Author: tasmin

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How short-staffed resorts can optimize scheduling

We live in the time of “The Great American Labor Shortage.” The leisure and hospitality industry faced a high unemployment rate of 39.3% in 2020, which, combined with the high number of job openings, reveals just how understaffed the sector is.

The World Travel & Tourism Council estimated a labor shortfall of 690,000 workers in the tourism and travel industries in 2021. Vail Resorts is one of many resort companies facing this problem. A shortage of chairlift operators, lift engineers, and snowcat drivers has delayed the resort’s ability to open doors to its skiing visitors.

Why has COVID led to a shortage of talent?

According to the Colorado Sun, lots of resorts in the country are in the same predicament as Vail Resorts. This widespread lack of active workers in the industry can be attributed to several reasons — all tied to the COVID-19 pandemic:

  • COVID fears: Staff doesn’t want to return to work because they’re scared of catching the virus.
  • Poor management: Resort management let go of many people last year, and one of the possible reasons they may not be hiring anyone back is to help recover from the profit lost during shutdowns.
  • Parental caregiving during the pandemic: The COVID-19 pandemic led a number of schools across the country to shut down. Parents without access to childcare are forced to remain home and are unable to rejoin the workforce.

In order to prevent the loss of customers whose needs are unmet, resort managers must optimize their scheduling while short-staffed.

To optimize scheduling while being short-staffed, you need to:

1. Use labor forecasting

Estimate sales demand by using labor forecasting software to look at historical sales data and then schedule shifts accordingly. You’ll be able to schedule your scarce labor smartly to meet sales demand. For instance, you might be able to schedule more experienced employees when the sales demand is high.

Sales demand is likely to fluctuate post-pandemic, and managers need to ensure that worker scheduling can adapt easily to meet sudden demand shifts.

You can also forecast labor demand by individual departments and monitor whether, say, more employees need to be scheduled in mountain operations versus lodging at a ski resort. For instance, a lot of people may be coming to ski for the day but not booking rooms for the weekend, meaning the level of scheduled labor needed will vary between the two departments.

2. Make schedules agile and adaptable

Prepare schedules in advance, two weeks at a minimum, to give employees the ability to communicate their need for coverage in the event of unforeseen scheduling conflicts.

Use hospitality employee scheduling software to centralize scheduling and increase your staff’s commitment to shift adherence. By using mobile technology like shift swaps and replacements, you minimize any last-minute scheduling changes, increasing both administrative adaptability and staff agility.

You must also manage leave requests in a timely manner to avoid being short-staffed. You don’t want too many employees taking leave at the same time. Discuss leave requests with each staff member to avoid any scheduling surprises down the road. Staff members should be encouraged to put in leave requests by giving at least a few days’ notice, so you can plan schedules in a timely manner.

3. Increase employee engagement

Focus on improving your overall staff experience. If your employees feel engaged, they are more likely to show up and do their best work and provide the best service.

With a centralized communication tool, it’s possible to quickly notify staff of timely updates or important company announcements. Getting your message out there efficiently on a unified system properly engages staff, makes them feel valued, and solves issues in disconnected communication with management.

Another way to increase employee engagement is to open up more avenues for staff to provide shift feedback. Employees may feel inclined to report on how various aspects of their shifts, from coworker cooperation to issues in staffing levels. Having the ability to give management feedback like this empowers employees, making them feel more valued. This leads to engaged and productive resort staff, even in the face of a shortage in labor.

You should also offer incentives to engage employees and boost their morale. Workers are happier when they’re well compensated. A lot of restaurant and hotel owners are offering higher wages to attract and retain employees. For instance, an ice cream parlor raised wages to $15 an hour and filled all of their 15 open positions immediately. As per Hotel Tech Report, higher pay rates can decrease absenteeism and control employee turnover, which is good news for short-staffed hotels and resorts.

Replicate these successes and improve employee motivation by offering a higher pay rate during busier shifts and during peak season.

4. Automate breaks

Employees need breaks so they don’t feel stressed or overworked, factors that often lead to staff attrition.

Between multiple departments with varying needs, resort management already spends too much time preparing employee schedules manually — up to 12 hours a week. Short staffing levels only add to this time, causing even more headaches for management. In the midst of all these hurdles, scheduling and enforcing breaks might slip between the cracks.

Solve this by implementing employee scheduling software that automatically applies legally compliant breaks to every employee’s schedule. These breaks should be easily monitorable by both employees and managers alike, ensuring short-staffed teams stay well-rested and productive. Leadership should receive notifications when employees miss breaks, and they should be able to track a live timeclock feed to know when and where workers are taking their breaks.

5. Cross-train employees

Train employees to handle a broad range of tasks so they’re more well-rounded and well-equipped to deal with short-staffing challenges. The best way to do this is to encourage your staff members to mentor and train each other.

Start by making a list of everyone on your team and include their job descriptions. Think about the expertise each role requires and then pair positions that share similar skill sets. For instance, you can pair up wait staff with those working in the front office team, both client-facing roles. The wait staff team members would learn how to perform check-ins, check-outs, and make reservations, and the front office team members would learn how to serve customers at the restaurant.

If all of your staff are cross-trained and multi-functional, they’ll be able to fill in for each other. It will become possible for you to rotate your staff across different departments to meet varying customer needs.

Proper WFM practices mitigate short-staffing pains

Workforce management can be quite complex for individual departments to handle, especially while short-staffed. By uniting staff on one platform and deploying the tips above, it’s possible to have executive oversight on staffing needs. If you’d like to overcome the challenges of the short-staffing problem at your resort, get in touch with us today!

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Restaurant Labor Costs: Good Percentage & 5 common mistakes

Restaurants have been struggling to survive as they cope with high labor costs post-pandemic.

As per WKBW news, Lisa Riniolo, who runs The Garage Bar and Restaurant, is complaining about workers demanding higher rates of pay. She says, “People are coming in with unrealistic numbers that they want. A dishwasher — $20 an hour — I can’t afford it. If I have to pay a dishwasher $20 an hour, I might as well close the doors.”

