks to keep employees from all taking the breaks at the same time.  Alternatively, managers can specify each break individually.

When using TimeForge Breaks in conjunction with TimeForge Scheduling, you can:

• Specify breaks based on hours worked, position, or duration of work scheduled
• AutoScheduler™ can quickly stagger breaks for each scheduled shift
• Schedule and manage both paid and unpaid, and optional and required breaks
• Print break reports and worksheets to track employee signatures

Taking Breaks:

Employees can begin or end their breaks with the click of a button.  You can set options to allow employees to take breaks based on the scheduled break settings, specify all breaks as a certain type, or staff can select what kind of break they will be taking (paid, unpaid, optional, required).  If preferred, you can print out the break worksheet and capture employee signatures for any waived or new breaks.

By using TimeForge Breaks in conjunction with TimeForge Attendance, management can:

• Track employee breaks (paid, unpaid, optional, required) for labor reporting
• Automatically take breaks based on the schedule if staff forget to break in or out
• Simple one-click conversion of unpaid breaks to paid breaks (and vice versa) in the “Edit Attendance” module
• Real time web and mobile view of labor and tracking of which staff members are on break
• Alerting and Reporting with TimeForge automatically staggers employees breaks when you add them to the schedule, so your business is always covered by capable staff.

Because the reality (attendance) is often different from the scheduled breaks, you can also see a display of employee breaks based on the employee’s scheduled hours with our Break Report, and track breaks that employees have taken, or should take, based on the employee’s scheduled work hours with our printed Break Worksheet Report. Our detailed and comprehensive reports make it simple and organized to view employee habits and work histories.

You can opt to be alerted via text, e-mail, or TimeForge message if staff members do not take their scheduled breaks after a certain number of minutes. For example, if you set the alert to notify you after 15 minutes of a missed break and an employee was scheduled to take a break at 1:00 pm, but has not taken a break at 1:15 pm, you’ll receive a notification via e-mail or text message directly to your phone or computer.

TimeForge is a best-of-breed employee management system, and our online application of the program allows for constant software updates and improvements live to your system. With TimeForge’s innovative online management software, you are always at the top of your game. TimeForge completes tasks like managing breaks in a matter of minutes – saving your company valuable capital.

TimeForge’s do-it-all program makes the headache of managing employee breaks a thing of the past. Sign up for a free trial today!

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Lately, everyone has been going crazy for “going green”. While some business owners are dismissing the rapidly growing trend as a fad, many savvy business owners are learning how to capitalize on the environmentally-conscious movement among younger workers. It is important for businesses to recognize that Generation Y is particularly sensitive to Green efforts, and (as our Marketing to Generation Y blog mentioned) is spending $150 billion dollars annually on expenses such as food, drinks, and entertainment.

Changes to make your business more environmentally friendly will:

• Improve your employee retention rate of environmentally-conscious Gen Y (and older generations’) staff members
• Allow you to capitalize on the 70 million individuals looking to spend their money in “Green” establishments. According to a recent study by Forrester Research, nearly 40% of Gen Y-ers are willing to pay more for products or services that are environmentally friendly.

When you are ready to take the next steps to make your business Green, the Green Restaurant Association (GRA) is a national non-profit organization that provides a convenient and cost-effective way for restaurants, manufacturers, distributors, and consumers to become more environmentally responsible. According to case studies by the GRA, businesses that they have assisted have had the following savings:

• After only one year since their GRA certification, The Draft House reported a 54% water reduction and a trash reduction of 50%.
• GustOrganics, the first certified Organic restaurant in New York State received free publicity from The Today Show, Telemundo, CNN, The New York Times, Financial Times and more after becoming GRA certified.
• Boston restaurant Taranta eliminated almost all garbage with recycling and composting program, and enjoyed savings of $1,300 per year by switching from paper towels to an energy-efficient hand dryer.
• “I realized about a 45% return on my investment in one year and cut approximately $1200 off my annual operating costs. Not only am I pleased with the financial results of my decision, I also know that my association with the GRA has inspired employee morale.” – Jim Solomon, Fireplace Restaurant.

Going Green will help your business save money, reduce employee turnover, generate positive publicity and increase your sales. For more information on going Green or getting your restaurant GRA certified, click here.

TimeForge can help your business take the first step to becoming green with our online labor management products.  Our software will help you dramatically reduce the amount of paper required for you to run your business by removing the paperwork overhead needed for common HR needs.

