Labor Management. NOW Simple.

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!

Employee dissatisfaction is common among businesses in the retail, restaurant and hospitality industries, and will lead to a high turnover rate. High turnover in a business is extremely costly, as new employees need to be recruited, trained and properly certified , each one costing hundreds or thousands of dollars.

To assist with managing the labor requirements of your business, TimeForge offers extensive reports for many tasks including labor costs, breaks, and scheduled labor, among many others. This week, TimeForge introduced several new reports to make labor management more efficient and decrease turnover in your business.

Shift Ranking:

Are your staff happy with their work environment? From the point of view of your staff members, are there problems with certain shifts that need to be addressed? How would you know which shifts are causing issues with your staff, so that you can address the needs of your staff and your business? You’d use TimeForge!

Using TimeForge, employees have the ability to record whether they were satisfied with the shift they just worked. Our new Shift Ranking reports allow managers and business owners to review a comprehensive account of how many employees were happy with their shift , and how many were unhappy , as well as the ratio of satisfied vs. dissatisfied employees, by either position or shift.

These remarkable new reports, an industry first, provide employers the ability to pinpoint problematic shifts and staff positions in order to decrease turnover and maximize profits for the business. Another report displays shift satisfaction among multiple locations to allow multi-unit operators to remotely monitor their business.

Shift Swapping:

Did you start the week with the perfect schedule, but by the end of the week you are paying unexpected overtime and have unhappy staff? One possibility is that staff are making too many shift swaps, changing around the staffing schedule in an unpredictable manner. Use TimeForge to identify heavy shift swapping and make profitable business decisions!

Our latest shift swap reports allow employers to view the shifts that employees are giving up and picking up, during any period of time, as well as the ratios of shifts given up vs. picked up. These reports provide employers the unmatched capability to gain understanding and control over employees’ shift-swapping habits to successfully remedy employee scheduling problems and overtime abuse.

Managing a workforce requires some give-and-take between management and staff members to ensure that the business runs successfully. Use TimeForge to gain insight into the day-to-day labor management at your business. Just look at what TimeForge customers have had to say about our revolutionary product.

Related articles or pages

• Part Two: Recruiting and Retaining Gen Y Employees
• Is Employee Scheduling Complicated? Not Anymore!
• Employee Scheduling Complicated? Not Anymore!
• Labor Management Software Update Simplifies Employee Scheduling
• Generation Y Part One: Marketing

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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• Building a Labor Schedule is Complicated. Use Tools to Keep Managers and Employees Happy.
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• TimeForge Improvements
• TimeForge Dashboard
• On-boarding is Simple with TimeForge HR

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)

TimeForge is both powerful and flexible!   We provide a stable and simple labor management platform that gives you, the user, the power you need to manage your workforce.

One way that TimeForge provides simple labor scheduling is by providing you, the user, with the ability to schedule staff any way you want to.   That’s right – schedule your labor based on the requirements of your business!

TimeForge supports building schedules in many different ways, and provides flexible, powerful, and easy to use tools to make sure you can get done building the schedule, communicate with your staff members, and go home early!   For example, you can build schedules:

• One shift at a time, using day parts (Work Periods) or specific time periods
• Bulk copying of shifts from one day to another
• Copying work shifts from one employee to another
• Using daily templates with predefined shifts
• Utilizing weekly templates with dozens or hundreds of shifts
• Bid shifts, which allow staff members to help build the schedule
• Copying a previous schedule to create a new schedule for next week
• Daily, using a gantt chart to oversee your exact staffing needs
• Weekly, using an Excel-like interface to quickly and easily schedule staff

And all of these staff scheduling options can use “fixed employee” scheduling … where you, the manager, choose the employee you want to work.   Alternatively, you can build labor schedules using the automated power of the TimeForge AutoScheduler.

Edit a Shift in the Detail View

In addition, you can build schedules using departments, where you can appoint a supervisor to oversee the schedule, availability changes, and staff communication.

Related articles or pages

• Improper Labor Staffing
• How Do You Manage Labor?
• Easily Manage Labor with Innovative Staffing Reports
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 2)
• Workforce Labor Scheduling Updates (Part 1)

Over the last few months, we have been improving all three of our hospitality and retail labor management products, including TimeForge Attendance.