Labor costs are important to the ever-evolving equation that is a restaurant business – in fact, they make up 29–33% of costs in the restaurant industry. And there’s plenty of room for error while you manage them. Here are five of the most commonly made mistakes while managing restaurant labor costs:

1. Inaccurately scheduling labor without anticipating sales demand

Failing to predict sales demand prevents managers from scheduling the optimal number of staff on each shift. Restaurants become overstaffed or understaffed, leading to either inflated or overly reduced labor costs with inadequate staff to meet customer needs.

How to avoid this mistake?

Tap into the power of your restaurant employee scheduling software and analyze historical sales data to schedule the right number of employees. If you know you need X number of employees for Y level of sales, you’re more likely to get the scheduling numbers right.

Make notes in your employee scheduling software for every shift. Highlight if you were understaffed, overstaffed, or optimally staffed for the sales figures you’ve recorded. Use these notes to learn from your past scheduling mistakes.

2. Paying overtime wages unnecessarily

Poor planning leads to employees working more than 40 hours a week which means, you guessed it, paying high overtime wages. Time and again, restaurants fail to consider overtime laws and continue to schedule labor on an ad-hoc basis.

For example, as per New York State law, most employees must be paid at the rate of 1.5 times their regular rate of pay for all hours worked above 40 hours per workweek.

How to avoid this mistake?

Spread your staff evenly across shifts, and make sure they’re all scheduled below the 40-hour threshold. Use predictive scheduling to plan work schedules at least a week in advance, so you make sure you don’t exceed the threshold. This way, you’ll not only save on overtime costs, but you’ll also end up giving your employees more predictability around their schedules and keeping them satisfied, leading to lower staff turnover.

Ideally, your employee scheduling software should alert you with an automated warning message every time a staff member is about to cross their overtime threshold. Simple automation like this provides management with increased visibility into how to best mitigate unnecessary overtime, and in turn, high labor costs.

3. Stingy scheduling, leading to understaffed shifts

In an attempt to boost profits, some restaurant managers schedule the lowest possible number of employees to keep tight control over labor costs. This can cause the restaurant to be understaffed and lead to issues like long lines and increased wait times, all leading to customer attrition.

How to avoid this mistake?

Have a more evolved goal of achieving ‘optimum’ labor costs so you can serve your customers effectively. Keep track of both your revenue data and your labor cost data. On average, labor costs should be less than 30% of gross revenue in the restaurant industry.

Always keep the customer in mind when scheduling labor. Seek their feedback on what they thought about your staff after they’ve dined at your restaurant. Ask how they felt about the level of available customer service. Customers are your number one priority. Controlling costs is your secondary goal.

4. Cutting wages to reduce labor costs

It’s a common mistake to think that cutting staff wages is an effective way to reduce labor costs. This is often a blind and oversimplified attempt at quickly lowering labor costs in the short term. Cutting wages can lead to short staffing issues, employee burnout, and bitter workers.

How to avoid this mistake?

Before laying off employees, those in hospitality must take a step back and realize the value of tracking scheduled vs. actual labor costs. By understanding the variance between these two costs, managers can pinpoint the source of increased labor costs.

Thankfully, modern solutions exist for restaurant owners. The right workforce management system should map labor costs to sales in real-time while also displaying the variance between scheduled and actual wages. This data increases visibility into front-line issues, helping managers tackle high labor costs before they get out of hand.

According to Josh Cameron of Workforce.com, “What’s much better is to have the schedule and the attendance in one system, so you can tick these things off throughout the day or at the end of the shift and if there are differences, you can go see why that happens.”

5. Not investing time and effort in employee engagement

Sometimes, bars and restaurants fail to properly curate employee engagement. For instance, management might not invest in continual training and cross-training, which can lead to issues in customer service and proper equipment care. If left unchecked, these issues can greatly increase operating and labor costs.

Improper employee engagement may also take the form of toxic, inefficient, or uninspired workplace environments, resulting in expensive staff turnover. One study found turnover rates in the hospitality sector (including restaurants) to be as high as 74.9%. When the restaurant fails to engage its employees, it causes disgruntled employees to leave the business, leading to high labor costs resulting from hiring and training new talent.

How to avoid this mistake?

Some employees leave their jobs because they may not know the exact processes to follow, their specific responsibilities, or their role’s connection to the larger business of the restaurant. By investing time and money into professional development, you’ll support their job performance and boost job satisfaction levels. Make sure you have detailed job descriptions, for starters, so your employees know exactly what they’re hired to do.

Keeping track of the number of hours your staff has spent on training is a great way to ensure their knowledge and skills are up to the mark. Make sure your employee scheduling software has the ability to record employee qualifications like training hours or specific certifications — this extra organization always ends up paying off.

Also, focus on collecting shift feedback from your employees. It’s a concrete way to boost engagement since you can ask staff to rate shifts and provide comments on them every time they clock out. This way, managers can uncover issues in staff satisfaction before they become a headache.

For instance, maybe a waiter says that they worked an overstaffed shift and didn’t get to serve enough tables. Or perhaps a waiter could say that they were working in a shift with staff they don’t get along with. Use this feedback to adjust schedules, boost employee engagement and reduce labor costs associated with turnover.

Record, report, and analyze labor data to manage restaurant labor costs effectively

It is easy for restaurants to overlook all sorts of granular data when managing their labor costs. To avoid this, they need to recognize the power of automation and workforce analytics. Restaurant timekeeping platforms should actively record and report data on wages, overtime, and hours worked, and also fully integrate with local POS and scheduling systems, so as to properly account for demand and employee engagement.

Learn more about how to avoid costly mistakes in restaurant labor by chatting with us today.

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Restaurant Tipping Laws [Federal + State]

Business owners in the restaurant industry are in a unique position when it comes to employee tips. As an employer, it is important to create a fair system for employees that makes sure employees are rewarded for their service, and also comply with IRS regulations.

There are a lot of nuances when it comes to federal and state wage laws and restaurant owners have a responsibility to implement policies that are legal yet rewarding for staff. Consider these two strategies to ensure your business remains fair but compliant.

