Author: Gus Anderson

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12 practical employee appreciation ideas for better engagement and retention

raccoon holding a lightbulb of ideas

Summary

  • Showing appreciation to your employees improves engagement and retention.

  • There are 12 practical ways to recognize and appreciate your team members.

  • Start by asking your employees how they like to be shown gratitude.

A healthy relationship between employer and employee should go beyond the simple exchange of money for effort. Managers and HR teams should strive to build a company culture where employees come together and actively work toward common goals. Your employees could choose to turn up to work and do the bare minimum, take their paycheck, and go home — so going beyond that should be encouraged, recognized, and rewarded.

Research shows that employee engagement is 2.7 times higher when workers feel like their hard work will be recognized. A survey by SHRM found that 68% of HR professionals agreed that implementing employee recognition activities increases retention. Fifty-six percent said that employee recognition programs are beneficial to recruitment activities.   

In light of this, we have put together 12 employee appreciation ideas HR professionals can use to show their team members that they are valued for their contributions to the organization. These ideas are applicable to both in-person offices and remote employees.

1. Give valuable feedback

raccoon getting feedback

Giving employees feedback is a vital way to show appreciation to your employees for the work they’re doing. A work culture built around feedback creates a stronger sense of teamwork and reinforces positive behavior. It creates an opportunity to tackle issues like unproductive work habits or problematic behaviors early before they have a chance to cause any real damage. 

In an organization, feedback needs to be constant and needs to happen at all levels. This includes managers to employees, employees back to their managers, and peer to peer. Research shows that 89% of HR professionals feel that ongoing peer feedback has a positive impact on their organization.

Technology can play a big role in facilitating feedback across a company, especially for remote workers. Certain apps like Workforce.com’s Shift Feedback tool allow for a standardized and efficient way to provide and receive feedback at all levels.   

2. Encourage public shout-outs

raccoon speaking into a microphone

It’s always nice to receive praise from a manager or a colleague, but when it is done publicly, it can make an employee feel even more appreciated. When praise is visible company-wide, it doubles up as a visible recommendation that can be seen at all levels of the organization. It also shows the sort of work and attitude that is appreciated by all employees.

Employee recognition software like Lattice makes it easier for companies to “cultivate a culture of praise.” With Slack and Microsoft Teams integrations, it makes manager-to-employee and peer-to-peer recognition even more visible.

3. Grant the gift of time

raccoon sitting at a table next to a clock

As much as you hope that your employees enjoy their time at work, giving them the opportunity to take some extra time off outside of the office to reward a job well done is a sure way to put a smile on their faces. 

Say an employee — or even an entire team — has reached a certain milestone or delivered their targets earlier than expected. Why not reward them with the rest of the day off? You could even consider adding an extra vacation day or two to be taken whenever it is suitable for them. 

Another great option is to consider something like a company-wide shortened workday or even shorter workweeks during the summer. Interestingly enough, fewer weekly work hours have been linked to higher productivity and better employee well-being. 

4. Harness their professional development

raccoon in a business suit

You may find that many of your employees would like to cross-train in other areas to expand their knowledge base and make themselves more helpful in case of short staffing issues. A great way to reward employees and show that you care is to give them the opportunity to develop new skills on the job.

Offer to enroll them in a mentoring program, let them work a shift they don’t normally work, reimburse their course tuition, or send them to conferences on topics that are of interest to them. 

5. Write them a recommendation on social media

raccoon holding an iphone

Why not show public appreciation outside of the workplace? Write your employees a rave review on LinkedIn highlighting their value to the company and the great work they do. The high visibility of a LinkedIn recommendation also helps your employee with their career development. When they eventually seek roles with other companies, prospective employers will likely give a lot of weight to your endorsement.

6. Organize something fun for the team

raccoons at the beach

Show your staff members that you appreciate the work they do as a unit by organizing team-building events and activities. This could be anything from a retreat to the countryside, hikes, or a day of hands-on volunteering with a local charity.

7. Acknowledge and celebrate birthdays and work anniversaries

raccoon birthday party

There are certain dates that need to be celebrated. Work anniversaries represent a job well done to both employer and employee. The employer has evidently created a work environment that harnesses retention, and the employee has given another year of effort to the company. 

Birthdays are special occasions on an individual level. Friends and families celebrate each other’s birthdays, and colleagues should do the same. 

Consider celebrating with employee appreciation gifts. Company swag items like branded t-shirts for work anniversaries or gift cards for birthdays are just some gift ideas you can consider. 

With remote work, things get a bit more complicated. This is where online events and activities over Zoom or Slack may come in handy. You can host a happy hour on a Zoom call, have casual chats in virtual break rooms, or organize talent shows on dedicated Slack channels.  

If your remote workers are located in the same few areas or cities, you can even host a series of in-person events grouped by location.

There are a number of software solutions you can use to stay aware of all significant dates. Systems like Workforce.com or Slack’s BirthdayBot are great for keeping the entire company up to date on upcoming birthdays and anniversaries.

8. Celebrate your employees for what they achieve outside of the office

raccoon holding a trophy

Take the time to learn about what your employees are interested in and what big events are happening in their lives and celebrate these things with them. Highlighting and recognizing the importance of these things helps to encourage a healthy work-life balance amongst your staff.

This way, you recognize employees for who they are as people beyond their work deliverables. It is important to learn about and highlight out-of-office events on a regular basis. Celebrate when employees:

  • Get married, have children, adopt a dog
  • Move into a new house
  • Finish their thesis
  • Launch an album with their band
  • … Or anything they may wish to share with their colleagues

9. Look out for your employees’ mental health and wellness

raccoon with rain cloud above its head

Tackling stress and burnout and looking after your employees’ well-being is more of a duty than a form of staff appreciation. Nonetheless, going the extra mile and offering your staff perks linked to their health and wellness enhances the employee experience. 

Healthy and stress-free employees are also good for business. The WHO found that depression and anxiety in the workplace cost the global economy $1 trillion a year.

As an employer, you can offer health and wellness stipends to cover things like gym memberships, sports activities, therapy, or subscriptions to meditation apps.

10. Give monetary incentives

raccoon holding money

While this might seem obvious and unoriginal, bestowing the occasional bonus as a token of appreciation can work wonders for employee morale. Consider giving cash rewards for reaching certain milestones. Or, think about offering staff additional compensation for claiming vacant shifts last minute. Alternatively, you can implement a performance-based profit-share plan throughout the company, to be given out once or twice a year.

11. Level up your virtual team’s “office” space

raccoon sitting at computer

Many companies go the extra mile to make their office spaces comfortable and functional for employees. Consider doing the same for your remote employees too. Some people might not have gotten around to investing in their home workspaces. 

This is particularly true for employees who had to suddenly adapt to remote work at the start of the pandemic and who might not have invested the time, energy, or money to upgrade their workspaces.

Show gratitude to your team members by offering reimbursements or gift cards at certain stores where they can purchase things like desks, proper office chairs, and monitors. 

12. Make sure they have the right tools to get the job done

raccoon wearing a hardhat

Have your employees got access to the best tools to get their job done? If you’re expecting your sales teams to get results without a good CMS or your HR team to organize rosters without the right scheduling software — you’re making their lives unnecessarily complicated. It’s also important to ensure that the technology staff use to clock in and apply for time off is accurate and simple to use. User-friendly software goes a long way in keeping employees happy and feeling appreciated. 

But before implementing any tool, start by speaking to your employees and understanding what their roadblocks to success are. Do research on what solutions are out there to help them overcome these roadblocks and identify the best fit for your employees’ needs. 

Show meaningful gratitude beyond employee appreciation day 

Waiting for the 3rd of March every year to show your employees that you value the hard work they do is not enough. You need to create a culture of appreciation across the whole team and give them the tools to be able to do so easily. 

The employee recognition ideas we presented here are just some suggestions that have worked for other companies. A good first step to building your own employee appreciation program is to actually ask your people how they like to be shown gratitude. 

You should also be looking beyond appreciation tactics if solving a deeper issue, like employee turnover, is your main goal. If so, check out our free webinar on how to better retain hourly workers. 

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California fast food workers bill: why it’s more than meets the eye and how to prepare

california fast food restaurant digital art

Summary:

  • California signs bill establishing a “fast food council” that has the power to raise the industry’s minimum wage to $22 and set fair labor standards

  • The bill marks major advances for joint liability and sectoral bargaining in the U.S. — More

  • Fast food franchise owners should prepare for rising labor costs and tighter regulations by reevaluating how they schedule and track employee hours — More

If you live in California, there is slightly more going on behind the counter of your local Burger King than just your order of medium fries being dumped into a vat of hot oil. 

The local fast food industry has been embroiled in a fierce debate over labor issues in recent years. It seems to have reached a conclusion earlier this month…somewhat. 

On Labor Day, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill passed by the California State legislature that effectively increases the collective bargaining power of nonunionized fast food workers throughout the state via the establishment of a “fast food council.” Since the signing, a referendum spearheaded by the International Franchise Association and the National Restaurant Association has been filed in an attempt to delay the bill’s enactment until the November 2024 ballot when voters can have a say in the matter.

Assembly Bill 257, or the “Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act” (FAST) creates a council of 10 unelected stakeholders representing California’s fast food industry, including workers, franchisors, franchisees, and government officials. The council will have the power to set various standards and protections for minimum wage, maximum work hours, and labor conditions.

If the referendum fails, AB 257 will go into effect on January 1, 2023. The National Restaurant Association says similar legislation in New York, Oregon, Washington, and Illinois could very well be on the horizon. 

The signing of the bill marks a pivotal moment for low-wage fast food employees facing persistent wage and hour violations and poor working conditions. But the ramifications for franchisors and franchisees go much deeper. 

While many of the headlines surrounding the bill point to the council’s ability to raise the minimum wage from $15 to as high as $22 next year, the more significant story here is the bill’s impact on wage and hour liability and the relationship between franchisees and their corporate overlords. 

Why the bill came to be

The history of labor violations in California’s fast food sector is a long one. Put simply, many workers over the years have experienced ongoing instances of wage theft – the goal of the council is to stamp out these violations. 

According to a study from earlier this year, nearly 85% of California fast food workers surveyed claimed to be victims of wage theft. Of this group, 59% reported denial of sick pay and 27% reported violations in overtime and minimum wage. And thanks to California’s notoriously complex break laws, 53% reported having their rest breaks withheld or interrupted without proper compensation. 

This disturbing trend has been the norm for a while now. A similar study conducted in 2014 across multiple states found that 89% of fast food workers experienced various forms of wage theft. To make matters worse, franchise owners and frontline managers apparently are not helping matters. 