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Management Philosophy 101 for dealing with staff turnover: The best way to reduce turnover costs is to reduce turnover.

The real cost of employee turnover is difficult to fully quantify because it is based on many variables but it is always more than you think it is.

In the restaurant, retail and hospitality industries, turnover is especially high – but, TimeForge, a labor management solution, can improve staff morale and efficiency in order to effectively reduce turnover and improve your bottom line. One way to find the cost of turnover at your business would include the following, some of which are hard to measure:

1. Lost productivity – Other staff members will have to pick up the slack of a missing employee, which reduces everyone’s overall productivity.
2. Temporary cost of replacement (i.e., contractor wages) – Some positions can be filled by others picking up the slack, resulting in no incremental expense. However, if this is a frequent occurrence, morale can suffer — leading to more turnover. Other positions will need to be filled with temporary or contract workers, which results in additional cost.
3. Recruiting/hiring expense – This is the literal cost of filling the position and can include search fees paid to agencies or headhunters, referral fees paid to employees, ads in newspapers, job board posting fees, etc.
4. Management time – Time management has to spend going over resumes, scheduling and conducting interviews, evaluating candidates and making job offers. TimeForge can slash the time spent collecting and storing a new hire’s documentation, but interviewing and evaluating applicants is a time-consuming skill that remains unavoidable.
5. Training costs – This includes all the costs associated with ensuring that new staff members have all the skills and tools they need to do the job.
6. Learning curve – The time it takes the new employee to perform at an optimal performance level.
7. Knowledge replacement – This is impossible to measure. Employees leave with accumulated knowledge that is hard to quantify and even harder to replace.

For an even more accurate and comprehensive determination of costs, include the following where appropriate:

1. Calculate the cost of training your company has invested in the employee leaving. Include internal training, external programs and external academic education. Include licenses or certifications the company has helped the employee obtain to do their job effectively.
2. Calculate the impact on departmental productivity because the person is leaving. Who will pick up the work, whose work will suffer, what departmental deadlines will not be met or delivered late?
3. Calculate the cost of department staff and include discussion on their reactions to the vacancy.
4. Calculate the cost of losing customers that the employee is going to take with them, or the amount it will cost you to retain the customers of the sales person or customer service representative who leaves.
5. Calculate the cost of drug screens, educational and criminal background checks and other reference checks, especially if these tasks are outsourced. Don’t forget to calculate the number of times these are done per open position, as some companies conduct this process for the final two or three candidates.
6. Calculate the cost of the various candidate pre-employment tests to help assess a candidate’s skills, abilities, aptitude, attitude, values and behaviors.
7. Calculate the cost of supervisory time spent in assigning, explaining and reviewing work assignments and output. This represents lost productivity of the supervisor. Consider the amount of time spent at seven hours per week for at least eight weeks.
8. Calculate the cost of coworkers and supervisory lost productivity due to their time spent on bringing the new employee “up to speed.”
9. Calculate the cost of mistakes the new employee makes during this elongated indoctrination period.
10. Calculate the cost of bringing the new person on board, including the cost to put the person on the payroll, establish computer and security passwords and identification cards, business cards, internal and external publicity announcements, telephone hookups, cost of establishing e-mail accounts, costs of establishing credit card accounts, or leasing other equipment such as cell phones, automobiles, pagers.
11. Calculate the cost of a manager’s time spent developing trust and building confidence in the new employee’s work.

Research continues to show that real turnover costs can run anywhere from 25% to 150% of the position’s salary and benefits, depending on how many of the above costs are applicable to the position.

TimeForge can help reduce your turnover by providing staff and management a superior means of communication, keeping everyone “in the know” at all times. TimeForge reduces turnover by:

• No more confusion! Keeping employees from being scheduled at times they are unavailable, and communicating schedule and availability changes to staff and management alike.
• Easy communication! Making online shift swaps, pickups, and time off requests a one-click process (with manager’s approval where necessary, of course)
• Easily Accessible! Web-based, text message, facebook, and printable schedules, time cards, and upcoming shift reminders.
• And much, much more!

The number one reason management-level staff members resign is the time, pain and high rate of error that comes with their job including constructing employee schedules – an issue that TimeForge makes obsolete. As opposed to inefficient and cumbersome Excel spreadsheets and paper logs, TimeForge will save management hours and virtually eliminate errors each week in various HR duties, including documentation/certification creation, storage and sending, schedule construction, and all of their various employee management tasks.