What are tips?

Tips are optional payments received by employees from customers, typically in exchange for good service. Tips make up a large part of earnings as approximately $36.4 billion is earned in tips by tipped workers annually. A tipped employee is an employee that earns more than $30 a month in tips.

What does the law say about tips?

The law around tips differs on the federal, state and local levels. However, there are characteristics that remain the same throughout:

  • A tipped employee is an employee that earns more than $30 a month in tips
  • Employees who do not earn tips —also known as “non-tipped employees” (cooks, cleaners, dishwashers etc) must be paid the minimum wage
  • Tips are considered wages
  • Tips are strictly the property of the employee— there is no legal arrangement where an employer receives part of an employee’s tips. This is considered wage theft.

Federal Law

Federal law concerning tips is dictated by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) as mandated by the Department of Labor (DOL). This law tackles wages, work hours and minimum wage requirements.

You are required to pay $2.13 per hour in direct wages on the basis that what your employee earns in tips will equal the federal minimum wage. For example, your waiter works 30 hours a week and receives $200 in tips for that week. Your employee’s earnings look like this: $2.13 x 30= $63.90 ( which is called the cash wage) plus the tips of $200, which brings the total to $263.90. Their hourly wage works out to $8.79, (earnings divided by total hours) which exceeds the federal minimum wage.

In another week, your waiter works a 30-hour week again, but this time only receives $100 in tips. The waiter’s earnings look like this: $2.13 x 30=$63.90 plus the tips of $100, making the total $163.90. The hourly wage is $5.46. This does not exceed the federal minimum wage, so you must pay the waiter a tip credit to fill the gap and fulfill the minimum wage requirement ($7.25).

Tip crediting is the process of applying the tips towards your employee’s wage to ensure you are paying the full amount. In the example above, the $5.46 hourly pay does not meet the minimum wage, so the employer must fill that gap by paying the waiter an additional $1.79 per hour.

State Law

It is always important to check your local state laws on the Department of Labor (DOL) website.

Some states such as Minnesota, Oregon and California —do not allow tip credits under any circumstances. In California, the minimum wage is $14 per hour for employers that have more than 26 employees and $13 per hour for employers with 25 and below employees. Employers in these states must pay the full state minimum wage to their employers. Therefore your employees receive tips on top of their wages.

Although wage laws require employers to ensure that employees’ tips bridge the gap to make the $7.25 per hour minimum wage, it may improve employee morale and reduce turnover to go beyond that rate of pay. Especially now, when there’s a labor shortage, attracting restaurant employees is difficult and workers are demanding better working conditions. It’s not uncommon to see workers walking out or refusing to work for such low wages.

How are taxes reported on tips?

Tips are subject to employment taxes including Federal Insurance Contributions Act, (FICA), Federal Unemployment Tax Act, (FUTA) and Federal income tax withholding. This makes you liable for different payroll and tax obligations. You must pay the employer’s portion of FICA and FUTA taxes. This can influence your decision on which tipping policy to implement for your staff. Here’s the basics of tax reporting on tips:

  • Your employees are responsible for reporting all cash tips to you if they exceed over $30 and this must be done by the 10th of the following month of when the tips were received. For example, a waitress earned $550 in tips in February, so this needs to be reported to the manager by March 10th.
  • It is important you create an open environment for your employees to declare their tips to you, so you can fulfill these tax obligations.
  • If your employee refuses to report their tips to you, you are not liable for the employer’s share of FICA until the IRS is notified.

What are the options for tip policies in restaurants?

As a restaurant owner, here are three tip policies you could implement:

Everyone keeps their tips

Each employee keeps the amount of tips they earned at the end of the shift. Whilst this is a straightforward policy, it can be considered unfair. Only customer-facing staff (waitstaff and bar staff) would receive tips, this excludes back of house staff like dishwashers and bussers—who are also integral to the hospitality industry. This policy could lead to less back of house employees as they do not see any extra benefits.

Tip splitting or tip sharing

Tip splitting involves splitting the tips between tipped and non-tipped employees based on hours worked or by role-based percentages. Tip sharing is voluntary and there are no guidelines or laws. This policy ensures all employees receive tips, creating a fair environment.

Tip splitting can be confusing from a payroll perspective because you have to ensure your non-tipped employees receive the minimum wage plus their tips (which will also be taxed). Plus you have to ensure that you are applying the correct tip credits to the tipped employees’ wages even though their tips are being split. You also want to ensure that the non-tipped employees are not out-earning the employees who actually earn the tips due to the tip credit rules.

Tip pooling

Tip pooling consists of collecting the tips earned during a shift and evenly distributing the tips at the end of the shift. The tip pool is shared between both front and back staff.

Tip pooling is covered by the FLSA. You cannot apply a tip credit to employees’ wages who share tips with non-tipped staff, therefore you must pay the full minimum wage. For instance, normally you can apply a tip credit to the front-of-house staffs’ wages. But if they are part of a valid tip pool agreement where they will be sharing their tips with back of house staff, you cannot apply tip credits.

This policy is equitable, employees receive a fair hourly wage and the tips are also shared amongst all employees. But tip pooling may not be a sustainable solution when there are slow periods and you are operating with less turnover. Your staff may be disappointed that their tips are being split when there are fewer tips going around.

Which is best: tip splitting or tip pooling?

From a compliance perspective, tip pooling may be the best option. It is easy to calculate the tips and wages—you can easily keep up with your employee earnings. Everyone is earning the minimum wage plus tips, there are no calculations for tip credits.

A tip pooling policy also might help you attract staff—you are offering a benefit to prospective employees. A fair wage plus the potential of earning tips for all staff. However, it might be a good idea to let your employees choose which policy they want to be implemented. This gives your staff a voice and agency to set the conditions that they want to work under.

Manage tip calculation headaches

Whichever policy you decide to implement, the bad news is there are some calculations waiting for you. The good news is, workforce management software can help. Oftentimes you can connect it to your POS system, set the percentage of tips to be shared, and your employees automatically get what they’re owed based on hours worked. Learn more about how proper time and attendance tracking can help you manage tip calculations by contacting us. We’d love to talk you through it.

