Expanding from a domestic business to a global entity is an exciting prospect. Yet tapping into new worldwide markets brings a unique set of workforce management challenges.
Success depends on a variety of factors but it ultimately comes down to building a consistent, equitable plan to manage employees at home and abroad. Implementing a workforce management software solution that cantrack and facilitate the needs of a global workforce is crucial to successfully developing an organizationâs worldwide ambitions.
A global workforce balancing act
How executives supervise their workforce in one country may vastly differ in another nation for many reasons. What motivates an employee in Argentina will likely vary from a worker with the same title and responsibilities in Belarus or Pakistan.
Studies also have shown that while a population in one country prefers a particular management style, that same approach probably is not as effective in another country. Other differences can include:
Holiday celebrations.
Social attitudes.
Cultural backgrounds.
Language and currency.
Unifying global employees
Despite the myriad differences that come with managing a global workforce, there are common bonds and responsibilities all employees share.
They all work for the same organization. As such, human resources leaders should work with heads of other departments and regional managers to create uniform workforce management precedents, policies and standards that cross all borders and incorporate relevant and useful tools for all employees to use no matter where they are located.
Technology and a global workforce management system
When choosing an automated workforce management solution for a global company, organizations should seek ease of use through mobility tools that can quickly show a return on investment. Workforce management software enables savings by:
Controlling labor costs â Workforce management software cuts costs beginning with the initial clock in byeliminating time theft due to employee fraud. Automating payroll processes also minimizes the need for supervisors to make interpretations and ensures strict compliance with corporate policies.
Boosting employee productivity â Managers can monitor when their employees punch in and when they actually begin work. A mobile solution can help spot an excessive time lag and can immediately investigate the causes no matter where the employee is located.
Minimizing risk â Implementing a global workforce management system can provide key regulatory requirements up front and provide alerts to ensure organizations can comply with regional regulations consistently and with confidence.
Mobile solutions ease the burden
Managers need to know where global staff is at any given moment. Whether itâs due to crisis communications during a natural disaster or monitoring employee safety through their whereabouts on a particular job site, mobile workforce management solutions allow managers to quickly identify and assess staff safety and location through a platformâs photo-verified clock in system.
GPS also plays a key role in global workforce management. Timesheets can automatically sync GPS locations of all employees when they clock in and clock out, so thereâs no need to worry about an employeeâs whereabouts.
For a number of organizations operating in industries that function globally, pay rates also can get complicated. By implementing the Workforce.com platform, employeesâ GPS clock in data automatically assigns pay rates depending on registered location, saving employers valuable time and payroll administrators the headache and complexities of computing pay.
IntegrateWorkforce.comâs time clock app with payroll and POS systems already in use and have those far-away employees available in an instant via your mobile device.
The Cleveland Indians have sent pitcher Zach Plesac back to Cleveland from their current run of road games for breaking the team’s COVID-19 protocols.
According to Cleveland.com, MLB security personnel caught the pitcher returning to the team’s hotel early Sunday morning after he had gone out with friends. The team has its own coronavirus code of conduct, which in part required Plesac to obtain permission before leaving the hotel. According to ESPN, the Indians hired a car service to return Plesac to Cleveland so that he would not share an airplane with his teammates and potentially place them at risk. The team’s management has said that he will remain quarantined until he receives two negative tests.
Bravo to the Indians for doing what they feel they have to do to keep their employees safe and the team playing games.
Your business may not be able to dictate how your employees spend their free time, but you can hold them to consequences if they choose to act irresponsibly when “off the clock.”
We are living through a pandemic. Every employee has a responsibility to their employer, their co-workers, and the business to make sure that they do what they can to avoid brining COVID-19 into the workplace, and every employer has the same responsibility to take reasonable steps to prevent an at-risk employee from entering the workplace when it’s discovered.
These are strange times for sure, and I will not fault any employer that errs on the side of caution in how it manages its employee respective to mitigating workplace coronavirus exposures. I’m not advocating for, or in favor of, employer monitoring of employee off-duty conduct. If, however, irresponsible, reckless or dangerous behavior comes to an employerâs attention, it shouldnât ignore it in the name of privacy either.
Weâve all heard the saying time is money, but as many employers and HR directors have witnessed, an employeeâs time can be used in vastly different ways.
One hour of work for employee A could equate to three hours of work for employee B for the same project, even when employee A turns out better quality work in less time.
As roughly 51 percent of employees report being disengaged or actively disengaged at work, workforce absenteeism is costing U.S. companies around $550 billion a year in lost revenue.