According to a McDonald’s employee featured in “Skimmed and Scammed: Wage Theft from California’s Fast Food Workers,” managers consistently engage in “fixing” timesheets to avoid instances of wage and hour violations.

“Meal and rest breaks are impossible when it’s busy. Instead of paying us for missed breaks, management goes into the timekeeping system and changes the time records to make it look like we took breaks that we weren’t able to take. Additionally, the time machines do not properly log overtime on certain shifts.”

Frontline reports such as these have fueled the fire for labor reform across the state.

What proponents say

Some see AB 257 as the answer to California’s battle with labor violations. Supporters believe the fast food council will provide Californian workers with more of a voice in the fight for labor rights. By convening all stakeholder voices into a single body representative of the industry as a whole, it will be easier to implement new minimum standards to limit wage theft and workplace harassment. 

Supporters also argue that the bill will ease the financial burden hourly workers face with rising inflation and California’s high cost of living. The likely minimum wage increase will be a welcome relief for low-income families relying on frontline QSR jobs throughout the state. 

What opponents say

A major concern with Sacramento’s passing of the FAST Act is that it will spike the cost of labor for employers. Even without a minimum wage increase, local franchise owners can expect to pay much more for labor with rules in place to monitor variable costs typically swept under the rug like break premiums and overtime hours. Assuming the $22 minimum wage is implemented, The National Restaurant Association reports that California fast-food restaurants could face an additional $3 billion in costs per year; this could cause chains to shut down locations, lay off workers, and avoid opening future locations in the state. 

Before Newsom’s signing, McDonald’s USA President Joe Erlinger criticized the FAST Act for being “lopsided, hypocritical and ill-considered legislation,” pointing out that targeting fast food restaurants with unfair bureaucratic restrictions would do more harm than good for the industry. “California’s approach targets some workplaces and not others. It imposes higher costs on one type of restaurant while sparing another.”

Another point of contention is that with increased labor costs, consumers can expect higher prices. A recent UC Riverside School of Business study found that increasing the minimum wage to $22 could cause menu prices to climb by as much as 17%.

An increase in the minimum wage and overall labor costs for fast food employers who already experience extremely tight profit margins could have some severe consequences according to Sean Redmond of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Not only will consumer prices go up, but employers might be forced to seek technological alternatives to automate away typically human roles – a consequence quite contrary to the pro-labor narrative of AB 257. 

Opponents are also quick to point out that the fast food industry does not experience higher than average wage and hour violations when compared to other industries in California. On the contrary, fast food restaurants actually only account for 2.2% of the total average wage claims filed annually with California’s Division of Labor Standards Enforcement from 2017 through 2022. 

Graph of the percent of total wage claimstotal wage claims by industry
Compiled from California Department of Industrial Relations data. From “Not So FAST: Analyzing Labor Law Compliance at California Fast Food Restaurants,” Employment Policies Institute, August 2022. https://epionline.org/studies/not-so-fast-analyzing-labor-law-compliance-at-california-fast-food-restaurants/

Based on the figure above from the Employment Policies Institute, it almost appears that in the grand scheme of things, wage violations in California’s fast food industry may not be as prominent of an issue as proponents of AB 257 would have the public believe. However, the question then shifts to whether or not California should stand for labor violations of any kind, regardless of what they may look like between industries. After all, a staggering majority of fast food workers suffer from wage theft, even if they only make up 2.2% of total wage claims – surely that means something. But maybe it doesn’t mean enough to the business and livelihoods that could go under due to increased bureaucracy. It’s a heated debate that won’t be settled any time soon, even with the recent legislation. 

Joint Liability

Perhaps the most fundamental change brought about by AB 257 is the enforcement of joint liability. Now, instead of just the franchisees being liable for wage and hour violations, the franchisors themselves can also be held accountable as joint employers.

In the U.S., the franchise model has become so successful due in part to its limited liability. While franchisors control food prices, menus, uniforms, and the number of workers scheduled, they leave wages, working conditions, and all labor liability in the hands of local franchise owners.

This separation of liability creates a dichotomy between franchisor and franchisee interests. According to a 2021 study by the University of Miami and Cornell University, franchisees have a “free-rider” interest in increasing profit margins by “shirking on franchisor standards that reduce profit.” Franchisors, on the other hand, would rather build customer loyalty and maximize store revenue. 

“Franchisor pressure can sometimes lead franchisees to violate employment law,” an economist from the study says. “Franchisees can respond to intensive franchisor monitoring and tight profit margins by unlawfully chiseling wages as the only cost variable that the franchisor does not directly monitor.”

So what does this all mean? Well, it means that the franchise model has long been a breeding ground for wage and hour infractions. The FAST Act is an attempt to fix the misalignment between franchisor and franchisee by holding them both accountable. 

In fact, AB 257 would actually allow a franchisee to sue a franchisor if their contract contains conditions that leave them no choice but to violate employee wage and hour rights. 

While joint liability is not settled at the federal level, enforcing it is nothing new in California. Both the Cheesecake Factory in 2018 and Tesla in 2019 were held responsible alongside their janitorial contractors for underpaying workers. Since settling the two cases, joint liability for contract companies and their clients has generally been recognized in California. 

So, why is it such a big issue for joint liability to be established for fast food franchises? Well, doing so would bring to light an even larger discussion, this time surrounding unions. 

Sectoral Bargaining

In the U.S., unions practice enterprise-based bargaining. This essentially means that they only negotiate wages and working conditions with individual organizations. In contrast, sectoral bargaining is when a union negotiates labor standards with multiple companies across an entire industry. Sectoral bargaining is common practice in places like Europe and Australia.

So, AB 257’s fast food council is effectively a pseudo-sectoral bargaining body within the fast food industry because its policies will impact a vast range of organizations, not just one. This is a massive shift in the way collective bargaining is achieved, not only in California but in the nation as a whole. 

While doubtlessly a big step, bureaucratic wage and hour boards are not entirely new to this country. Similar legislation straddling the line of sectoral bargaining was passed in New York back in 2016. An “all-industry” wage board was convened by Governor Cuomo to increase the state minimum wage to $15. 

What to expect moving forward

If the concerns surrounding AB 257 materialize, consumers can expect menu prices to rise at their favorite fast food chains, and perhaps even see some locations shut down. On the flip side, wages will almost certainly increase for employees, and instances of wage theft will hopefully become less common. 

For business owners, labor costs will most likely rise. A higher minimum wage and stricter enforcement of break penalties and overtime rates will put a strain on profit margins. Compliance measures will also become tremendously important for avoiding costly lawsuits and penalties. Luckily franchisees should be able to fall back on holding their franchisors accountable for unfair contracts, reducing the pressure to cut corners. 

With the increase in costs, franchisees will be looking to higher fewer people going forward, opting instead for the use of technology. Utilizing automation in this way will hopefully cut down on human error, wage costs, and compliance risks. 

On a larger scale, major fast food chains will most likely be hesitant to open up new locations in the state. Outside of fast food, other industries can probably expect similar labor-regulating legislation to come their way in the next few years. 

What employers should do to prepare

In light of the changes brought about by AB 257, it’s important that fast food chain managers understand what they can do to keep wage costs low and comply with labor laws. Here are a few things to consider:

1. Audit the payroll process

Gone are the days of calculating inaccurate overtime and break penalties. Employers need to be on top of making sure all timesheets are correct, no matter what happens during a pay period. The best way to make sure your payroll runs as smoothly and accurately as possible is to catch all wage and hour errors BEFORE they even reach payroll. Employers can do this by prioritizing how they go about tracking time and attendance. Timesheets should be automatically calculated and reviewed every day by both managers and employees to prevent simple errors from compounding into major lawsuits. 

2. Keep detailed paper trails

These paper trails don’t need to be made of paper. In fact, they really shouldn’t be. Franchise owners should make sure they have an online system in place that automatically maintains wage and hour records for every pay period and every employee in order to hedge against labor liability. 

3. Review scheduling and timekeeping practices

Correctly scheduling and recording employee hours is a foolproof way to prevent labor law violations. Franchisees should look into automated employee scheduling systems built around strict compliance engines – technology like this makes it tremendously easy to schedule fair and cost-effective hours for workers. It’s not enough to just schedule employees correctly, however; employers need to have a time tracking system in place that accounts for all kinds of complications like break rules, overtime rates, and tardiness. 

4. Seek out automation

With the looming rise in labor costs, employers should look to workforce management automation to improve their margins and eliminate wasted time and money. Using AI to automate scheduling, forecasting, and timekeeping not only decreases admin time and human error, but also optimizes how labor is distributed, reducing things like overstaffing, wage theft, and overtime accruals. 

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7 statistics on employee turnover every HR manager should be aware of

Summary

  • July 2022 saw 5.9 million total separations – More

  • Replacing a full-time employee can cost up to 2x the amount of that employee’s annual salary — More

  • Only 28% of workers say they have received a raise higher than the current 8.5% inflation rate — More

  • 48% of people are leaving their current job and moving to an entirely new industry — More

  • 16% of workers would consider quitting if asked to work on-site full time — More

  • 40% of workers quit their jobs within the first year of employment — More

  • Millennials are twice as likely as boomers to quit their jobs — More

The Great Resignation, the Great Attrition, the Big Quit, or the Great Reshuffle. Since 2021, HR professionals have been dealing with high employee turnover rates and resignations as people started to return to work following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over a year on, the Great Resignation shows no sign of abatement. The number of new job openings vastly outweighs the number of potential new employees willing to fill those roles.

Webinar: How to Retain Hourly Employees

In this article, we’ll provide you with seven eye-opening employee turnover statistics obtained from the latest studies that shed light on the current high turnover rates. We will discuss what HR professionals can do to create a company culture that fosters employee retention. 

1. The average turnover rate remains much higher than pre-pandemic levels

According to the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), July 2022 saw 5.9 million total separations. Total separations refer to quits, layoffs, discharges, other involuntary turnover, and other separations. In December 2019, quits were registered at 3.5 million. In July 2022, the number of employees who quit their jobs was 4.2 million. That means that this is still 20% higher than the annual turnover rate at pre-pandemic levels. 

According to the senior director of research at Gartner, Piers Hudson:

New employee expectations, and the availability of hybrid arrangements, will continue to fuel the rise in attrition. An individual organization with a turnover rate of 20% before the pandemic could face a turnover rate as high as 24% in 2022 and the years to come. For example, a workforce of 25,000 employees would need to prepare for an additional 1,000 voluntary departures.