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How to determine weekly work hours for your staff

Do you know how to set weekly work hours for your shift workers?

The average number of weekly hours worked by full-time employees in the U.S. is 41.5 hours. It’s lower in European countries, like Denmark, where it’s 37.2 hours per week.

The statistics are only an approximation. Your business and staff needs are unique. And you need to learn how to determine weekly work hours for staff in a balanced, methodical way — balancing between staff productivity, staff morale, business profitability, and legal requirements.

Here’s how to determine the right number of weekly working hours for your staff:

#1: Understand your staff needs

While setting weekly work schedules, it’s important to learn your staff’s work and life goals. Some workers might be college students, while others might have family commitments. Talk with them to discuss their weekly work schedule expectations, so you can take that into consideration.

If you set the weekly work hours too high, it may be bad for your staff’s health and productivity. A study by the World Health Organization found that working more than 55 hours a week increases the risk of having a stroke by 35% and the risk of dying from heart disease by 17%.

Setting weekly work hours too high can be counterproductive as it unnecessarily overworks staff and often causes burnout. Research shows that productivity falls sharply after 50 hours per week and drops dramatically after 55 hours. On the other end, setting weekly work hours too low may not compensate your staff to levels that keep them satisfied.

Set weekly hours in a way that enhances staff productivity while keeping them healthy and happy. This requires empathy at an individual staff level so you can set weekly hours for each staff member most effectively. This will also boost your employee retention rates, leading to higher profitability in the long run.

The best way to achieve higher productivity and morale is to view the exercise of setting weekly work hours as a collaborative effort between you and your staff. You need to seek their feedback before and after setting their weekly hours. This will help you evaluate their preferences and know how they’re feeling after delivering a full work week.

Being human-centered in your approach is essential when scheduling for maximum employee productivity and satisfaction.

#2: Evaluate what your business needs

Business is about supply and demand. When your sales are high, you need more staff to help you deliver on customer expectations. The million-dollar question then is: How do you predict sales demand so you can set the weekly work hours to meet it?

The simplest way to predict sales demand is to examine your historical sales data. You’ll know the shifts where you’ve been busy in the past and ones that have been quieter. And the chances are high that sales will follow a similar pattern in the future, too.

Use revenue and shift data from your employee scheduling software to set weekly work hours accurately for meeting sales demand. More importantly, you can avoid the expensive mistake of overstaffing or understaffing.

You also need to minimize employee turnover as much as possible. Fast-food chains like McDonald’s are offering flexible hours and higher hourly rates to their employees. Following a similar tactic could help you reduce employee turnover costs to a large extent, making your business more profitable in the long run.

Know your personnel needs to effectively set working hours. From past experience, what mix of employees do you need for which shifts? How many supervisors and entry-level employees do you need on each shift? These questions will help you determine how many hours you need from each level of employee.

You must allow shift workers to cover for one another in case anyone falls sick, so you can maintain the same number of weekly hours you’d originally planned. Empowering employees to pick up the shift of a sick staff member will prevent you from being understaffed.

#3: Stay within legal boundaries

You need to ensure your weekly scheduling is compliant with both local, state, and federal laws. For instance, in New York City, retail and hospitality companies with over 20 employees aren’t allowed to have staff on an ‘on-call’ basis. They should be given a written schedule 72 hours in advance, so they have a predictable schedule.

There may also be laws in your state that need you to give a certain amount of gap between shifts to allow your employees to rest. In New York, you’re required to pay an additional hour of pay to staff who work split shifts, i.e., working two or more shifts per working day.

You also need to follow overtime laws. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires non-exempt workers to receive overtime pay for any time worked over 40 hours, and some states even have different laws regarding overtime pay. And in certain circumstances, legislation may set limits on the amount of overtime employees can work, so you need to keep this in mind too.

If you plan weekly work hours meticulously with your employee scheduling software, you’ll realize you can avoid overtime costs, or at least prevent them to a large extent. The right employee scheduling software can help you navigate these laws and make it easier for you to set weekly hours.

Use predictive scheduling features within your employee scheduling software, so you can create weekly work schedules ahead of time. Avoid annoying your employees who might be pedantic about their working conditions.

Move toward a lean workforce to set optimum weekly hours

Aim to move toward a lean and agile workforce to ensure your business is setting weekly hours cost-effectively. Remember, weekly scheduling proves to be a balancing act between staff satisfaction, business success, and legal standards. By fulfilling these three needs in a flexible way, you are sure to strike the perfect amount of weekly work hours for your staff.

If you want to continue the conversation about how to set weekly work hours for your business, please feel free to contact us today. We’re here to help.

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4 Ways to Maximize HR and WFM Data

Technology and cloud-based applications and platforms enable companies to gather more data, but can they use it to make more effective HR and business decisions?

Virgin Media exemplified how to turn HR data to improve the candidate experience and recruitment process, ultimately reducing a potential loss in revenue equivalent to $5.4 million per year.

Another example is Lake Elsinore Storm, a minor league baseball affiliate of the San Diego Padres. They can track different WFM data, giving them information on how labor dollars are being spent. Using Workforce.com, they see labor costs and revenue per week, per team, and per individual. Because of this visibility and system, they can spot gaps and potential opportunities that help them not just be more efficient with costs, but more importantly, improve customer engagement.

However, the same cannot be said for other organizations, and most are still looking for the best way to utilize and make sense of their data better. In fact, according to a Workforce.com study, 64% of respondents say that labor analytics is a priority when they are evaluating any new software for their organization. It’s a clear indication of a gap between how organizations want to utilize data and how they currently do so. 

How to Maximize HR and WFM Data

1. Have everything in one place

Integration is key to ensure accuracy, access information fast, and analyze information alongside relevant metrics. 