In the 21st century, we live in a world full of distractions, stressors and vastly changing technology that has never existed before, placing our 40,000-year-old brain into new and unforeseen territory. Are we surprised that employee engagement has decreased as a result of this change?
The standard eight-hour workday resulted from Henry Fordâs efforts to attract better workers to his Ford Motor Co., eventually paving the way for unions to demand changes in how business was conducted during the Industrial Revolution. While the eight-hour day has been the set standard over the last century, the workplace has vastly changed since those times.
Is it possible for an employee to put in an eight-hour workday by working fewer hours with greater prioritization of time and focused effort?
After looking at the data, all signs point to a resounding yes.
According to McKinsey and Co., the average business professional spends 28 percent of their workday checking e-mail and answering messages, which can amount to nearly 2.6 hours per day, and roughly 120 messages exchanged between correspondents. Since email is the lifeblood of communication between businesses and their customers, these statistics may seem difficult to change, but they arenât.
The average employee checks their email 15 times a day, which is alarming, considering it takes an estimated 23 minutes and 15 seconds to reach the appropriate level of resumed concentration to return to the previous state of work. Taking these statistics into consideration, it makes sense why some people struggle to put in an eight- to 10-hour day with few results to show.
Even more alarming is the fact that the average amount of time someone spends on a given task without being interrupted is about 3 minutes and 5 seconds, which decreases to 2 minutes and 11 seconds when using an electronic device such as a computer or phone. Interruptions are bound to happen at work, especially for those stuck in a managerial position, yet 44 percent of the interruptions that occur throughout the day are self-induced.
In the 2020 workplace, we must minimize distractions to maximize our time and overall productivity. And what if we donât need a 40-hour workweek to achieve maximal results?
In 2019, Microsoft Japan implemented a four-day workweek âWork-Life Choice Challengeâ to test a new model of workplace efficiency, which showed some very promising preliminary findings. Their data showed a 40 percent increase in workersâ productivity, with a 23 percent drop in electricity costs and a 60 percent drop in the amount of paper being printed, all while providing a three-day weekend.
Although these outcomes are still in the early stages of adoption, they show promising results and further support the notion that time is relative to the focused efforts placed onto it. And as Parkinsonâs Law states, work expands to fill the time allotted.
Limiting the amount of time spent on a project may have the potential to increase performance and productivity vastly, pending that the work performed isnât truly constricted based on time (i.e., baking goods, laboratory testing, etc.).
These factors are vitally important because they all support many underlying principles held in cognitive neuropsychology and behavioral economics. The recurring trait that all of these statistics hold in common is that they all deal with people.
In order to truly maximize our business outcomes, we must help our employees maximize their brainpower and subsequent use of time. Working smarter doesnât mean we have to work harder. We merely need to utilize the power of time management to minimize distractions and help our employees optimize their brain to maximize their results.
You communicate with your other employees to let them know that you’ve had someone test positive. You reinforce all of your coronavirus safety rules, protocols and procedures. And you require the COVID-positive employee to isolate and not return to work per CDC guidelines.
Those guidelines recommend that a positive employee not return to work for either of: 1) being three days fever-free, respiratory symptoms have improved, and it’s been at least 10 days since symptoms first appeared; or 2) the receipt of two negative tests at least 24 hours apart. You opt for the latter, believing that negative tests will provide you and your employees better confidence that COVID-19 will not reenter your workplace when that employee returns.
Who pays for these coronavirus tests?
We have several of federal statutes, old and new, that guide the answer.
As to the cost of the testing itself, we look to the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Both the FFCRA and the CARES Act contain requirements that group and individual health insurance plans cover COVID-19 diagnostic testing without cost-sharing, co-pays, or deductibles. This requirement not only includes the cost of the test itself, but also the cost of any related office, urgent care, emergency room, or telehealth visits.
Second, if for some reason an employee is not covered by applicable health insurance, EEOC guidance strongly suggests that the ADA requires employers to cover the costs of COVID-19 testing. The EEOC’s Enforcement Guidance on Disability-Related Inquiries and Medical Examinations of Employees Under the ADA provides that an employer must pay for all medical-exam related costs when an employer requires the examination because the employer reasonably believes the employee poses a “direct threat.” According to the EEOC, “COVID-19 poses a direct threat.” Therefore, the ADA would require an employer to cover the costs of diagnostic testing related to keeping that direct threat out of the workplace.