TimeForge Attendance is a powerful time and attendance software system that for employee time cards and managing payroll.   Using TimeForge Attendance, staff members can clock in and out, managers can review employee time cards, and then management can approve time punches for third party payroll processing.

TimeForge Attendance can perform many other time management duties, including:

• Tip tracking and mileage reporting
• Record staff notes about each shift worked
• Stop buddy punching with biometric fingerprint scanners
• Interface attendance and time punches with your favorite Point of Sale system
• Track time off, sick time, and PTO time for quick processing
• Allow staff to check their time cards using the TimeForge employee portal

If you are using a standard time clock, or are having staff write their arrival, departure, and lunch breaks on a piece of paper, switching to TimeForge Attendance will save you hours of headaches each and every week!

Some of the recent improvements to TimeForge Attendance include:

• Automatically switch positions if an employee is already clocked in. Staff members are occasionally responsible for working back-to-back shifts with different departments or positions.   For example, an employee might be scheduled from 10:00am , 2:00pm as a Cashier, but from 2:00pm , 6:00pm as a Delivery Driver.   To ensure that they remember to clock out as a Cashier, and in as a Delivery Driver, at 2:00pm, TimeForge can automatically do this for your staff members.   This feature can be configured on a per-location or per-department basis.

Automatically Switch the Clocked-In Position for an Employee

• Clock out staff members at a specific time each day. To ensure that staff members are all clocked out by a certain time, you can set a department-level or location-level clock out time. For example, if your business closes at 11:00pm, and no one should be at work beyond 11:30pm, you can set TimeForge to automatically clock out all staff members at 11:30pm.   This feature can be configured on a per-location or per-department basis.

Automatically Clock Out Employees Out At A Specific Time

• Automatically clock employees in based on their posted schedule. Sometimes staff members forget to clock in, even though they are scheduled to work and arrived on time. TimeForge can automatically clock staff members in based on the posted schedule, if they have not yet clocked in.   For example, if an employee is scheduled to work at 8:30am, TimeForge can automatically clock them into the system at 8:30am.   This feature can be configured on a per-location or per-department basis.

Automatically Clock In Employees Based on the Schedule

• Receive an email message during the day showing which staff members are clocked in. If you’d like to know which employees are clocked in at your business during an important part of the day , before a dinner rush, just before closing, or after the first morning shift , you can!   Update your alerts and set the time you’d like to receive notification of who is clocked in.

Receive a Daily Email of Clocked-In Staff

• Automatically clock employees out based on their posted schedule. Sometimes staff members forget to clock out at the end of the day.   TimeForge can automatically clock staff members out based on the posted schedule, if they have not yet clocked out.   For example, if an employee is scheduled to leave work at 8:30pm, TimeForge can automatically clock them out of the system at 8:30pm.   This feature can be configured on a per-location or per-department basis.

Automatically Clock Out Employees Based on the Schedule

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

Related articles or pages

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• TimeForge Improvements
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It’s been a while since we’ve written on the blog about TimeForge improvements, but we have been hard at work adding features, improving functionality, and otherwise making TimeForge a better tool for your staff and your business.

Some of these improvements include training videos, which can be found on TimeForge’s Manual , the videos cover many aspects of TimeForge, including attendance and time cards, scheduling, employee management, and much more.

In addition to the expanded manual, many other improvements are included in our latest TimeForge release.   The most recent update, which happened about a week ago, includes more than 100 new features, improvements, and changes , and every one of our customers is already running the latest and greatest version of TimeForge.

Some of these new features include:

• Faster page loading on all TimeForge pages. If you are on a DSL or Cable connection in the United States, most of the TimeForge web site should load in less than a second!   Get done, get out, and go home faster!

• The Schedule Detail View is improved, and faster. Our Schedule Detail continues to expand in functionality, and you can now schedule by station or section, or swap the scheduled employees with a single click.

Schedule Detail View

• Create a default location for each employee. Managing staff members who can work at multiple stores (or locations) can be extremely difficult.   TimeForge makes staff management easy, enabling your management team to get done quickly and get back to business.   You can set up a default (or home) location for staff members, which will ensure that the AutoScheduler schedules the employee at their default location first, where possible.