“Over a really long period of time, everything seems fine. And I think it’s true for most HR data. No one really needs it for anyone. No one’s asking, so people tend to forget that this is important. And then there’ll be some event—something regrettable and unexpected. When that does happen, not having this data correct and accessible becomes very, very expensive,” Josh Cameron, Chief Strategy Officer at Workforce.com, said. 

When COVID-19 first hit, HR departments were suddenly being asked for a lot of information regarding employee statuses, PTO balances, and pay rates. “Instead of having a week to work it out, HR teams need to provide information right away. We certainly saw that in the market and saw organizations wanting to implement systems really fast to handle all of that,” Cameron shared. 

Webinar: The Hidden Cost of Bad HR Data

When HR and WFM data are integrated and can be found in a single place, it would be one less thing organizations need to deal with when something unexpected happens. 

2. Automate what you can

A good place to start is employee onboarding. A digital and automated onboarding system helps you keep track of employee information from the get-go. This helps keep everything in one place without too much paperwork. An efficient system stays on top of qualifications, certifications, and employee pay rates and alerts HR teams and managers when they need to be revisited. 

3. Optimize operations with data

WFM data can be powerful when used to optimize operations, and it begins with access to vital data and ensuring that frontline managers can use it too. 

It’s all about having access to crucial data in real-time and being able to make decisions on the fly. Typically, managers receive an end-of-week report on their labor analytics, but the crucial decision point has passed by then. When they have a real-time view of their operations, they’re able to adjust according to how the day goes. 

Read: Labor analytics and reporting starts with access to the right data

Access to WFM data can also help managers build cost-efficient employee schedules based on historical data and metrics. It takes out the guesswork and ensures that there are enough employees scheduled to meet the day’s demands. 

4. Avoid compliance issues

When HR and WFM data are tracked and analyzed correctly, they can prevent compliance issues from happening.  Leveraging data for HR compliance is about preventing potential violations. It means having the information to make sure everything is compliant—from wages, implementing schedules, to workplace policies. But at the same time, it’s also about not having to scramble getting information when it’s requested by authorities.

An integrated system is vital to realize the positive impact of data on your organization. When systems are integrated, consolidating a vast amount of information proves to be much easier. Ultimately, integration allows teams to generate reports fast, act on them quickly, and stay agile if something unexpected happens. 

Workforce.com can sync with any platform an organization uses, allowing for scheduling driven by actual labor insights, automated employee onboarding, custom BI reporting, and easier labor compliance, among others. See it in action by trying Workforce.com today. 

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Bridge Control Services Navigates 12-hour Shifts with Workforce.com

Operating in the Gulf of Paria between the shores of Venezuela and the island of Trinidad and Tobago, Bridge Control Services (BCS) has remained a cornerstone of the local shipping industry for 17 years. With a fleet consisting of 10 ships and 37 crew members, the marine transportation company specializes in taxiing people to and from major shipping vessels that arrive in Trinidad and Tobago ports. 

For general manager Troy Persad, the role of BCS encompasses much more than just transportation. “When you live on an island that is surrounded by water, [shipping] is an important industry because that’s how we get things like food,” he says. “I know I’m playing a role and supporting those important things, you know?”

CHALLENGE

With rigid pandemic health and safety protocols limiting nearly all stages of operations, BCS management found it difficult to accomplish previously simple tasks such as scheduling and replacing shifts.

“The pandemic is having a negative impact on our manpower planning,” says Persad. “When staff members contract the virus we lose them for 14 days at least and we have to find a replacement for them.”

Dealing with manpower planning limitations like this was even more of a headache considering BCS’ complex scheduling process. Persad schedules two different shift patterns, one a 12-hour pattern and the other a regular 8-hour pattern.

Crafting consistent schedules for both 12-hour and 8-hour groups and managing last-minute changes proved very cumbersome. To make matters even more difficult, Persad and all his coordinators were operating with a completely manual system for both scheduling and attendance. It was up to these on-site coordinators to know who was working when, confirm over the phone between bases, and manually plug the information into spreadsheets.

BCS needed a workforce management platform that automated the whole process. “We need that to ensure that we manage our manpower stringently and monitor it very precisely,” says Persad. “Utilizing the manual system, you have the risk of errors,” says Persad. “In order to circumvent those errors, you have to have various layers of contingency which basically increase the administrative time.”

SOLUTION

BCS knew immediately that Workforce.com would be a perfect fit. “The Workforce.com system was so easy to use and easy to develop. It really was not an imposition,” says Persad regarding the implementation process. 

The new workforce management platform overhauled BCS’ outdated scheduling and attendance processes, making daily life easier for Persad, the coordinators, and all crew members. “I now have a greater understanding of the operations of the company simply by logging onto the [Workforce.com] dashboard,” says Persad.

With staff attendance and scheduling now all streamlined through a single, live platform, coordinators have enhanced abilities to manage formerly complex tasks like last-minute shift replacements, maritime certification tracking, and 12-hour shift planning. 

RESULTS

Together, BCS and Workforce.com are reinventing the logistics of maritime transportation in the Gulf of Paria. Since deploying its new workforce management system, BCS has successfully resolved all its inefficiency issues revolving around pandemic restrictions, shift planning, and attendance tracking. Here are only a few specific ways in which BCS has experienced success with Workforce.com:

Increased staff attendance visibility

On-site coordinators at each of BCS’ three bases now have the capability to see in real-time when and where crew members are working.

“At my fingertips, I actually know who is present and if someone is not present, what’s the reason for their absence,” says Persad. “It takes no time for me to actually get a full view of my whole operation.”

Coordinators also no longer need to manually report attendance, with Workforce.com allowing staff to clock in and out themselves. All attendance data is then automatically compiled into accurate timesheets and reports. 

Greater insight into labor costs

BCS can now actively track their labor costs while scheduling, helping them mitigate issues in overspending. “We know for each shift, what its cost is without having to crunch any numbers on a spreadsheet,” says Persad. 

While building schedules, every shift tile displays wage costs. Persad can use this information to optimally design shifts that suit crew member needs as well as the organization’s budget. “It allows me to make more effective decisions on a timely basis,” he says. 