Sectors like transportation, warehousing, and utilities saw an increase in quits of 39,000. Other sectors saw decreases, like healthcare and social assistance (-73,000) and state and local government education (-21,000). 

2. The cost of employee turnover is high

According to Gallup, replacing a full-time employee can cost anywhere between half to two times the amount of that employee’s annual salary. These financial and organizational costs include:

  • The cost of recruitment and the onboarding process
  • The cost of training new employees
  • Operational inefficiencies
  • Under-resourcing and operational delays
  • Negative impact on employee morale and burnout
  • Loss of organizational knowledge 
  • Loss of innovative thinkers and leaders (This is considered to be an opportunity cost.)
  • Negative impact on the customer experience due to organizational inefficiencies

3. Inflation and the fear of recession is a growing concern amongst workers

Another factor contributing to higher turnover rates is the current mismatch between wages and the cost of living, as well as a pervasive fear of an upcoming recession. A reported 41% of job seekers have received pay raises to combat inflation in 2022, but only 28% of respondents say that they received a raise higher than the current 8.5% inflation rate. In light of this, 78% are looking to switch jobs in order to make more money.

As fuel prices have more than doubled, 86% of respondents who drive to work sometimes and 68% who do so all of the time are feeling the hit; 59% say that these gas prices are having a “high” or “very high” financial impact on their lives.

Given the current landscape, fears of a recession seem to be widespread amongst US employees — 80% expect the US to enter a recession within the next year.

4. Many workers are switching industries

According to a study by McKinsey, nearly half (48%) of people are leaving their current job and moving to an entirely new industry. Worldwide, only 35% who quit in the last two years took on a new role in the same sector. 

This has affected different industries differently. Sixty-five percent of employees who quit the finance and insurance sector changed industries altogether. This percentage was higher for the public and social sector, which lost 72% of workers who quit to go to other industries. 

It would appear that many employees feel more confident to take the leap in their career development toward something different. People are looking for jobs that offer more flexible work arrangements, remote work opportunities, and generally greater job satisfaction. 

5. Flexibility is key when seeking better work-life balance

A 2022 Gartner survey found that many employees are seeking work environments that offer higher levels of flexibility. Flexibility could refer to the physical location where work takes place, the number of working hours, and the days worked.

Results show that 52% of respondents said levels of flexibility would impact whether or not they stick with their current employer. 16% would consider quitting if asked to work on-site full time. Eight percent would also quit even if asked to work on-site partially.

6. Most new hires quit in the first year

The Work Institute’s 2020 Retention Report found that nearly 40% of the respondents who quit their jobs did so within the first year of their employment. Two-thirds of these employees left in the first six months. 

It is important to note that these are pre-pandemic and pre-Great Resignation statistics. These rates are likely to be even higher now.

7. Younger people are more likely to leave their jobs

A study by EY found that age influences attrition rate. Boomers and those with over 10 years of tenure are most likely to stay in their current roles. This is particularly true of employees working in government or education roles.

Millennials, on the other hand, are twice as likely as boomers to quit their jobs. 

How to increase employee engagement and your retention rate

For business owners and human resource professionals, employee retention is a top priority. It not only costs less but also ensures more stability and consistent quality within the organization. There are a number of things that can be done to boost your employee engagement strategy to lower turnover rates and hold on to your top talent.

Understand why employees leave

Understanding the reasons you’re losing good employees will help you make necessary changes to provide a better employee experience, which will ultimately help you hold on to more of your people. 

Webinar: How to Predict Employee Flight Risk

According to a study by McKinsey, the top reasons employees quit are:

  • A lack of career development opportunities and room for career growth – 41% 
  • Inadequate total compensation – 36% 
  • Uncaring and uninspiring leaders – 34% 
  • Lack of meaningful work – 31% 

Conducting exit interviews helps you understand the reasons why your people are leaving and puts you in a better position to do something about it. If you’re finding that a lack of professional development is commonly cited, you might want to implement learning and development opportunities to boost your employee retention rate.

Create opportunities to attract nontraditional workers

It can be argued that the current system is geared toward attracting and retaining traditional workers. These are career-oriented people who are happy to make sacrifices in exchange for a good salary, perks, title, and career advancement. Unfortunately, these workers are not large enough in number to fill the ever-growing demand for work. 

Employers should look to nontraditional workers. McKinsey classifies them as:

  • Do-it-yourselfers – These workers value flexibility, meaningful work, and adequate compensation. They are typically between 25 and 45 years old and can be found to be self-employed, in full-time traditional roles, or doing gig and part-time work. 
  • Idealists – This group tends to be younger — aged between 18 to 24. Many are students or part-time workers who are not tied down by things like mortgages or dependents. They value flexibility, career development, meaningful work, and community. Compensation is not as high on their list of priorities.
  • Caregivers and others – These are people who have largely stayed home since the pandemic. They are predominantly women, aged between 18 and 44, and are responsible for the care of their children or other dependents. They value good compensation for their work but need flexibility and support from their employers in order to continue their care.

Generally speaking, non-traditionalists value:

  • Flexibility
  • Adequate compensation
  • Meaningful work
  • Support for health and well-being
  • Having reliable and supportive people in the workplace

For employers to attract these personas, it is important to remove barriers to employment that might stop them from being hired in the first place. This could include educational qualifications that might not be prevalent amongst these groups and are also not really necessary for the job upon re-examination.

Attracting such employees could also require HR teams to reach out beyond traditional recruitment platforms. Nontraditional workers might not be so prevalent on online job boards or might not spend so much of their time on LinkedIn. Companies might want to consider bolstering their referral programs or exploring other social media platforms.  

Focus on creating work environments that foster employee retention

Employees are looking for more than just a high salary. Companies need to work on developing a culture at the workplace that makes people want to stay. HR teams can do this by:

  • Listening to and addressing the needs of their employees 
  • Prioritizing psychological safety
  • Working toward building a strong sense of community at work
  • Beyond exit interviews, frequently asking for feedback and asking questions about what will make employees stick around
  • Offering well-being bonuses or perks
  • Funding career development programs

According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the key to employee retention and greater job satisfaction depends on these five factors:

  1. Respectful treatment of all employees at all levels
  2. Compensation/pay
  3. Trust between employees and senior management
  4. Job security
  5. Opportunities to use their skills and abilities at work

Equip HR to better manage and prevent turnover

In light of today’s tight labor market, it is essential that HR teams prioritize employee retention and reduce turnover. Executive Advisor and CEO of Status Flow Chris M. King dives into some strategies to stop employee turnover in a recent webinar with Workforce.com, which you can access below:

Webinar: How to Stop Employee Turnover

With the right strategies and the right tools, turnover can be mitigated and sometimes even prevented. Utilizing workforce management software combined with the right strategic initiatives makes this possible. Get in touch to learn more about how Workforce.com can help keep the cost of your employee turnover low. 

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Policy management: What is it and what does it look like for HR?

Summary

  • Policy management involves the creation and maintenance of administrative procedures and guidelines within an organization — More

  • There are four circumstances in which HR management should introduce new policy — More

  • Policy management automation is becoming increasingly common with frontline HR teams — More

Below the surface of any organization is a process that, perhaps while not the most glamorous, serves to create order, fairness, and standardization. Few people like to talk about it, and even fewer enjoy directly working with it. 

This, of course, is policy management. While sometimes an afterthought, its importance cannot be overstated and it ought to be carried out efficiently and effectively throughout a workforce. 

But let’s back up a second. How about we first pinpoint a clear definition for policy management? Beyond that, where is policy management even going, particularly for HR teams? And how do you automate it? Well, let’s take a look.

 

What is policy management? 

Policy management involves the creation, distribution, and maintenance of different administrative procedures and guidelines within an organization. Modern approaches to policy management seek to not only manage but also automate how policies are applied across different business functions. 

The purpose of policy management is to essentially ensure HR compliance, reduce risk, and protect stakeholders at every turn of a business’s operations. It achieves this by introducing the standardization and centralization of different policies in the workplace. Implementing and properly following these policies creates an audit trail that can protect an organization from all kinds of liability. 

 

The different kinds of policy management

Since policy management spans a wide variety of industries, what it looks like can change drastically – this naturally obfuscates how one should manage it properly within their own business.  

You’ll typically find that the organizations most concerned with compliance and risk management tend to lean heavily on policy management – think local government, public safety, IT, and legal services. However, there is a certain kind of policy management that often gets overlooked: hourly employee HR.

While HR policy management for hourly workers may not be as technical as IT policy management or as critical as public safety policy management, it nonetheless affects the lives of countless hardworking people and frontline businesses. To understand it is one thing; to get it right is another matter entirely. Let’s take a closer look at what policy and procedure management mean for your human resources department. 

 

HR policy management for hourly employees

Streamlining the creation and application of HR policies is becoming increasingly important for hourly workforces, particularly in hospitality, retail, and QSR. While quite extensive, HR policy management in these areas is extremely important to get right in order to protect both employers and employees alike.  

Unfortunately, frontline employees can often experience a disconnect with HR when it comes to understanding and following policy; this can lead to breaches in labor compliance, codes of conduct, and much more. To avoid these issues, it’s best to understand where your company needs to implement policy as well as how to easily communicate and follow that policy. 

Here are some of the most common areas where HR policies are put into place for hourly workers:

  • Leave and time off: Covering such things as vacation, sick leave, and holidays, time off policies should be clearly communicated in an employee handbook and fall in line with state and federal labor laws. More than this, employees should be able to easily interact with and utilize leave policies within a scheduling system. 
  • Meal and rest breaks: Every state has its own laws regarding the length and frequency of breaks in the workplace. HR policy needs to account for these laws by transparently meeting all requirements throughout the scheduling process. 
  • Time tracking and pay: Employees should always have an understanding of how their work hours are being tracked, as well as what their pay rate is, the frequency of paydays, and any special procedures for holiday pay, overtime rates, or absenteeism. At the same time, management needs to be able to apply and follow these policies across their workforce accurately. 
  • Attendance and tardiness: Attendance policies can vary greatly between organizations. Clear guidelines mapping out how tardiness, unexcused absences, call-outs, and no-shows will be interpreted should be communicated to all employees and closely followed. 
  • Job and shift qualifications: Some organizations may require specific training, licenses, or qualifications to work specific shifts/roles. It helps to have policy that manages, records, and enforces these requirements within the scheduling process so that work standards are met and laws are followed. 
  • Training and handbook acknowledgments: Organizations should have a central repository of training material and other important documentation for employees to refer to whenever needed. More than this, they should have a simple attestation process and a clear paper trail to ensure all workers are complying with the required materials. 
  • Disciplinary actions and termination: As a tremendously sensitive area of employment, termination procedures and disciplinary documentation should be clear, concise, and followed very closely. Effective policy management here prevents lawsuits and removes the volatility of human emotion from difficult situations. 
  • Tipping: F&B and hospitality businesses can choose from a variety of unique ways to distribute tips, but it should be based on sound and accessible policy. 
  • Overtime: Employees should understand their overtime rates as well as their employer’s tolerance for overtime occurrence. Moreover, the employer should have procedures in place to closely approve, track, and pay overtime accruals. 
  • Incident reports: Without strict procedures and reminders in place, it is sometimes easy to forget about documentation amidst the chaos of a workplace incident. However, it is crucial for liability reasons that organizations have policy in place to remind and guide employees through the reporting process. 