Money spent proactively on employee training, staff morale, career development, staff-management communication and other benefits can have significant return on investment when it leads to reduced turnover, and TimeForge reduces the time and cost associated with accomplishing these vital employee hiring and retention techniques.

TimeForge makes building schedules, tracking attendance, exporting and approving payroll and much more a fast, easy, point-and-click process. With TimeForge, your staff will communicate better, work more efficiently and eliminate costly mistakes associated with human error.

Additionally, our software makes your business more environmentally-friendly by drastically reducing paper usage, which has been shown to elevate staff morale and improve employee retention rate – employees feel good about being associated with a company that’s environmentally-conscientious.

Sign up for a free trial of our labor management software, and start improving your bottom line today.

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The number one reason managers quit a restaurant job is because of frustration associated with scheduling. After dealing with all the employee requests and working around personal schedules, managers invest large amounts of time and effort into a schedule which inevitably fails to make everyone happy. Some managers employ a “if the schedule doesn’t work for you, too bad” attitude to reduce their frustrations. This definitely reduces a manager’s stress, but according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this directly increases turnover rates, which cost your business money. Whether managers are accommodating to employees or not, the frustration of scheduling reduces managerial job satisfaction, ultimately resonating through the ranks to all employees.

According to retensa, 94% of turnover is preventable, so money spent proactively on employee training, staff morale, career development, and staff-management communication can have significant return on investment by resulting in reduced turnover. TimeForge reduces the time and cost associated with accomplishing these vital employee hiring and retention tasks. TimeForge makes building schedules, tracking attendance, exporting and approving payroll and most other management duties fast and simple, which makes managers and staff happy!

Instead of dealing with inefficient and cumbersome Excel spreadsheets and paper logs, managers who use TimeForge are less inclined to feel negatively about scheduling. TimeForge saves management hours and eliminates errors. TimeForge handles HR duties, including document and certification storage, schedule construction, and most labor management tasks.

With TimeForge, your staff will communicate better, work more efficiently, and eliminate costly mistakes associated with human error. Additionally, TimeForge helps make your business more green by drastically reducing paper usage.  Being a green business has been shown to elevate staff morale and improve employee retention rate – staff members (especially Gen Y employees) feel good about being associated with a company that’s environmentally conscious.

Click here to sign up for a free trial of TimeForge and start improving your bottom line today.

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The pre-hire and on-boarding processes for bringing on a new hire can cost managers and business owners hours of valuable time. Most businesses must go through the process of collecting resumes and cover letters, applications, assessments, background checks, I-9 and W-4 documents, payroll documentation, insurance forms, staff availability, and other necessary documents such as copies of certifications and previous training verification.

In addition to the time spent collecting these documents and other demographic information, there can be costly legal repercussions for failing to keep records on file and properly documented.

TimeForge HR can reduce all of this paperwork hassle into a simple and fast point and click process. Getting a new employee ready for scheduling or tracking time is as simple as entering the employee’s basic information within TimeForge’s innovative labor management software.

Managers can set up any number of prehire and onboarding documents that must be on file before the new hire is allowed to clock in or be scheduled to work. This innovative process allows you to define a standard employment process for your organization – ensuring that new employees have all of the necessary documents before they are scheduled, or clock in.

TimeForge HR documents can include relevant dates and any employer notes, and you can also scan and upload documents directly into TimeForge – no more searching for relevant paperwork!

Store Documents, Demographics, and HR Information

Additionally, if you enter an employee’s email address into TimeForge, the software will automatically email the employee instructions on how to login to TimeForge, check upcoming schedules, enter requests for time off and much more – greatly speeding up the onboarding process within your organization.

Our easy-to-use online product, TimeForge HR, allows managers and business owners to add an employee, change their availability and submit documents to TimeForge in seconds, making the onboarding of new personnel faster and more convenient than ever. For a free trial of TimeForge, sign up here and see how TimeForge is making labor management woes a thing of the past!

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In many states/localities, employees receive paid and/or unpaid break periods and possibly meal periods according to the law. Our Breaks feature allows management to set up rules which govern these employee breaks and meal periods, letting managers know when to grant breaks to on-duty or scheduled employees.