Default Staff Member Location

• Create a default department for each employee. Managing staff members who can work in more than one department can be complicated.   You can set up a default (or home) department for staff members, which will ensure that the AutoScheduler schedules the employee into their default department first, where possible.

Default Department for a Staff Member

• Automatically approve requests when employees are “available to work” or “want to work“. Instead of spending your time managing requests for employees who want to work, these requests can be automatically approved without needing manager intervention.   For example, an employee who normally cannot work on Wednesday because of their class schedule can request to work online and will not need manager approval to request to work on Wednesday (normally, she will need approval to actually pick up a shift).

Automatically Approve Work Requests

Check back soon, as we’ll be discussing some of the other TimeForge features that have been recently added!

You should be using a labor management system to make your life easier! TimeForge can quickly and easily build your staff schedules, manage attendance, reduce labor costs, and streamline employee management. Sign up for a trial today!

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Haven’t quite gotten started with TimeForge yet? Want to see some of what TimeForge can do for your business? Ready to see how fast TimeForge can build a schedule for you?

Please take a look at our latest demo video … in 4 minutes and 30 seconds we can show you the power of TimeForge as we add positions, create employees, build a schedule, and send the schedule to our staff members using email and text messages.

You should be using an employee scheduling product to make your life easier! TimeForge can quickly and easily build your employee schedules, manage attendance, reduce labor costs, and streamline labor management. Sign up for a trial today!

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We’re always improving and extending TimeForge to improve your business and to ensure that you can quickly and easily build schedules, manage time and attendance, and communicate necessary information to staff members.

So, if it’s been a while since you last reviewed TimeForge, make sure to come take a look at everything we’re doing to improve your day!

11 New Reports

TimeForge users now have access to eleven new labor management reports, including reports about shift swapping, attendance vs. schedules for employees, and much more!   Read more here.

Enforce the Schedule

TimeForge can now enforce the start time, end time, employee, and position that is scheduled to work, if you would like to enforce the scheduled labor.   Read more here.

Message Multiple Locations

TimeForge can now send messages across locations, allowing you to target managers, or staff members at different stores / units.   Send messages to individual staff members, everyone at certain locations, or identify specific positions to receive messages.   Read more here.

New TimeForge Partners!

We are proud to introduce two new TimeForge partners, who are bringing TimeForge to their clients and respective markets. Mercer Sales & Service serves customers in New York and Pennsylvania, and High Plains Cash Register serves customers in West Texas. Read more here.

Give Shifts Up

Staff members can give up a shift to any qualified employee, or the employee picking up the shift swap can specified by the staff member giving up the shift. Communication among staff members has never been easier! Read more here.

Daily View Improvements

We are always improving our scheduling system to make scheduling easy for staff members and managers. While building a work schedule in the Daily View, you can now see how many hours and shifts each staff member is scheduled to work (this has always been available in the Schedule Detail View). Instantly know what everyone on the schedule is doing! Read more here.

You should be using a labor management product to make your life easier!   TimeForge can quickly and easily build your employee schedule, manage time and attendance, reduce labor costs, and streamline labor management.   Sign up for a trial today!

Related articles or pages

• Time and Attendance Made Easy
• New Labor Management Reports
• Updates to Employee Scheduling and Time and Attendance Software
• TimeForge Updates for December
• TimeForge Labor Management, a quick background ….

Do you use the TimeForge Daily View while building your schedule?   If you haven’t tried the Daily View, you should give it a try!

The TimeForge Daily View provides immediate insight into your daily labor operations, by providing at-a-glance charts to show when your business is over-staffed, or under-staffed.   You and your management team can use the Daily View to quickly and easily locate staffing issues before they become a problem.

The Daily View now includes two new staffing metrics:   the number of hours, and the number of shifts that each staff member has been scheduled for your current week.

While building the schedule, you can easily identify which staff members need additional shifts, and which staff members are already booked for the week.

Use these staffing metrics to identify which staff member to schedule while building the schedule.

How long does it take to make a schedule for your staff members? It should take less than 5 minutes!   Did you know that TimeForge can reduce labor costs and streamline labor management by effectively scheduling your restaurant, hotel, bar, club, grocery store, or retail business.   Sign up for a trial today!

Related articles or pages

• Improper Labor Staffing
• Updates to Employee Scheduling and Time and Attendance Software
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• TimeForge Updates for December
• TimeForge Improvements