 

When to introduce new HR policies

While the purpose of HR policy is to introduce order to how people are managed in the workplace, it would be a mistake to assume that all policy is static and unchanging in nature. In fact, according to a Forbes quote from veteran CHRO Rohit Manchua, “Policies ought to be living documents that are reflective of collective human consciousness … [they] ought to be updated on an ongoing basis.” These updates should be relevant to employee sentiments and should align with the overall strategic initiatives of the company. 

Indeed, examples of policy management updates can be seen everywhere. In 2019 a study of C-suite executives in the healthcare industry found that more than 50% of those surveyed would be revising their privacy policies and conducting new training regiments to comply with new data privacy regulations in the industry. 

So this begs the question, when is the right time to introduce new policy? Well, here are a few circumstances according to Forbes’ Human Resource Council:

  1. During the launch of a strategic initiative

  2. During growth and decline periods

  3. In response to employee feedback

  4. If an urgent matter arises

HR managers should use any of these situations as an opportunity to review, rework, and roll out new policies and procedures to guide their hourly workforce. 

But the work should not stop there. Beyond simply updating policy, managers should utilize the four circumstances listed above to introduce automation in any way they can to improve policy adherence and streamline procedural workflows. 

 

Policy management automation – the future for HR teams?

Particularly in larger organizations, policy management can often swell into an unwieldy behemoth filled with red tape and bottleneck. Ensuring all employees and managers follow carefully planned policy procedures is no easy task, often resulting in countless errors when done completely manually. It’s not enough anymore to simply write down policies and hand out booklets. 

Luckily there seems to be an emerging answer for these HR issues. 

In recent years there has been a growing push to automate many policy management functions. Things like attendance strikes, overtime approvals, meal breaks, qualification-based scheduling, and more are now being handed over to policy management software. 

These tools often come with a high degree of configuration, allowing HR professionals to create and manage nearly any kind of policy workflow. Automation like this reduces human error, increases employee accountability, and speeds up administrative tasks at every point of the policy lifecycle. 

Perhaps most importantly, policy management automation understands the living and breathing nature of policies – they cannot sit idle in a notebook collecting dust. Instead,  policies and procedures are automatically applied to your employee scheduling and time-tracking processes to ensure compliance and improve employee engagement. 

For more information about how to perfectly sync policy management with things like scheduling, check out the free webinar below about employee call-out policies:

Webinar: The Best Way to Replace Call-Outs

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Employee Retention Strategies in a Tight Labor Market

Summary:

  • Effective employee retention strategies are crucial in today’s labor market, where there are more available jobs than job seekers.
  • Flexibility is a primary factor in retaining current employees, but it can mean different things for employees, depending on the industry and roles
  • Technology plays a vital role in gathering data and feedback that can help measure employee satisfaction and spot potential issues that trigger employees to quit.

The COVID-19 pandemic. The Great Resignation. Quiet Quitting.  

All of this has created a much tighter job market with low labor participation. Currently, there are around 10 million vacancies for just 5.7 million unemployed workers. The labor participation rate is at 62.6%, down from 63.3% in February 2020. This is the equivalent of 1.8 million fewer workers.     

All of this has made it trickier as well as vital for HR professionals to keep positive employee retention rates and hold on to their top talent, particularly since remote work has become more commonplace and sought after. Employees now have a much larger job market to find new opportunities, which, in turn, means tighter competition for talent. 

Webinar: How to Retain Hourly Employees

With more jobs and a smaller talent pool, how do you retain top talent and increase your chances of attracting new employees? There are several ways to boost employee retention, but what’s challenging is implementing a strategy that makes the most sense for your organization and people. We spoke with Jack Light, a labor economics Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago, to provide us with more insight.

Understand why good employees quit and why they stay

It’s impossible to identify the best employee retention strategies for your specific circumstance without finding out what causes attrition. According to the Work Institute’s 2022 Retention Report, over 47 million employees voluntarily quit their job in 2021. This is the highest turnover rate since 2001 — when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began measuring this metric

According to the report, some of the most common reasons why people quit their jobs include:

  • A lack of career development opportunities
  • Stress due to a lack of resources or training
  • Prioritizing health and/or family – caring for dependents, personal health reasons, or health-related issues due to work
  • Searching for different opportunities that will give them a better work-life balance
  • Issues with their current work environment

These areas are well within leadership’s control, and they can quickly improve these conditions by implementing changes and using the right tools.  

It’s always easy to assume that compensation is the main motivation for employees to stay at a company. However, that’s not always the case. What’s valuable to your team is not always as apparent as you think. Beyond a competitive salary and benefits package, there are other areas that can be equally valuable to employees.

  • Fulfillment or finding purpose in a role
  • Job satisfaction
  • Workplace culture
  • Relationships with bosses and colleagues and teamwork
  • Company values
  • Processes such as onboarding
  • Flexibility

Once you understand what your employees value most, you’ll be more equipped to make changes and create programs that compel them to stay. 

Watch: How to Predict an Employee Flight Risk

Establish a feedback system

There are two sides to feedback that are crucial to employee retention. The first is feedback from employers about job performance. The second is feedback from employees regarding operations, policies, and colleagues. Both are key to creating a culture of employee appreciation.

And both are important and should be gathered and addressed promptly.

Employees value feedback that’s immediate and clear. It helps them improve their work, makes them feel appreciated, and shows how valuable their contribution is to the organization. 

Meanwhile, encouraging employees to provide feedback about the company and their tasks helps with retention, too. When employees are comfortable enough to share their thoughts on what works and what needs improvement, you’ll have a goldmine of insights on how to keep your best talent.

“The goal of gathering employee feedback is to try and surface low-hanging fruits that you can be actioning on that you may not otherwise be aware of,” says Light. “So it might actually turn out that a lot of your employees are struggling to get to work, for example, because there’s a bus route that’s been canceled. Or maybe you have a particular manager who many people are struggling to work with. Those are the sorts of things that are valuable from the perspective of an employee but can be quite difficult to find out.” 

That’s why having a healthy company culture that embraces feedback is crucial. And it shouldn’t stop at gathering employee sentiments. Another equally important part of the equation is the mechanism to act on them.

“If you don’t do anything with that data and that feedback, you’re probably going to get less and less of it as time goes on,” says Beau Grzanich, head of solutions at Workforce.com. Transparency is key here. You need to inform your employees about the actions you’ve taken based on feedback they’ve provided. Doing so will incentivize people to provide more information that can drive more results and benefits in terms of employee retention. 

The frequency of feedback is also important. Typically, companies do it regularly — quarterly, semi-annually, or annually. While this provides some structure, feedback tends to be more effective when it’s fluid and immediate. Moreover, it doesn’t always have to be in a formal setting. It can be casual, during quick catch-ups, or through automated tools like Workforce.com’s Shift Feedback and Rating feature. 

Engage your managers, and they’ll engage their teams

People leave managers, not companies. This popular phrase regarding employee engagement and retention is supported by data from Gallup that shows that “it takes more than a 20% pay raise to lure most employees away from a manager who engages them”. And it takes almost nothing to poach disengaged employees.

Empower your managers to engage their teams effectively. One way to do this is to take administrative and repetitive tasks off their plate. This makes it easier for them to focus on the people-centric aspects of their work.

Implementing the right technology can help managers work smarter and spend less time on tasks like scheduling, time tracking, labor forecasting, and payroll. As a result, they focus more on coaching their employees and understanding and addressing potential issues.

Offer flexibility

Employees tend to stay with a company that offers flexibility. Research has shown that flexibility at work is becoming increasingly important for job seekers, particularly among younger employees. But before you think about implementing policies around it, you first need to understand what flexibility actually means for your employees. 

Typically, people view flexibility as being able to control their work arrangements. This means having the option to work outside of the typical office setting and set hours, enjoying a flexible schedule, or being able to attend to important matters that typically warrant PTO or waiting until the weekend.

“An important thing to remember is that flexibility is often quite loosely defined. It’s much harder if you’ve got regular opening hours or you’re a retail store, and there are fixed tasks that need to be done and planned in advance,” explains Light. If that’s the case, how do you create a certain level of flexibility for hourly workers? 

Light says that offering a certain level of predictability is important for hourly workers. This means providing their schedules ahead of time, so they can plan their activities outside of work accordingly. In fact, data shows that employees who get their schedules a couple of days before their shift are more likely to quit compared to staff who receive their schedule at least 10 days in advance.

Create programs and perks that are valuable to your employees

Competitive benefits, incentives, and perks can compel employees to stay with you. But again, the key here is to know what types of benefits they find valuable. Game rooms, free meals, and company-sponsored gym memberships are all nice to have, but those perks are not always good enough reasons to keep employees from looking elsewhere. 

Get to know your employees to understand what matters to them. Consider that you have employees who are probably in different life stages. Looking at your workforce’s demographics is a good first step in determining what programs you can devise that will make the most impact. 

Your employees’ age group, seniority level, gender, as well as their personal circumstances will all dictate what they deem important. Some perks and incentives to consider:

  • Professional development. Opportunities for employees to learn new skills, such as training programs or attendance at industry-specific conferences
  • Health and wellness stipends or reimbursement. To cover costs of things like sports activities, healthcare, and mental health programs
  • Company culture. Activities, such as team-building games, that help establish a stronger company culture

Whether it’s additional time-off benefits, family activities, upskilling, professional development opportunities, or employee recognition programs, make sure that your benefits package includes items that make the most sense for your operations and where your employees are — both in tenure and life in general.  

While it’s not easy to figure this out, you can always drill down on data and employee feedback to determine the specific types of programs you should implement within the organization.