Scheduling Breaks

With our revolutionary Breaks module, employers can add their state or company’s “Break Rules” or “Meal Period Rules” and delegate whether the break is paid or unpaid, optional or required. After adding the necessary breaks, TimeForge can automatically place them on the schedule, and will stagger the breaks to keep employees from all taking the breaks at the same time.  Alternatively, managers can specify each break individually.

Using TimeForge Breaks, with TimeForge Scheduling, business owners and management can:

• Specify breaks based on hours worked, position, or duration of work scheduled.
• AutoScheduler™ can quickly stagger breaks for each scheduled shift.
• Schedule and manage both paid and unpaid, and optional and required breaks.
• Print break reports and worksheets to track employee signatures.

Taking Breaks:

Employees can begin or end their break with the touch of a button inside of TimeForge.  Managers can set options to allow to employees to take breaks based on the scheduled break settings, or staff can select what kind of break they will be taking, (paid / unpaid, required / optional).  If preferred, management can print out the break worksheet and capture employee signatures for any waived or new breaks.

Using TimeForge Breaks, with TimeForge Attendance, business owners and management can:

• Track employees’ breaks (paid, unpaid, optional, required, etc.) for labor reporting.
• Automatically take breaks based on the schedule if staff forget to break in or out.
• Simple one-click conversion of unpaid breaks to paid breaks (and vice versa).
• Real time web and mobile view of labor and which staff members are on break.

Alerting/Reporting:

TimeForge can automatically stagger staff member breaks when you add them to the staffing schedule, ensuring that the front of the house is never left empty and customers without service.

Because attendance breaks (time tracking and time punches) are often different from the scheduled breaks, TimeForge allows you to also see a display of employees’ breaks based on the scheduled hours with our Break Report, and track breaks that employees have taken, or should take, based on the staff members scheduled work hours with our printable Break Worksheet Report. Our detailed and comprehensive reports make it simple and to view employees’ habits and work histories.

Managers and business owners can opt to be alerted if staff members do not take their scheduled breaks on time.  For example: If an employer set TimeForge to alert after 15 minutes of non-compliance with the break rules, and an employee is scheduled to take a break at 1 pm, TimeForge will send an alert at 1:15pm if the staff member has not yet taken the schedule break.

These reminders and alerts will ensure compliance with state and union required break rules – potentially circumventing costly fines and lawsuits.

Use the TimeForge Breaks module with our online labor management programs – Scheduling, Attendance, and Human Resources, to easily manage your staffing needs.  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 break management – saving business owners valuable time and effort.  Try TimeForge today!

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On May 22-25, TimeForge will be exhibiting at the 2010 National Restaurant Association restaurant, Hotel and Motel Show at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois, where we will be showing our latest generation of labor management software for retail, restaurants and hospitality businesses.

The latest version of our TimeForge labor management product encompasses the entirety of labor management, including staff scheduling, attendance tracking, payroll exports, and many aspects of human resources. If you’re going to be at the show, please stop by and pay us a visit to find out how easy it is to save your business time and money!

TimeForge will be occupying booth 5256 at the 2010 National Restaurant Association show, in between FishBowl, Inc. and Eco-Oil Saver.

NRA 2010 is the largest food service and hospitality event in the Western hemisphere. Last year, more that 2,000 exhibitors from 108 countries participated in this global marketplace for the restaurant and hospitality industry.

Highlights of the event include 60+ education sessions, culinary and designer exhibitions and many opportunities for networking. Restaurant owners, operators, chefs, managers, buyers, servers, bartenders, architects, designers, decorators, caterers, and special event professionals will be there exchanging information and ideas.

Use a labor management system to make your life easy and improve profitability at your business! TimeForge can quickly and easily manage staff schedules, employee time off, and time and attendance tracking timecards, employee attendance, and export payroll for accurate processing.  Sign up for a trial today to use TimeForge.

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Simple and easy communication between the management team and the staff members is a requirement for every business, in any industry.

It is important to keep track of daily notes, task lists, todo items, and sticky notes in every business – big or small, independent or chain. The task of managing all of these items is quickly cumbersome for all but the most disciplined staff members.

Scheduling human resource tasks, upcoming maintenance events, human resource tasks, management meetings, and other necessary items across multiple shifts (where the manager or staff member that created the event may not be the person responsible for the event) quickly becomes a management nightmare.

And, as your business grows, keeping up with the pile of paperwork and small notes can quickly become a nightmare.