What about compensation for taking a COVID test? Is the time an employee spends taking a COVID-19 test (including the time spent traveling to and from the testing site) “working time” such that it must be compensated? The answer to this question is likely “yes.” While there is little guidance on this issue, we can look to a 1997 opinion letter by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, which states, “[A]ttendance by an employee at a meeting during or outside of working hours for the purpose of submitting to a mandatory drug test imposed by the employer would constitute hours worked for FLSA purposes, as would attendance at a licensing physical examination during or outside of normal working hours.” If time spent submitting to a mandatory drug test or a physical or examination counts as “hours worked” for which an employer must compensate an employee, then it’s safe to assume that a required COVID-19 test falls into the same category.
Simple questions, complex answer. Bottom line, pay for the testing if the employee lacks health insurance to cover it, and pay the employee for the time spent related to the testing. It’s not only the law, but it’s also just the right thing to do.
Clocking in for a colleague may come as a wink and a nod between coworkers. But the practice of buddy punching is time theft, plain and simple, and it can land a gut punch to managers trying to ring in their scheduling problems and labor costs.
It may start innocently enough. The train is stuck. The babysitter arrived late. But without a managerâs approval, time theft is easily defined.
Employees start shifts late.
An employee leaves shifts early.
They take breaks that are longer than scheduled.
They work overtime that wasnât authorized
An employee engages in personal or non-work-related activities while on the job.
And then there is buddy punching.
The financial sting of buddy punching
Time theft puts an alarming drain on an organizationâs finances. One 2018 estimate pegs the cost of buddy punching at over$370 million in payroll costs annually, and according to research by the American Payroll Association, buddy punching affects about 75 percent of U.S. small businesses.
Additionally, businesses lose 5 percent of their annual revenue to employee fraud, and buddy punching is fraud. Businesses with fewer than 150 employees are more likely to take it on the chin due to employee fraud schemes like time theft.
What leads to buddy punchingÂ
Some employees simply will take advantage of a situation when they know they can. A lack of adequate technology with proper checks and balances often sets the path to one worker punching in for another. Even implementing a system with RFID cards or passwords can be manipulated.
Lacking proper technology, multiple employees can utilize passwords and credentials to punch in for one another if the system does not detect who uses the password, and employers have a difficult time proving time theft.
Employers also naively foot some of the blame. They can develop a false sense of security since they may have hired and gotten to know the people working for them. And, because they know them, they are confident that none are bad people who would steal from them. Adequate workforce management software creates a more objective, unbiased approach to the time and attendance process.
Counterpunching time theft
There are solutions to sparring with buddy punching. By automating how staff members clock in and out with mobile solutions, not only can time theft be curbed but hours of needless administrative tasks be cut back.
Record when your employees punch in and out with Workforce.comâs time clock. From ensuring the right person clocks in for the shift to paying staff correctly, it starts with the mobile time clock app.
Such a solution assures that the right person clocks in for the right shift through electronic photo verification and unique passcodes. These, along with payroll add-ons, also let employers do away with lengthy steps in computing payroll.
Going mobile
Mobile time and attendance solutions also help manage employees remotely without having to question time and attendance records. Such automated solutions also build trust. By not relying on pen and paper bookkeeping, employees gain the confidence to know they wonât have to follow up or scrutinize recordkeeping to make sure they are being paid fairly for their work.
Why pay for hours that werenât worked? Make the practice of buddy punching tap out and fight the scourge of time theft withWorkforce.comâs time clock app.
A recent survey of businesses reveals a variety of trends about COVID-19 in the workplace.
Nearly 6 out of every 10 employers has had an employee test positive for COVID-19 (double the number from April).
92 percent require on-site employees to wear masks in common areas and mandate physical distancing.
93 percent have enhanced cleaning protocols.
More than 1 in 2 are taking employees’ temperatures and performing other daily health screenings, while only 2 percent are requiring (legal but impractical) COVID-19 diagnostic testing and 1 percent (illegal) COVID-19 antibody testing.
73 percent are allowing employees to work from home based on a fear of contracting COVID-19 without any risk factors.
20 percent are discouraging domestic travel, and nearly 45 percent are requiring employees to work remotely or take a leave of absence for a 14-day quarantine upon their return.
Despite all of these measures, 21 percent of employers have received a COVID-19 related complaint from employees.
What has your experience been? On track with this survey? Or different? Please share in the comments below.
âI fell into the role. I had no idea that I was going to end up in retail for the last 20, almost 30 years now,â said competitive surfer and Spyder Surf managing partner Dickie OâReilly.