Enrich your onboarding process

Convincing and attracting new hires is just half the battle. The other half is making sure they stay. Employee onboarding sets the tone for a new hire, and you need to make it count to retain them. According to Gallup, 70% of employees who had a positive onboarding experience say that they have “the best possible job.” 

Employee onboarding is a crucial process where companies must deliver on what’s promised during the hiring process and integrate new hires into their role and the organization. Successful onboarding is not attained overnight. It is a process that can last through a new hire’s first year with the company. 

Here are some of the ways human resources teams can make employee onboarding successful:

  • Create a clear and intuitive onboarding roadmap. Define where you want your new hires to be at specific time frames, whether monthly or quarterly or what makes sense for your organization. Gather feedback about the process and iterate your roadmap and programs as you go along.
  • Incorporate onboarding programs that will help employees build initial rapport and cultivate healthy working relationships with other team members. It’s vital for new hires to feel included and part of a group.
  • Equip new hires with mentorship and training. New employees become more productive faster when they have the tools to learn and carry out their responsibilities.
  • Provide clarity when it comes to expectations and goals. Employees, especially new hires, become more efficient when they clearly understand their roles, career paths, and how they directly contribute to the organization’s overall success.
  • Use technology to organize onboarding files, keep track of employee details, and streamline new hire paperwork. This frees up time for more critical parts of onboarding. Besides, no new hire would want to deal with a pile of documents to sign and information overload on their first day of work. 

A well-structured onboarding process not only gives new employees a good first impression of the company but also plays a big part in reducing employee turnover. 

Maximize the offboarding process to benchmark market trends

On the other end of the employee life cycle, you must also pay attention to your offboarding process. While it is the stage where an employee transitions out of the company, it can still help with your employee retention strategy. 

You should ensure that any employee leaving the company has a smooth exit. So maximize exit interviews and use them to gather feedback on what you can improve and what departing employees think will make current staff stay. Use this opportunity to understand their motivation for leaving. Is it career advancement, a more competitive salary, or burnout?

You can also use the exit interview to gain insight into their new job and what other companies are doing to attract and retain employees. Inquire about what compelled them to move. Is it a generous sign-on bonus, more comprehensive learning and development, or the promise of a healthy work-life balance? 

“Exit interviews, in particular, are beneficial for benchmarking where people are going and what the wages and working conditions are gonna be like in the firms that they’re moving to,” says Light. 

With this information, you can create benchmarks on how the market is, compare it to where you stand, and strengthen your programs and processes accordingly.

Harness technology to boost employee retention

Data and feedback are crucial in strengthening your programs for retaining your employees.

“Something that’s particularly interesting at the moment is that the data is getting increasingly available in real time” remarks Light.

For instance, when an employee is coming in late more often, the right tool can help you identify this and address it before it becomes a real issue.

“Moving from the sort of survey done at fixed points in time to more proactively identifying when you need to be stepping in and checking in if everything is okay is super exciting,” says Light.

Furthermore, technology significantly contributes to the employee experience. It helps organizations streamline administrative processes so that managers can focus more on being on the ground with their teams and coaching their staff. It also helps employees perform their tasks better and more efficiently, allowing more opportunities for innovation or additional time for training and development.

Streamline workflows and improve the employee experience with Workforce.com

Workforce.com provides efficiencies around demand-based employee scheduling, time and attendance, and labor forecasting. It helps improve the employee experience by providing staff with a straightforward way of clocking in, accessing their schedules, and filing leave requests. It has real-time insights, shift rating and feedback, and an in-depth reporting functionality that can provide managers with actionable insights on key metrics. 

Book a call today if you want to know how Workforce.com can improve your workforce management and employee retention. 

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How to create a rotating schedule [Examples + Benefits]

Summary

  • A rotating schedule is a schedule that gives employees the opportunity to work various shifts.

  • There are various types of rotating schedules. These include the DuPont, Pitman, 24-48, and 4-3 schedules.

  • Rotating schedules are complex and pose some risks, including a lack of consistency, health risks to employees, and more complicated scheduling.

Considering a rotating schedule? Not sure what the options are, or what the benefits even entail?

Rotating schedules aren’t for everyone, but if implemented correctly and in the right context, they can be tremendously effective.

There are various options to choose from, and picking the one that’s right for your business is key to boosting productivity and revenue without placing an unfair burden on employees.

What is a rotating schedule?

A rotating schedule is one where your employees work different shifts across different scheduling cycles.

For example, in a given two-week scheduling cycle, an employee might work day shifts during the first week and night shifts during the second week. Assuming you have only two shifts per day, the employee might work both day and night shifts during the two weeks.

Approximately 2.4% of U.S. employees work rotating schedules. The numbers are higher for employees in the wholesale, retail, leisure, and hospitality sectors, with approximately 5% of employees working rotating shift schedules in these industries.

Types of rotating schedules

There are several different types of rotating schedule templates.

DuPont

The DuPont schedule is used by businesses that need 24/7 coverage. There are two 12-hour shifts spread among four teams. Each team works four nights in a row, followed by three consecutive days off, then they work three day shifts, followed by just one day off, and end the rotation working four nights. Finally, the fourth week gives seven full days off before the whole cycle starts again.

The DuPont shift schedule is popular within the industrial and manufacturing sectors. It has benefits and drawbacks for employees. Workers get a full week break, often called a long change or long break, within each 28-day rotation, which is often appealing. However, the limited recovery time between day and night shifts makes it difficult for workers to adjust, and they may struggle with disrupted sleep schedules as a result.

Pitman

The Pitman shift schedule, also called the 2-3-2 schedule, is similar to the DuPont, with four teams working two 12-hour shifts over a two-week cycle. The advantage of the Pitman schedule is it ensures workers get time for recuperation between shift cycles. They don’t work more than three days in a row, and they get alternating weekends off. Within a given two-week cycle, employees work two days followed by two days off, work three days followed by another two days off, and then work two days followed by three days off.

24/48

Employees work a full 24 hours, and then they take a full 48 hours off. This schedule works on a three-day cycle and requires three teams for it to make sense. Every employee works an average of 56 hours per week. This schedule is common in nursing and emergency services and is usually intended to reduce the number of shift changes that occur on schedules – a variable that is best minimized in these particular industries. Employees work only three days per week, but they’ll work 24-hour shifts, which can be exhausting.

4-3

This schedule splits employees into groups of six in order to provide 24/7 coverage. Each team shuffles the 8-hour shift they’re working. For example, someone on this schedule would work four days on the 6 a.m. – 2 p.m. morning shift, have three days off, work four days on the 2 p.m. – 10 p.m. afternoon shift, have three days off, then work four days on the 10 p.m. – 6 a.m. overnight shift and have three days off.

The advantage of this schedule is that staff works shorter weeks consisting of only four eight-hour days and has time to adjust their sleeping schedule before the next shift starts. However, the 4-3 shift pattern may not be the best option if employees don’t want to work weekends. Depending on how the rotating schedule falls, teams will work three consecutive weekends before having one weekend off.

The benefits of using rotating schedules

Nearly 51% of employees in jobs with rotating schedules have stuck to their jobs for three years or more. Clearly, rotating schedules offer benefits that employees are willing to stick around for.

Some of these benefits of rotating shifts include:

Gives employees more exposure to different teammates and shifts

Businesses that use rotating shifts help employees get a complete picture of operations at different hours and on different days. This can help in training employees holistically, as they know what to do on different shifts, and can strengthen your team since employees get the chance to work with different teammates.

Provides equal opportunities to earn

In the restaurant industry, for example, evening shifts might be more lucrative in terms of tips than day shifts. Through rotating schedules, all employees get the chance to work during peak hours of demand, increasing their exposure to tips.

Provides flexibility and reduces burnout

Rotating shift schedules may improve work-life balance by giving employees time to get personal things done and recover from stress. For instance, the DuPont schedule includes seven days off for every 28-day cycle. Employees may also have time for running errands outside of normal working hours since they work across different days/time slots.

Whitepaper: How to Reduce Burnout of Hourly Employees

The challenges of implementing rotating schedules

Sixty percent of workers on a weekly rotating schedule said they’d rather work another schedule, showing their dissatisfaction with weekly rotating schedules. Some challenges associated with rotating schedules include:

Lack of consistency

Employees may not like the idea of rotating shift work. Some people like the consistency of fixed shifts and predictable work hours, and the rotating schedule may not allow for this. If a business is to deploy a rotating schedule, it’s essential to give employees notice of their shifts far enough in advance. Typically, at least two weeks is standard practice in a fair workplace – any less tends to harm employee retention.

Webinar: How to Retain Hourly Employees

Health risks

Working a day shift one week and then working a night shift the next week may disrupt the body’s natural clock (aka Circadian rhythm) and pose a risk to the employee’s health. According to a study by researchers at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, “people who rotate their shifts have a 42% increased risk for type 2 diabetes.” Canadian OSH identifies common medical issues in shift workers that include disrupted circadian rhythms, sleep disorders, gastrointestinal issues, cardiovascular disorders, and general exacerbation of existing health problems. There is also a documented association with increased cancer risk, which is still being studied.

More complex scheduling

There’s a lot going on with rotating schedules, especially since you have several things to manage, like creating teams, designing work schedules, and making changes to the schedule. Scheduling can take hours from your day, so you’ll benefit from the support of sophisticated employee scheduling software.

Steps to creating a rotating schedule

Creating a rotating schedule requires a step-by step-approach:

1. Divide the entire workday into shifts

To create a rotating schedule, you must create time slots or shifts that you can rotate employees through. Start by dividing the entire workday into shifts. For example, if your office is open 16 hours a day, you could consider setting up two eight-hour shifts.

2. Determine the employee coverage needed

Determine what skills you need for each shift and how many employees you need to provide full coverage for the shift. Sometimes you may require a different combination of skills or more employees to fill shifts. Alternatively, some shifts may require a specific skill set that only some people are trained for. Labor forecasting software can help you collect predictive data on sales, foot traffic, weather, and other factors that can determine upcoming demand and help you match your staffing levels accordingly.

3. Create teams*

You can create teams of employees, depending on how many people you need to cover each shift. If shifts require only one employee, though, you need not create teams. By creating teams, you’ll be able to rotate them through different shifts. Teams are great if you want the same employees working together. You can also switch teams up if you want different people working together. Creating teams is a skill in itself, as you might want to lump together people with complementary skills, differing levels of seniority, and different responsibilities.

*Note that in a union workplace, teams may be allocated by contractual obligation rather than by the company.

4. Design the rotation

Build your shift rotation based on the needs of your business. You may find that one of the examples above — DuPont, Pitman, 24/48, or 4-3 — works perfectly for you, or you might design an alternative specifically for your business. You’ll need to account for full-time and part-time employees’ hours and ensure coverage of all the positions needed for each shift.