Simple 12-hour shift building

BCS operates on a 24-hour basis, with three separate teams cycling through six-day rotations. The rotations consist of 24 crew members working four days on and then two days off.

“I go in and build the teams, identify the persons for each team and for each of the shifts, build one shift pattern, choose how long to replicate it, and just click ‘build shifts,’” says Persad. 

With Workforce.com’s intuitive scheduling system, Persad can easily craft the perfect 12-hour shift patterns for every team and save them as templates for continued use.

Analytics on equipment uptime

BCS now has the ability to understand the usage and availability of every vessel in its fleet. Coordinators can update shift tiles on the schedules to indicate which vessels are being used and who the operators are for each shift.

“We can pull a report at the end of the month, showing person X worked on boat one, boat two, or boat three,” says Persad. “This is very important to us in understanding the availability and the uptime of all boats.” 

Tracking of certifications and licenses 

Using Workforce.com’s Qualifications feature, BCS can organize and track vital employee credentials. “[Workforce.com] allows us on a real-time basis to know that all of our crew members have things like their captain’s licenses,” says Persad. 

In the maritime transportation and shipping industry, complying with laws regarding qualifications is essential for safe operating conditions. BCS can automatically schedule according to these qualifications, with Workforce.com flagging any non-compliant shifts that are accidentally scheduled. 

At the end of the day, it’s about the clients and the island community at large for Bridge Control Services. Without their vital transportation services, the shipping industry in Trinidad and Tobago would not be the same. 

“We have a very close relationship with our customers in the industry,” Persad reflects. “Ensuring that they are happy, that’s very important … that’s what keeps me coming to work every day.”

BCS understands its importance to the local economy; this fuels its continued drive for perfection. A major part of this perfection is the curation of proper workforce management practices. With Workforce.com, BCS realizes its workforce management potential, resulting in optimal outcomes for all its stakeholders. 

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How to reduce labor costs in a restaurant without compromising on service

Running a restaurant business has never been easy. Eighty percent go bust within five years of opening, and the average profit margin for a full-service restaurant in the USA is just 3-5%. This is a sector where every cent still really counts.

Wages make up the majority of any eatery’s outgoings. With the hospitality landscape still in turmoil, controlling that expenditure while maintaining an attractive service is more important than ever. Rather than simply cutting staff and hoping for the best, try these strategies to reduce labor costs in your restaurant without diminishing your service offering.

Plan ahead to avoid unexpected costs

Predictive scheduling isn’t just a benefit to employees. Chaotic ad hoc scheduling costs you more as you bring in additional staff to fill shifts at the last minute. This makes it harder — impossible, even — to accurately predict your wage costs from month to month.

Depending on where you operate, you may already be legally obligated to use predictive scheduling, which involves setting staff schedules at least two weeks in advance. This allows staff to plan their personal lives more reliably, knowing they won’t suddenly be called into work. This reduces frustration and burnout and keeps staff happy and more productive. This, in turn, means lower employee turnover, which also saves you money in advertising and hiring.

Crucially, for restaurant managers, planning your shifts weeks in advance means you pay less in overtime as you’re able to more carefully plan who will work when. Using software to manage your time and attendance helps in this regard. Workforce.com will even warn you when you schedule staff who are coming up on overtime hours and identify alternative employees with normal working hours still to use.

Use data to schedule efficiently

Planning shifts in advance can protect your business from last-minute understaffing, but overstaffing is where labor costs really add up. Many restaurants, even those that are profitable, are still losing money through unnecessary wages because they’re not crunching the numbers when it comes to scheduling.

Many restaurants still rely on the “eyeball” method for setting staff levels. Wednesday afternoons always seem quiet, so fewer staff are scheduled. That works up to a point, but to find the real patterns driving your business, you need to be able to take months of data and sort it on a day-by-day, shift-by-shift, even hour-by-hour basis.

Seeing the long-term income vs. expenditure patterns needed for this granular efficiency is incredibly hard to do manually unless you happen to also be a statistician with lots of free time. This is another area where software like Workforce can help restaurants and hospitality businesses. By automatically collating all the relevant data, it can produce regular reports that spell out in detail where these smaller savings can be made, adding up over the financial year.

Overstaffing a shift doesn’t just cost you money; it can have a dramatic impact on your employees too. For customer-facing roles such as wait staff and bartenders, it directly eats into their income by spreading the available tips thinly across more staff. Efficient scheduling means more income for everyone.

Ditch the delivery apps

Not all of your labor costs will be direct. The pandemic saw an explosion in the use of delivery apps such as Grubhub and Uber Eats that allow customers to order food from restaurants for local delivery. However, with fees that can be as high as 30%, many restaurants — both chain and single location — are finding the additional business from these apps does not result in more profit.

In March 2020, even before lockdowns turbocharged the delivery app sector, TechCrunch research found the cost to the customer for ordering restaurant food via an app included a markup of between 17% and 40.5%. None of that extra profit finds its way back to the restaurants, which instead are expected to swallow the cost of discounts offered by the apps to entice new users.

These kinds of business practices are not going unchallenged. New York has already passed a permanent 15% cap on delivery app fees, and several New York state residents are the source of a class-action suit alleging that Grubhub, Postmates, DoorDash, and Uber Eats are operating a monopoly.

It’s understandable that for many restaurants, off-site customers now represent a significant part of their business. At the very least, you should consider how much you’re paying in fees to reach these app customers and whether that investment is paying off in a sustainable way. Controlling labor costs by hiring more staff may sound counterintuitive, but it may well be more cost-effective to hire your own delivery driver and directly serve fewer off-premises customers at a higher profit margin.

To reduce labor costs for a restaurant, dig deeper for big savings

If your strategy for wage efficiency is simply scheduling less staff on traditionally quiet nights, you’re missing long-term savings and eating into an already slim profit margin. A data-driven approach is the only way to maximize your efficiency, and for that, you need to really crunch the numbers — or use software like Workforce.com to do it for you.