Founded by Dennis Jarvis in 1983, Spyder Surf has been a Los Angeles area mainstay ever since. And it has had no problem keeping up with the trends either, releasing new board models to fit all kinds of needs. OâReilly has been with the brand from the start, seeing it grow from one small retail space to two Los Angeles locations.
Spyder Surfâs flagship store on Pacific Coast Highway used to be an 850-square-foot space. Today it boasts 7,000-square-feet of signature surfboards, wetsuits and other surfing gear. Likewise, Spyder II in Hermosa Beach has been showcasing their products to millions of surfers since 1997. Maintaining a strong presence in this competitive industry can be quite a challenge. Spyder Surfâs secret? OâReilly and his team know exactly what theyâre doing.
Creating a brand, shaping a culture
Spyder Surfâs story began where all good stories do: the passion for getting it right. Jarvis began competitively surfing in the mid-1970s. As a professional surfer, he quickly learned that his equipment could be better.
He grew up practicing art, so he decided to make the equipment himself. Soon after, he began shaping boards for some of his best contemporaries. âI was shaping boards for competing surfers, and I was surfing against them. We were all friends,â Jarvis said in a 2015 interview.
Jarvis was more than a pioneer though; he was also OâReillyâs mentor.
âCompeting as a surfer myself and dabbling in a little bit of the Pro Junior contests, he was my sponsor and he was making me surfboards. And then you have me working at the store. I worked there through high school,â OâReilly said. After he graduated from college, an opportunity opened up for him to manage the store. He has been growing the business ever since. âHeâs a creative genius and [an] amazing craftsman. A bit of a mentor for me for sure.â
Innovating for Spyder Surfâs workforce
When OâReilly is not out on the beach, heâs thinking of ways to operate more efficiently. As managing partner, among his duties are monitoring attendance and processing payroll.
But when the administrative work cost too much time and energy, Spyder Surf turned to Workforce.com.
âYou know, the fact that you uploaded all of our employee data saved me a ton of time there,â OâReilly said when asked about his experience. âWhat was a half a day for me starting out payroll is now an hour at most, and the Workforce.com side of it is about 15 minutes. So that alone frees up my time to do the other stuff thatâs more important,â he added.
Workforce.comâs Employee Time Clock App is installed on Spyder Surfâs tablets, which allows them to monitor their stores.
âLove being able to log in from anywhere and see whoâs there â exactly when they got there, when they came, when they left, when they took their break or didnât take their break at the right time. Iâve never seen it before,â he said.
And because it also generates timesheets that can be exported to an existing payroll partner, they are able to pay employees accurately and on time, at a fraction of the effort.
Spyder Surf is showing no signs of slowing down. The brand continues to evolve, from their product lines to the way they run their stores. OâReilly looks forward to using more of Workforce.comâs features. âIâm excited about seeing the lifetime salaries and comparing it with our sales,â he said.
Moving forward, OâReillyâs team is balancing growth with keeping their tight-knit work culture alive.
âWe would love to keep growing, but weâve got a small core group of really good people that have been with us for a long time too. Itâs a family,â he said. If their progress so far is anything to go by, Spyder Surf is riding the waves into bigger things.
OâReilly is keeping a level head, though. âWe do it slow and weâre going to continue to do it slow and make sure we do it right.â
Like many companies Shawmut Design and Construction faced the dilemma of protecting the health and well-being of its employees as the COVID-19 pandemic tore through the U.S. workforce.
While the safety of its 900 employees was Shawmutâs top priority, no one-size-fits-all solution was evident. Shawmutâs staff includes in-office employees as well as workers in the field at sites across the country.
With a diverseportfolio of jobs including cultural and historic buildings, academic institutions, commercial properties, luxury homes and Major League Baseball stadiums, Shawmutâs executive team had to act quickly and decisively to assure that their workers could function safely while still productively maintaining their commitments to hundreds of clients.
Les Hiscoe, CEO, Shawmut Design and Construction
âWe experienced added complexities on many projects that continued to work right through and were not impacted by shutdowns,â said Les Hiscoe, Shawmutâs CEO since 2015. âWe had to make real-time adjustments on the fly to keep our people safe first and foremost and to make sure we continued to deliver for our clients.â
One of Shawmutâs core values even before the pandemic struck was âfind a better way.â Company leaders realized early on during the pandemic that making decisions on the fly was not sustainable and determined the âbetter wayâ was developing solutions internally.