You could rotate schedules within a week, have employees change shifts after a few weeks, or alternate weekends. You could also experiment with employee cohorts, putting part of your workforce on a fixed schedule and the other on a rotating schedule to see which one performs best for your company. Auto-scheduling software can easily populate your schedule once your rotation is designed, automatically accounting for hourly rates, staff qualifications, and availability.

5. Monitor and adjust

Your rotating schedule needs to be easily accessible and editable in order to account for irregularities and last-minute changes. Call-outs, shift swaps, and time off requests are all expected and are part of a regular workforce. Having schedules easily available digitally via a website or app will make it easier to account for unexpected changes.

It’ll be helpful to use software to track attendance so you can fill open shifts promptly when no-shows or emergencies occur. Look for tools that give your employees the ability to easily manage their own schedules by shift-swapping and give you visibility so you can see and approve shift changes easily.

Choose the rotation that suits your business

Try out different combinations of rotation schedules to balance your employee and business needs. Give as much notice to your employees as possible before you set your rotating schedule, so employees get plenty of time to adapt to it, and your rotating schedule system is ultimately successful.

Find out more about how to create rotating schedules by contacting us today, or try your hand at creating one right now with a free trial.

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How staffing agencies can better manage a remote workforce

Summary

  • As remote work continues its rise, modern workforce management technology is being adopted – staffing agencies should be at the forefront of this development.

  • Flexibility and visibility are key when it comes to how staffing agencies manage employees

  • Make it mobile: scheduling, time tracking, and labor compliance all need to be mobile-friendly to cut down on costs and increase employee experience

Managing remote employees has rapidly shifted from being a new and unpredictable challenge to a regular part of the work landscape over the last two years. The National Bureau of Economic Research estimates half of the workforce is now working remotely at least part of the time. While we have developed an incredible number of tools and processes to support remote staffing, remote work is still developing, and it still comes with its own unique challenges.

Staffing agencies are tackling remote work in their own ways. Some may be managing remote workers as part of their workforce, while others focus entirely on staffing remotely. Even those who don’t regularly manage remote staff may have to deal with the workplaces they staff occasionally shifting to remote work to accommodate unpredictable events.

All staffing agencies with remote workers will benefit from continuing to refine their remote workforce management skills and systems. Effective management builds a remote workforce that feels supported and gets the resources they need to do their work well, which ensures your clients always get the quality staffing they hired you for.

Streamline communication channels

Remote workers will be able to work more effectively if they have easy access to information and important notifications. It’s harder to share timely information when you’re not working face to face. While there are many channels for communicating remotely, having too many options is a problem when you have critical or time-sensitive information to share.

Slack and email threads are easy to lose track of since there is a lot of noise on those channels. Workers hired through a staffing agency might not even be plugged into a company’s Slack or email system yet. Texts and phone calls are harder to send to larger groups simultaneously, and you may not want to share everyone’s personal numbers in a group text.

You want to figure out a streamlined notification system for your staffing agency. All important communication should go through that one channel, so nothing gets lost. Ideally, the software you’re using for scheduling and time tracking will include an app and a notification system so that everything stays in the same place. You want a tool that can send individual alerts as well as push important announcements to groups of workers directly.

Plan for interruptions and unpredictability

Though we have all adapted to new working habits, unpredictable world events are still throwing unexpected interruptions into work and personal lives. On a purely practical level, smart staffing needs to anticipate these interruptions and have systems ready to deal with them. Your clients and your workforce will both be better off if you can build some accommodation into your staffing systems.

Workers may be sick unexpectedly in ways that make focusing impossible and require calling out. They may experience mental health challenges. Schools and daycares may close, leaving workers without childcare at the last minute. Travel plans are now more likely to get canceled, leaving workers stranded and scrambling to find ways to get back to a functional working environment.

Be prepared and communicate as needed during times of crisis to keep your employees safe and supported and ensure your clients’ needs are reliably fulfilled. Set up notifications ahead of time and use tools to easily manage your scheduling when it needs to change. Flexibility in a crisis and effective communication will help ensure that work isn’t derailed long term.

Find an efficient scheduling system

The most important, and often most challenging, part of staffing remotely is making efficient schedules. Employee scheduling software can help you schedule in a more sophisticated way, communicate those schedules efficiently, and make easy changes when needed. Even if workers aren’t commuting, they need reliable scheduling information so they can manage their time.

Give employees mobile access to their schedules so they can view upcoming shifts from anywhere, including the job site. This will help improve employee experience and cut back on miscommunication, confusion, and no-shows.

Make schedules early so you can alert workers in advance and avoid increasingly common predictive scheduling laws in certain areas. Labor forecasting will help you anticipate where staffing will be needed, avoiding the negative consequences of over- or under-staffing and optimizing labor costs. You also want to have systems in place to track attendance and quickly fill open shifts in case of no-shows or emergencies.

 

 

Use digital tools to manage a remote workforce

The digital tools you use to manage your workforce will be the key to smooth and effective management. Remote work is only possible because of the amazing array of digital tools we have available to us now, so take advantage of them. All of the practical parts of managing remote workers are easier if you use software tailored for the job.

Time and attendance

It’s vital to understand how, when, and where staff clock in – especially for agencies managing employees scattered across job sites. Proper time and attendance tools should be utilized to eliminate excessive wage costs stemming from issues in time theft, tardiness, and overtime. Employees should have the ability to clock in and view shifts on their phones right from the job site, and managers should be able to set clock-in parameters according to GPS location. Live time clock feeds are also a great way to improve back-office visibility into front-line attendance.

Paperless onboarding

Onboarding is hard to do remotely, as it requires sorting lots of information and getting documents read and signed. Onboarding quickly and efficiently gets you off on the right foot with new hires. Digital tools will help you automate your HR data, get documents signed, and collect personal information, bank details, and addresses quickly. They can even introduce staff to your policies and systems and begin training remotely.

Payroll

You may have payroll software, but you also need it to integrate with the rest of your management tools. Use a tool that can connect payroll to your scheduling and attendance software to make remote payroll management more efficient. Software can help you manage PTO and overtime payments that may vary by location as well.

Labor compliance

Remote work can quickly get complicated when trying to stay compliant with labor laws. They may change from state to state and city to city, and your workers may not even be in the same locale as their workplace. Digital tools exist to help you navigate labor compliance easily instead of trying to work each situation out case-by-case. Use your scheduling software to automate breaks to avoid labor violations in some states.

Simple and direct systems make remote staffing work

The common thread in each of these strategies is simplifying systems and providing clear, direct management processes for your remote staff. Workers in person receive information through interpersonal conversations, physical written materials, and the actual working environment they are entering, as well as digital sources. That makes it easier to ask questions casually or reduce distractions by physically moving or shutting off your computer.

Remote work concentrates all tasks and communications into a single channel. Counterintuitively, this often makes the information overload much higher. It’s harder to focus, and harder to sort the important details from the noise. Onboarding to remote jobs — absorbing lots of information digitally and learning new software and tools — is often the hardest part. Workers placed through staffing agencies may have to repeat this process frequently.

If you provide them with a single source of truth, they will be able to work more confidently, knowing they have access to all the information they need. Simplify your management. Communicate through one clear channel. Give them access to schedules, time tracking, and payroll in one place. Reduce the noise and overwhelm so that your workers can get up to speed quickly and focus their attention on doing their jobs well.

Book a call with one of our team members to learn more, or try our software for free today.

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9/80 Work Schedule: Pros & Cons + Examples

Summary

  • The 9/80 work schedule: Staff work four 9-hour days, one 8-hour day, and get one 3-day weekend over a two-week period

  • 9/80 work schedules are good for gaining more days off, boosting employee morale, and saving on labor costs

  • Proper employee scheduling software is needed to handle the transition to a 9/80 work schedule

Could compressing your work schedule increase the productivity of your employees?

Transitioning to a 9/80 work schedule requires experimentation, planning, and a methodical approach to implementation. While some employees may be fine with working a 9/80 work schedule, some may not be comfortable working an extra hour a day. Administering a different work schedule also requires a few adjustments by the employer. Managers should follow a process when switching to a 9/80 work schedule and remain flexible at the same time.

What is the 9/80 work schedule?

A 9/80 work schedule covers a two-week period and is made up of eight 9-hour days, one 8-hour day, and one three-day weekend.

During the first week, employees work four 9-hour days (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) and one 8-hour day (Friday), totaling 44 work hours. The first Friday is split between two 4-hour shifts, with the first 4-hours marking the end of week one and closing out the 40-hour workweek. The second 4-hour period spills over into the second week.

In the second week, they work another four 9-hour days followed by a day off on the second Friday, totaling 36 work hours for the week. Due to the additional 4-hours worked on the previous Friday, a three-day weekend is created every other week.

So, after everything, all workers fulfill 80 hours of work over a two-week period with this compressed work schedule.

Research shows that employees look for more flexibility around their work schedules post-pandemic; 54% of employees would consider quitting their jobs if employers did not afford some flexibility in where and when they work. The same survey revealed that 33% of respondents want a shorter workweek. And the 9/80 work schedule aims to provide these employees with the flexibility that they desire along with the shorter workweeks too.

The pros and cons of the 9/80 work schedule

Since the 9/80 work schedule comes with its fair share of both upsides and downsides, it is wise to consider all angles before implementing one across a workforce.

The pros of the 9/80 work schedule are:

Pro: Higher employee productivity & morale

Having an additional day off over a two-week period gives employees more time to dedicate to personal commitments and gives them time to recharge, making them more rejuvenated when they get back to work. Breaks allow employees time to rest, which makes them more productive on the remaining days when they are at work.

Microsoft’s division in Japan says it saw productivity grow by 40% after allowing employees to work for four days a week rather than five. While the company didn’t move to a 9/80 work schedule, its results are proof that four-day workweeks make employees more productive.

Pro: More flexibility, greater work-life balance

More time away from the office, in the form of 26 three-day weekends a year, reduces the instances of burnout. Employees get a guaranteed two extra days off in a month. More time for errands, hobbies, and personal commitments. According to a survey by Cornerstone, 87% of employees believed that three-day weekends are better for stress relief than long vacations.

Also, when employees are happy with their work environment due to flexible work schedules and shorter workweeks, they’re more likely to stay with the business for longer, which could reduce staff turnover costs.

Pro: Reduced costs for the business and employees

With employees working fewer days over a two-week period, businesses can lower their labor and overhead costs, since they would need to support employees over fewer days on-site.