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How COVIDCheck Colorado Optimized Operations Across 55 Locations

 

During the peak of the pandemic in 2020, emergency testing and vaccination service COVIDCheck Colorado was established to help return half a million disconnected and isolated people back to their normal lives. For Carol Carrasquillo, COVIDCheck Colorado’s site optimization director, this proved to be a monumental yet extremely necessary challenge. In charge of continuous improvement measures and training protocols across all testing locations, Carrasquillo understands more than most what it takes to optimize a workforce to provide the best possible level of care. 

CHALLENGE

With communities throughout Colorado suffering amidst the pandemic, COVIDCheck Colorado acted quickly to expand its operations. While this rapid expansion provided more public access to testing and vaccines, it was very difficult for Carrasquillo to control frontline staffing issues like no-shows, emergencies, and most commonly, overtime. 

“We weren’t necessarily keeping up with the number of staff on-site as quickly as we could,” says Carrasquillo. “When you’re getting those types of 80-hour weeks, there’s cause for concern because that’s not sustainable.”

She also struggled with ensuring all staff had proper medical training and credentials. “Vaccination sites are very particular about the credentials that someone has to have in order to vaccinate,” says Carrasquillo. “It would put us at a big compliance risk if someone were performing duties that they weren’t actually medically certified to do.”

Perhaps the biggest challenge Carrasquillo faced with operations was adjusting staffing levels across 55 different locations in response to fluctuating demand. “It was hard knowing who was at each site and when they were working,” reflects Carrasquillo. “We were doing everything in Excel spreadsheets.”

Carrasquillo needed a solution that would provide her with increased operational visibility so that she could better control labor costs, ensure proper medical compliance, and adjust staffing levels across all sites. She also wanted to equip her staff with technology that would help them perform their jobs efficiently, effectively, and above all, safely.

SOLUTION

Carrasquillo used Workforce.com to optimize operations across all 55 of COVIDCheck Colorado’s sites. The workforce management platform automated tasks such as timekeeping and schedule distribution. It also provided Carrasquillo with more visibility into key operational areas like staffing levels, medical compliance, and labor costs. 

“Without Workforce.com, we wouldn’t be able to assess our staff as far as where they are, when they are working, and how many hours they’re working,” says Carrasquillo. “Workforce.com is able to quickly assess where we can reallocate extra resources.”

RESULTS

Powered by Workforce.com, Carrasquillo orchestrated 3,400 frontline workers in the successful administration of 300,000 vaccinations and 800,000 tests. With an overhauled workforce management system, operations across all 55 COVIDCheck Colorado sites were streamlined to ensure the best possible efficiency, safety, and patient outcomes. Here are some of the specific ways Workforce.com helped Carrasquillo achieve this success:

Reduced labor costs

With its live insights into scheduled vs actual wages, overtime, and demand data, Workforce.com provides Carrasquillo with the information she needs to pinpoint and limit overspending wherever present. “I can see how much overtime is being worked on a weekly basis,” says Carrasquillo. “[Workforce.com] gives us visibility and raises red flags where we might have opportunities to address unnecessary overtime.”

Most importantly, these savings have enabled Carrasquillo to carry out the equitable deliverance of care, an important part of COVIDCheck Colorado’s mission. “We can take any of those extra dollars that we have and really go out to the different communities that we wanted to reach.”

Improved patient outcomes

Optimizing labor costs has also led to better patient outcomes. “We’re able to provide more resources to our sites and newer sites, to be able to run them right from an operational perspective, and test and vaccinate as many people as we can in the community,” says Carrasquillo. 

The results speak for themselves, as COVIDCheck Colorado’s NPS scores have consistently fallen in the nineties since implementing Workforce.com. 

Labor compliance at all sites

Using Workforce.com’s Qualifications feature, Carrasquillo can easily check on employee medical certifications and training requirements. “What it has allowed us to do is be able to quickly assess who is actually qualified from a medical certification perspective to do different roles,” says Carrasquillo. 

She can also automatically limit scheduling according to qualifications, meaning shifts assigned to unqualified workers are flagged for managers to see and change.

Greater workforce visibility

With a live timeclock feed, Carrasquillo and her site managers can see where and when people are working, making it much easier to track down employees who need to be sent to understaffed sites. 

“We’ve been using Workforce.com to capture and really assess our capacity,” Carrasquillo states. “We’ve leveraged it to look at how many appointments we have compared to how many people are scheduled and determine whether we have enough staff.”

With the help of Workforce.com, Carrasquillo successfully optimized operations at all COVIDCheck Colorado sites, helping bring emergency aid to thousands of people in need. At the core of this achievement was her ability to empower and allocate her staff with the right tools. 

“Your staff is what is really going to make or break your operations,” reflects Carrasquillo. “Whether you have enough to help serve customers or you have too many and need to reallocate them somewhere else, Workforce.com helps make things more efficient and effective.”

Following COVIDCheck Colorado’s success with Workforce.com, Carrasquillo believes change is imminent for emergency health services regarding how administrative tasks and oversight are carried out. “I think the future of the healthcare space is that we need to leverage and utilize [workforce management] in a way that just makes things more operationally efficient.”

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How to prevent workforce management system outages: mitigation through redundancy

Summary

  • Workforce management data breaches and outages are a very real threat

  • Businesses should build redundancy and backup plans into their systems

  • It comes down to choosing vendors with reliable data and network security

In light of the ransomware attack on Kronos (UKG) that caused disrupted operations for thousands of businesses across the nation, it is worth reflecting on how to properly build redundancy into a workforce management system so as to mitigate the pitfalls that come with mass system outages.  

As many unfortunate companies and employees experienced with the Kronos (UKG) data breach, having vital attendance, scheduling, and payroll systems shut down and remain inoperable for weeks can be disastrous. Without proper contingency plans and security measures in place, workforce management system failures can result in payroll running late, chaotic scheduling, extremely inaccurate timekeeping, and the potential for sensitive employee information to be leaked. 

Okay, now take a deep breath.

Outages and data breaches do not need to be so stressful or debilitating. Here are several measures you can take to build redundancy into your workforce management system to keep your business running smoothly in the event of a technological emergency. 