Many businesses tackle the tornado of paper and notes by raiding the local office supply store – lab notebooks, 3-ring binders, and other similar products. While these paper products are very cheap, the disadvantages are obvious:

• Paper products will tear and can be destroyed with any mild abuse.
• Writing with pens or pencils can be smudged or unreadable by spilling a drink, or with wet hands
• Searching through dozens of paper notebooks for historical data is impossible..
• Staff who use ink pens will scratch out notes from other employees, making notes unreadable.
• Notebooks are easily be lost in a back office under piles of other notes.
• Handwriting that is made in a hurry can be unreadable minutes, or months, after the note is made.
• Organizing notebook or 3-ring binder notes into categories on a day-by-day basis is cumbersome at best.
• Multiple location / multi-store operators have no insight into the day-to-day operations of individual locations without faxing and scanning pages back and forth.

In most cases, the paper log book is simply insufficient for modern businesses. Many niche businesses provide organized paper notebook equivalents of the 3-ring binder or lab notebook, like Red Book Solutions and CommLog. While these product are somewhat better than the paper notebooks available at your local office supply store – all of the disadvantages of the paper process remain. In addition to the paper problem, these pre-printed log books are organized in a format that may, or may not, work for your business.

The TimeForge Daily Log is a superior solution to organize the notes and todo tasks at your business.

Use the TimeForge Daily Log for easy notes and communications

Use the Daily Log as your manager log and staff log – and for much more.  Read more about the TimeForge Daily Log!

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TimeForge is an easy to use workforce management solution for your business, and includes many powerful features designed to improve your business. These include:

• Go home early and stop fussing with payroll and time card mistakes with easy time tracking (electronic time sheets and time cards) and staff monitoring.
• No more worrying about break laws and meal management with easy one-click break sheets and meal management.
• Get done with payroll with a single click with our one-click payroll exports to popular provides like SurePayroll, CompuPay, QuickBooks, and more.
• Rest easy with automatic reminders when staff are late, show up early, late, or start approaching overtime.
• And much more…

Here is a brief overview of some of the features of TimeForge Attendance …

TimeForge Attendance is a powerful replacement for your traditional time clock, or the limited punch in / out included with many Point of Sale systems. Use TimeForge Attendance by itself, or combine with TimeForge Scheduling for a powerful workforce management solution.

TimeForge can also integrate with many Point of Sale systems, stopping employees from clocking in early, or leaving too late.

Use TimeForge Attendance to make your life easy! TimeForge easily manages time cards, staff attendance, and payroll exporting.

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As operations managers and HR professionals know, managing labor is much more than building staff schedules and managing time and attendance for employees.  There are many other aspects of human resources and labor management, including:

• Talent management
• Tracking staff training and continuing education credits
• Skills tracking and ranking
• Onboarding and hiring processes
• Background verification and skill assessments
• Certifications and qualification tracking
• Raise requests and workflow
• And much more …

In many of these HR areas, we recommend that our users utilize a best of breed solution to ensure the best results for our customers.  For example, Corvirtus is simply the best company around to perform skills assessments in the hospitality and restaurant industries, and we recommend our customers look at Corvirtus for any unmet assessment needs.

However, a few of the these HR areas are easily managed inside of TimeForge’s best-of-breed labor management solution.  Historical raise requests, qualifications, skill tracking and ranking, and others are already available in TimeForge, and more will become available in the near future.

Let’s review employee certifications …

Did you know that TimeForge can track certifications for staff members?  Using TimeForge, you can track any number of certifications (staffing qualifications), testing dates, renewal dates, and test scores.  Each certificate can also include a note about the staff member’s qualification.

Specifics of a Certification / Staff Qualification

TimeForge allows savvy managers to set up certifications which are required before the staff member can be scheduled.  TimeForge can then stop you and your management team from scheduling employees who are not qualified for the job position.

For example, in the state of Texas, a server (waiter) that serves alcohol needs to have taken an alcohol awareness and training course.  Serving alcohol, of any kind, without this certification can land the employee and the responsible manager in jail for the evening.  With a single click inside of TimeForge, managers can ensure that staff are only scheduled if they are qualified to be scheduled.

Add a Certificate, Restrict who can be Scheduled

As an added bonus, TimeForge will notify managers and employees 6 weeks before the certificate expires, so that managers and staff members both know that it’s time to renew the qualification.  The certification reminder also appears inside of the Daily Log.

Use certifications to make your life easy!

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