When Microsoft Japan moved to a four-day workweek, the company reduced its electricity costs by 23%, simply because it only needed electricity for four days a week instead of five.

Fewer workdays also mean less commuting for employees, helping them save money on travel. If a company finances commuting costs, it saves the company money too.

The cons of the 9/80 work schedule are as follows:

Con: Longer workdays

It can be more tiring to work longer days, resulting in laziness and even burnout. Employees may only have time to eat and go to bed when they return home, which may reduce their morale and motivation to work.

Working anywhere from 30–40 hours per week, which is considered full-time, can hurt employee health and wellbeing. In fact, according to a study conducted by the Australian National University, work should be limited to a maximum of 39 hours per week.

Con: Scheduling problems

If an employee takes a sick day or vacation day on a 9-hour working day, he/she has lost 9 hours of pay, instead of the usual 8 hours under a normal schedule. It’s the same for public holidays that fall on 9-hour workdays. This might create scheduling problems since your scheduling system may be programmed to count sick days as eight-hour days.

There are also overtime complications in managing a 9/80 work schedule. If you track work hours on a weekly basis, rather than every two weeks, employees who work greater than 40 hours in a week may consistently hit overtime. Since employees can work up to 44 hours in the first week of a 9/80 schedule, some businesses could find themselves paying out increased hours of overtime every other week.

For businesses that require a continual presence (like a restaurant), it may be difficult to implement a 9/80 work schedule. They must organize their scheduling in a way to ensure staff is on duty to attend to customers every day of the week. With staff regularly taking three-day weekends, scheduling gaps inevitably appear, meaning managers will need to figure out simple shift replacement procedures.

Con: Other businesses and customers could be inactive during extra work hours

If your employees are working an extra hour a day, other businesses and employees could be inactive during those hours. So, if your employees work from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., your customers may be inactive between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., making it redundant for employees to work those hours. This, of course, is assuming you work in an industry where your customers’ working hours may fall outside of your working hours as a company.

How to implement the 9/80 work schedule

Adopt a step-by-step approach when moving to the 9/80 work schedule. Evaluating if it’s right for your business, communicating with leadership and employees, trialing the new schedule, and using scheduling software that enables you to make the switch are ways to make a successful transition.

Evaluate whether the 9/80 work schedule is right for your business

It’s a good idea to evaluate the perks and quirks of a 9/80 work schedule to determine whether or not it is right for your business.

Adopting the 9/80 schedule is typically easier when employees can work on the same weekdays and take the same day off every two weeks, so there can be a company-wide day off. 10. Also, a fixed day off for the whole company means the business can close fully for a day, which could result in cost savings in the form of reduced utility bills.

Examples of workforces where the 9/80 work schedule might be a good fit include software developers, business consultants, graphic designers, writers, and accountants. Their work is focused on deliverables, and they need not work on a certain day to meet customer needs. They could easily work the extra hour a day and remain focused on their deliverables.

On the other hand, industries like retail, hospitality, manufacturing, and logistics will find adjusting to this type of schedule very difficult, as they’ll have to manage a rotating schedule to ensure customers are always attended to. It requires significant effort and organization to implement different days off for each employee to maintain staffing levels throughout the week that match output. To do this, you may have to adjust which day of the week is your “flex” 8-hour day depending on customer demand or make that flex day different for distinct employee teams/groups/locations.

Not just that, for companies in these industries, it’s hard to schedule company-wide days off, which makes it tougher to implement the 9/80 workweek schedule. Employees may also be required to do physically demanding work, or have daily personal life obligations to attend to, making 9-hour workdays impossible.

Finally, businesses will need to assess whether or not their scheduling software and processes can handle the implementation of a 9/80 work schedule. Without the right tools and automation, adopting a 9/80 work schedule across an entire organization could prove quite tricky.

Get consensus from leadership and employees

Detailed consultation of your entire workforce is required to gather the thoughts and opinions of everyone involved. You need to pay heed to how, when, and where your employees work best and assess their shift preferences.

You need to figure out if staff are open to the 9/80 work schedule, if longer workdays might negatively impact their productivity, and what their preferred days off are during the two-week period.

You also need to train employees on the new schedule and educate them about its benefits.

Trial the new schedule with employee cohorts

A transition to a 9/80 work schedule need not happen suddenly. It can be done through experimentation and trialing the new schedule with team members. One cohort could be on the 9/80 schedule, while others could be on the traditional 9–5 schedule, and depending on how the 9/80 schedule makes employees perform, you can decide whether or not to switch to it for the entire company.

This process will teach you a lot about employee preferences and if you’re able to maintain the productivity of your employees by switching to the new work schedule.

You may also try different versions of the 9/80 schedule. For instance, making Monday the 8-hour flex day for half the employee base, while the other half have Friday.

Channel resources to make the shift to a 9/80 work schedule

Use scheduling software along with a payroll service that enables the transition. There are plenty of challenges in managing a 9/80 work schedule. You’ll need to switch to a two-week period for payroll, split the first Friday into two four-hour shifts, and keep track of sick leave, PTO, or vacation based on whether it was taken on an eight-hour day or a nine-hour day.

You’ll also need to create a 9/80 work schedule template for continual use week in and week out. This schedule should be easily accessible for both managers and employees on all devices, and management should be able to assign, approve, and edit shifts depending on frontline needs.

Moving employees to the new schedule also requires having an adequate number of staff to provide shift coverage on all working days, so no customers go unserved.

Remain flexible while implementing the new schedule

Each department may implement a compressed workweek differently. For example, the customer service department may need to work longer hours on most days, but the accounting department may not need to work long hours, especially during the off-peak season. So, it’s important to remain flexible while adapting to the 9/80 work schedule, bearing in mind that customer needs are paramount and that schedules should reflect customer and business needs.

Master the 9/80 work schedule with Workforce.com

To get the most out of a 9/80 work schedule, employee scheduling, time tracking, and labor compliance all need to be in sync. Additionally, accurate information needs to flow seamlessly into payroll.

Proper workforce management software does all this for you.

Build, publish, and edit 9/80 work schedules with Workforce.com. Use it to track overtime, labor costs, and weekly work hours, and approve ready-for-payroll timesheets in minutes.

Switching to a 9/80 work schedule may seem daunting at first, but it doesn’t need to be in practice. Learn more about how to accomplish your vision by contacting us today, or by starting a free trial.

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How The Amenity Collective improved employee and customer experience with Workforce.com

From your local community pool to the most lavish condominium complex in your state, the landscape for hospitality services is changing rapidly – and for the Amenity Collective, it’s only the beginning. 

“There’s a massive opportunity to leverage technology, to not only provide a better customer experience but also deliver a better employee and owner experience for our subsidiary companies,” says Adam Chen, CIO of the Amenity Collective. 

The Amenity Collective is a suite of lifestyle and hospitality businesses consisting of three main subsidiaries: American Pool, Heartline Fitness, and LIVunLtd. With thousands of locations spanning the east coast and the Sun Belt, and with up to 10,000 seasonal workers, the Amenity Collective provides a gamut of services including spa and concierge work, pool and gym equipment upkeep, lifeguard staffing, and much more. 

Their rapid expansion and propensity for success are due mostly in part to a laser focus on curating employee and customer experience. 

“Customer experience is one of our core values,” says Brian Buccino, CEO of LIVunLtd. “Our success is directly correlated with best in class experience for our customers. But we also have to balance that customer experience with the experience of our employees.”

CHALLENGE

After experiencing tremendous growth over the past few years, the Amenity Collective began to pinpoint several operational pain points throughout their workforce. One of their biggest challenges was delivering a consistent employee and customer experience across a growing and highly decentralized organization. 

“When we grew through acquisition, we bought really strong companies, but they all outgrew their legacy manual processes,” says Dan Cohen, the Amenity Collective’s COO. “Our goal was to figure out how to bring on a workforce management tool that would allow us to operate digitally.” 

Inefficient scheduling and attendance practices, in particular, were dragging down employee and customer experience. “Our staff was spending an inordinate amount of time just trying to work our old system” reflects Chen. “It took a lot of legwork.” 

These inefficiencies caused high overtime rates, unnecessary admin work, and concerning levels of absenteeism. Something had to change.  

SOLUTION

Management knew that in order to improve customer experience, they first needed to improve employee experience – and that began with addressing the issues plaguing their scheduling and attendance systems. 

“We wanted to find solutions that would adapt to our unique business model – Workforce.com fit that bill,” says Chen. “Being able to leverage a system like Workforce.com has allowed us to free up time within our employee base to focus on other areas.”

With Workforce.com, the Amenity Collective introduced automation to their scheduling and time tracking practices. Their formerly decentralized workforce management became unified on a single, cloud-based platform, serving to enhance administrative work and improve customer experience across all three subsidiaries. 

RESULTS

The Amenity Collective is now able to drill down where and when they are overspending on labor and administrative work. Their scheduling and time tracking are combined into a single, streamlined system, increasing the accessibility of actionable data. As a result, both employee and customer experience have greatly improved – here’s how they got there:

85% reduction in administrative work

Before Workforce.com, managers spent about 20 hours a week on basic administrative tasks like creating schedules, approving timesheets, and managing call-outs. Less than a year into using the software, they have now cut admin time down to 3 hours a week on average, boosting overall employee experience and productivity. 

“With Workforce.com, we’ve been able to reduce the time our staffers spend publishing schedules by 85% – that is a huge efficiency gain for our organization and for our employees,” says Chen. “What that allows our employees to do is spend more time building stronger relationships.” 

50% drop in overtime

In less than a year, the Amenity Collective has reduced the occurrence of overtime across their entire organization, resulting in lower labor costs and fewer cases of employee burnout. 

“We were floating around a 10% overtime rate with our employee base. Not even a year into using Workforce.com, we’ve already reduced that 50%,” says Chen. “That is a massive savings for us.”

70% decrease in absenteeism 

Once all staff began checking schedules and clocking in and out on the Workforce.com app, missed shifts dropped from 10% to a mere 3% throughout all three subsidiary companies.

“Workforce.com lets us immediately see when somebody doesn’t clock in for a shift,” says Chen. “We are able to fill those gaps in the schedule and make sure that our gym or pool doesn’t stay closed. Workforce.com has given our teams that insight, that visibility, and we’ve been able to meet our employees where they are.”

Guaranteeing staff coverage in this way has kept locations up and running, client obligations fulfilled, and facility users satisfied. 