Have a business continuity plan

Essentially, this is a document that outlines in detail how a company will remain in operation during a sudden system disruption or outage. A continuity plan like this needs to be mapped out and understood by all parties well in advance to any sort of outage in order for it to work. Drafting up a plan in the moment of failure will do very little good and most likely add to the confusion and stress of the situation, so be sure to put one in place ahead of time. 

To create a business continuity plan, take the three following steps:

  • Identify key business functions. In the case of workforce management systems, these would usually be timekeeping, scheduling, and compliance.
  • Determine the minimum downtime for each function. This will help you gauge the urgency at which measures need to be taken to address outages. It will also clearly define a timeline for when replacement systems may need to be brought in. 
  • Create a plan to maintain operations. Here is where you actually decide on the temporary processes your company will take to continue scheduling and timekeeping. These are usually manual processes taking the form of paper-based tools and simple spreadsheets. In other cases, you might have backup software or hardware. 

Use best-of-breed software

This is undoubtedly the best way to ensure your workforce management system is failure-proof.

When using a traditional all-in-one software system that handles everything ranging from scheduling to payroll processing, you are susceptible to a single point of failure. As soon as an all-encompassing platform like this has a data breach and crashes, your company can be left without the ability to run a single critical business function for up to several weeks.

Instead, companies should use a suite of best-of-breed softwares from a variety of different vendors. Enlisting multiple platforms to perform different functions eliminates the risk of a single point of failure. For instance, if your specialized time and attendance system goes down, you are still left with the ability to use your payroll system which operates on a completely different server. In this case, all you would need to do is document time manually which then you can still plug in for payroll. 

Regularly export timesheets, schedules, and other relevant data

There are many precautionary measures that can be taken during normal business operations that can help mitigate damages from an outage. Exporting timesheets and schedules to store separately from your workforce management cloud is simple, efficient, and often, very useful. 

By routinely exporting and keeping former timesheets and schedules on hand, you effectively create a paper trail which you can use in case of ill-timed audits during an outage. These offline records can also be used as references for when you need to manually create previously automated schedules and timesheets. It’s always a good idea to have business-as-usual models available while in the midst of enacting a business continuity plan. 

Ensure systems have strong IT security infrastructure

Finally, at its core, a workforce management system simply needs to have reliable data and network security. Your business won’t need to suffer the damaging effects of software outages if the software doesn’t become compromised in the first place. 

While data breaches and system outages can happen to anyone, the likelihood of them happening is far lower in systems with proven track records of safety and reliability. You should look for past instances where a provider has fallen short in its IT security and use those red flags to help you choose a secure workforce management platform.

Proper workforce management IT systems should be SOC-2 certified so as to ensure maximum client data security. The system’s online infrastructure should also be hosted in a virtual private cloud, helping to safely isolate it from potential network breaches. 

You should also be sure that your workforce management system runs daily data backups as well as Point in Time Restore points. All backup data should be stored on a separate cloud server too, so that a single outage will not compromise the entire system and all its data.

Don’t let your business remain unprepared for workforce management and payroll system outages. These nightmares can happen to anyone, and the fallout can be severe without proper protocols and backup plans in place. If you’d like to find out more about what to do in the event of a system data breach or failure, contact us today. We’d love to chat.

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Kronos (UKG) data breach leaves businesses in the dark for “several weeks”

Summary

  • Workforce management company Kronos (UKG) suffers ransomware data breach

  • Kronos Private Cloud applications to be offline for “several weeks”

  • Impacted businesses seeking timekeeping and payroll alternatives ahead of busy holiday season

Christmas came a little early this year for thousands of businesses using Kronos attendance systems – this time delivered by the horrific Krampus, however, not jolly ol’ St. Nick. 

Kronos (UKG), a large workforce management and HR software provider, announced yesterday that they suffered a ransomware attack over the weekend on Dec. 11. The attack impacts UKG solutions using the Kronos Private Cloud, namely Workforce Central, UKG TeleStaff, Healthcare Extensions, and Banking Scheduling Solutions. 

The applications will be unavailable for “several weeks” while Kronos works to resolve the breach – unfortunate timing for businesses heading into the final stretch of the holiday season. Many will be left without the necessary capabilities to account for overtime, apply bonus payments, adjust for shift differential pay, and simply run payroll on time. 

For many organizations, the breach likely compromised sensitive employee information such as names, addresses, social security numbers, and employee IDs.

People everywhere are very alarmed about the breach, with their concerns even outperforming the search intent of avid PlayStation gamers and night sky fanatics, according to Google. That’s when you know things are serious. 

 

A Kronos representative has suggested clients “evaluate and implement alternative business continuity protocols related to the affected UKG solutions.” As such, many are reverting to rudimentary pen and paper practices to stay on top of attendance and scheduling, while others still are seeking entirely new workforce management systems. 

The breach comes as a surprise seeing as Kronos is such a long-standing and well-established brand in its field, with its origins dating all the way back to the 1970s. Some of its major clients include Puma, Tesla, Clemson University, and the MTA.

Ever since their merging with Ultimate Software to form UKG in 2020, the elderly company has struggled to update its outdated time clocks and hardware systems to keep up with newly emerging workforce management solutions. This latest security breach will undoubtedly prove a major setback in building customer trust heading into the new year of a still-young decade. 

In light of this recent ransomware attack, businesses should reevaluate the security of their workforce management systems. With a national labor shortage currently reducing employee engagement and satisfaction, businesses are already on thin ice with staff. The last thing they need right now is for their timekeeping systems to shut down. Employees are not very forgiving when it comes to the accuracy and timeliness of their pay – something Kronos and its clients are about to experience firsthand. 

The safety of employee information and the reliability of payroll is of the utmost importance when it comes to workforce management practices. If having your workforce management and payroll processes offline for weeks at a time is damaging to your business, then it’s probably time to make a change. Don’t let Krampus ruin the holidays for you or your company next year – be sure to invest in modern-day workforce solutions with top of the line data security.