Comprehensive API integrations

To ensure business operations flowed together seamlessly, the Amenity Collective required strong integration capabilities from all their software. Workforce.com fit perfectly within the organization’s software stack, syncing data in a way that optimized employee experience. 

“Workforce.com is an incredibly powerful tool, especially with its integrations,” reflects Chen. “We have an integration with Salesforce … simultaneously, we have an integration with Workday as our HRIS platform. Workforce.com sits in the middle, where we can really auto-schedule to our demand.” 

Together, the Amenity Collective and Workforce.com are scaling amenity management services to new heights. “We can now be more confident that as we scale and get more business, we’ll actually get it in a more profitable way,” Cohen says. 

By overhauling their approach to scheduling and attendance, the Amenity Collective now leads a rapidly expanding market.  Successfully lowering labor costs and boosting admin efficiency has, in turn, improved both employee and customer experience tremendously. 

“This is a very fragmented industry,” says Chen, “but there’s a huge opportunity … and we’re at the forefront of that change. Using best-in-class technology providers like Workforce.com allows us to get new clients to market faster. It gives us a standardized process to implement best practices across all of our markets.”

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Job Abandonment: What is it, How it Happens & How to Handle it

Summary

  • Job abandonment occurs when an employee doesn’t show up to their job for a specified number of days without notice and any intention to return.

  • Handling job abandonment involves defining it clearly, investigating the causes, providing coverage, and complying with labor laws.   

  • It’s possible to prevent job abandonment by regularly addressing burnout, communication, and engagement issues. 

Imagine a scenario where your most valuable staff member is a no-call, no-show one day – and then the next day, and the day after, and even the day after that.

A week goes by, and it’s quite clear – they have abandoned their job.

Too many instances of this – or even one instance – can leave you shorthanded. Your operations slow down, you’re unable to serve customers properly, and affected staff members start to lose morale.

Job abandonment like this is not rare. In fact, it is quite common. Only just recently, the American economy was rocked by the “Great Resignation.” As such, employers should take steps to target the main culprits behind job abandonment, namely burnout, miscommunication, and poor engagement.

Webinar: How to Address Staff Burnout

What is job abandonment and why does it happen?

Job abandonment is when an employee abandons their company abruptly by not showing up to work for a predetermined number of days (a quantity determined by the employer) without notification. This is considered a “voluntary resignation,” even though the employee may not have formally quit their job. By failing to communicate, it’s assumed that the employee has no intention of returning to work.

For example, an employee may not show up for work for many business days consecutively without reasonable explanation, might stop responding to calls and emails, or may have removed their personal belongings from their work station. Or an employee who is on unpaid/paid leave doesn’t show up for three consecutive days after the leave ends.

There are several reasons why job abandonment occurs:

  • Fear of quitting the job in person due to embarrassment
  • Getting a job with another employer
  • An unexpected personal or family member emergency
  • Dissatisfaction with the job due to a lack of recognition or poor company culture
  • Fear of returning to work due to health/hygiene concerns (as in the pandemic)
  • A careless or negligent attitude by the employee

In other instances, an employee may have genuine reasons for not notifying their employer. For example, they might have a medical emergency or may have lost access to their phone and the internet if they’re away on leave. Such situations require careful consideration before being classified as job abandonment.

How to handle job abandonment

Employers must minimize the negative consequences of job abandonment to their business by having a job abandonment policy in place. They should anticipate the problems it can create, like scheduling issues, and take steps to mitigate the effects of job abandonment, both before and after it happens. Here’s how you can handle job abandonment:

Define job abandonment clearly

Create and communicate a company policy dictating how many no-call, no-show days qualify as job abandonment. There’s no federal law that defines job abandonment clearly, so it’s your responsibility to provide clarity to your employees on what counts as job abandonment. Remind employees of the consequences of abandonment and let them know that job abandonment deprives them of unemployment benefits as it’s considered a voluntary resignation.

Follow a thorough investigation and termination procedure

There should be an investigation process in place for every job abandonment, as employers are responsible for ensuring the employee had no intention of returning. Upon thoroughly investigating and recording, employers should follow a detailed termination process in order to mitigate liability as much as possible. To do this, some steps you can follow include:

  1. Attempt to contact the employee via phone calls and email to find out why they missed their shift. Try to figure out if they intend to return to work by communicating with them.
  2. If the first attempt is unsuccessful, make a second and third attempt after waiting for 24 hours or try to get in touch with the employee’s emergency contact. After this, make as many attempts as necessary to contact the employee up until they have been absent for the minimum number of days constituting job abandonment as defined by your company policy.
  3. Ensure you accurately record every attempt at communication with the absent employee. You may need a reliable paper trail to fall back on in case of legal action.
  4. If all attempts for communication fail, send a letter to your employee’s address mentioning your attempts to contact them, along with the employee’s missed dates of work. Include a notice that if the employee doesn’t respond to the letter within a week, their absence will be considered job abandonment.
  5. If the employee still doesn’t respond, terminate the employment through a job abandonment letter, mentioning the reason behind the termination, their date and times absent, company property to return, and a contact in case the employee has any questions regarding their termination. Use these termination letter templates as guides.
  6. Upon notifying an employee of their termination of employment for job abandonment, make sure to double-check payroll to ensure the terminated employee will receive all that they are owed on their final paycheck.

Use your scheduling management software to ensure that abandoned shifts are covered. Allow employees to communicate freely with scheduling managers so they can pick up abandoned shifts. Allow shift swapping and cross-train employees to be able to fill in for staff members who’ve abandoned their jobs.

It would be sensible to learn from past experiences of job abandonment and plan schedules as far out into the future as possible. Have a network of “on-call” employees to count on in case of job abandonments, so you’re never faced with a staffing crisis.

Remain compliant with employment laws

You must always take steps to confirm that the job abandonment was indeed a voluntary resignation to avoid potential legal action. Dismissing an employee due to medical reasons can be tricky and could be scrutinized. For this reason, the job abandonment policy should address short-term disability and the Family and Medical Leave Act. Clarify that if a staff member does not come to work for three successive days and does not file their short-term disability paperwork or request a leave of absence on the grounds of a family emergency, they will have abandoned their job.

A recent California appellate court decision in the Bareno Case reaffirms the sensitivity of dismissals when medical reasons are involved. This case involved an employee who had notified her employers that she wouldn’t be able to attend work due to medical reasons. The employer said that they didn’t receive one email and terminated the employee on the grounds of an “unexplained absence.”

The employee sued for wrongful termination, claiming her employers terminated her for simply taking medical leave. The court’s decision was that the employer should have asked the employee for further details about her leave rather than just waiting for a few days and terminating the employee. Based on this decision, employers are advised that if they believe the employee is absent from work because of medical reasons, they should assume the employee has not resigned.

Employers also need to be mindful that email and spam filters may lead to unread or skipped messages from the employee. To avoid a similar scenario that occurred in the above case, where a message goes missing, employers should consider using a single channel of communication without spam filters to make it easy and simple to communicate with their employees.

Be consistent in applying a job abandonment policy

It’s important that you have a documented job abandonment policy. Record detailed notes of every unexcused absence and every attempt to contact the employee. Include a copy of your job abandonment policy in your employee handbook and human resource portal, so there’s no room for confusion among employees. There should be no surprises when employees are terminated.

How to proactively prevent job abandonment

Job abandonment is not easy to deal with, and one way of avoiding its negative consequences is to prevent it from happening. Having fair policies centered around inclusiveness that keep employees engaged and a good company culture that motivates employees to do their best work can help engage employees and prevent them from abandoning their jobs.

Make your job abandonment policy visible

Including your job abandonment policy in your employee handbook or explaining it in detail when employees are being onboarded is a great way to make employees aware of your leave policies and the consequences of job abandonment. The more aware employees are, the higher the chances of them complying with your policies.

Stay on top of “no call, no shows”

These are your early indicators that an employee is at risk of abandonment. You need to be able to track who’s consistently not showing up for work and clearly communicate the consequences of these actions. An attendance point system can help in this area, while mobile shift replacement software can help your teams quickly find replacements.

Webinar: How to Reduce No Call, No Shows

Have an accessible PTO policy

More often than not, people abandon their jobs because they’re overworked, frustrated with their job, and don’t have enough time off. A comprehensive leave policy should help staff understand how and when they can take time off, while also empowering them to take time off via self-service tools. An open and accessible PTO policy makes employees feel valued, while a closed off and confused policy tends to discourage staff from taking leave.

According to an interview with The Washington Post, Raygun owner Mike Draper said, “It’s tough if you have a family crisis and you need to deal with that and you have an employer that says, ‘If you leave to deal with that, you’re fired.’” His company is lenient with things like calling out and paid time off. He said, “We provide an environment where people don’t find themselves in that situation. Work doesn’t have to be intractable.”

Practice flexible scheduling

Allow employees to bid for open shifts or swap shifts with managerial approval so they can meet their personal, financial, and professional commitments. Enable employees to do these things by equipping them with the right mobile scheduling tools, and try to honor them as much as possible using flexible scheduling policies.

Communicate and engage

Preventing job abandonment hinges on engaging your employees. By regularly communicating with them via shift feedback and pulse surveys, you’ll be able to more easily identify morale problems on the front line. Treat communication as a two-way street. Provide regular feedback to employees to keep them engaged, but also provide them avenues to give feedback on management. This is a two-pronged approach that will help keep your employees engaged while making you aware of any glaring issues, so you can take preventative measures to curb job abandonment.

Address immediate well-being needs

A comfortable work environment is essential for staff retention as it directly impacts employee productivity, engagement, and overall job satisfaction. Employees who feel comfortable and supported in their workspace are more likely to remain committed to their role and the organization. For instance, one popular trend that has emerged in recent years is the use of standing desks. These desks allow employees to work in a more ergonomic position, reducing the risk of health issues associated with prolonged sitting. Providing such options shows that the organization cares about employee health and well-being, which can lead to higher levels of employee satisfaction and retention.

Job abandonment comes at a BIG cost

Last year, Gallup reported that replacing a full time employee can cost an employer up to twice the amount of the employee’s annual salary. Ouch.

Needless to say, high turnover affects more than just team morale and scheduling logistics – it places a severe drag on your bottom line. Find out how to reduce turnover like this our webinar below featuring management consultant and author Kris M. King.

Webinar: How to Stop Employee Turnover

It is one thing to map out a plan for how your business will handle job abandonment – it’s another to actually go out and execute that plan. Both managers and employees need the right tools to efficiently work together to prevent and overcome job abandonment in the workplace. Contact us today to learn more about how to handle job abandonment on the front line using cloud-based scheduling and HR compliance software.