Initially partnering with trade unions, industry peer groups and other construction companies, Shawmut developed its COVID-19 safety plan to minimize coronavirus exposure and risk across all job sites. The company soon rolled out safety protocols as well as a COVID-19 risk assessment and response plan to project sites across the country, Hiscoe said.
Shawmutâs leadership looked inward to develop a technology-driven solution that addresses worker safety as well as on-site productivity. Built in-house, Shawmutâs IT, safety and marketing teams developed Shawmut Vitals, a custom technology platform designed to track COVID-19 symptoms and manage contact tracing to minimize and control infectious disease spread.
Implementing a vital technology solution
Shawmut staff quickly took the platform to market, transforming the idea from concept to rollout in under two weeks, Hiscoe said.
âThe platform allows employees and subcontractors to self-certify daily health screenings by scanning a job-specific QR code that pulls up a health survey to fill out,â Hiscoe said. âIf an individual is experiencing COVID-19 symptoms or has been exposed to someone who is either infected or at risk, the individual is flagged for further care and action.â
The platform reduces friction points as people enter a site. Shawmut Vitals alsofrees a site superintendentâs time since the data is integrated into Shawmutâs systems, resulting in thorough recordkeeping and generating reports that previously had been done by hand.
Virtual communication in the office and on site
Frequent communication played a huge role in Shawmutâs safety response andemployee engagement when offices began reopening, Hiscoe said.
âWe held daily executive team huddles that begin with conversations around the best ways to keep our people safe, sharing successes and lessons learned across our job sites and regions,â Hiscoe said. âThis also includes connecting with our Virtual Crisis Command Center, a COVID-19 crisis team that is constantly monitoring developments and helping to guide actions. We can provide constant guidance to our on-site client and office teams and ensure we are following all federal, state and CDC recommendations.â
Shawmutâs Future of Work Task Force also evolved out of their meetings.
Created to implement the best processes, systems and technology as employees began returning to the organizationâs 10 offices, the task force is made up of cross-region, cross-department staff members.
The team meets virtually every week to develop thorough office-specific plans that adhere to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, state and local government guidelines to keep everyone as safe as possible. Each office has a core team that examines the specific needs of that space and workforce to ensure every detail is taken into consideration, enabling staff to work safely and efficiently.
Hiscoe added that before entering the office, employees complete a health screening using Shawmut Vitals. This not only prevents those exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms or may have been exposed from coming into the office but also helps with contact tracing. Offices are also clearly marked with signs including traffic flow, conference room capacity limits and common-area closures.
Those who are not ready to come back to the office utilize Shawmut Flex, Hiscoe said, a flexible work program allowing teams to work remotely.
âHaving flex options is rare in the construction industry so Shawmut was uniquely positioned to be able to transition to work from home arrangements,â he said.
Following the rules
The pandemic has had a significant effect on how Shawmut employees work together on their job sites, Hiscoe said. They identified several new requirements:Â
Self-awareness
âWe encourage any individual who is feeling sick or who is presenting any symptoms of a cold, flu, or COVID-19 to stay home and/or seek medical attention. We enforce a 100 percent zero-tolerance policy that does not allow for anyone showing symptoms to be on the job site.â
Hygiene
All projects provide access to hand washing stations, which are spread at least 6 feet apart to maintain social distancing. Hand washing stations have corresponding signs with proper hand washing and hygiene techniques.
Personal protective equipment
All standard requirements apply. When two workers are operating near each other, face shields, safety glasses, hard hats and face masks are mandatory. PPE is disinfected before brought in personal vehicles or to homes.
Site safety requirements
A COVID-19 officer is on site 100 percent of the time to enforce all site safety rules, including the twice-daily cleaning of high-contact and common areas, pre-task planning meeting, health screenings, limiting of only essential personnel on the site and frequently cleaning high-traffic areas, equipment, and tools and devices.Â
Communication
The team hosts toolbox talks related to COVID-19, distributes regularly written communications on best practices to job-site teams and reinforces all messages with signs in English and Spanish.
Emergency procedures
In the event of possible COVID-19 exposure, Shawmut teams will strictly follow CDC regulations.
Hiscoe added there is no wiggle room with Shawmutâs procedures either in office or on a job site. âAlongside my executive leadership team and virtual crisis team, weâve made our enhanced safety protocols mandatory for both our staff on site and in our offices,â he said. âWeâve shared our enhanced protocols virtually with our partners and any guests who may need to access our offices making them fully aware of our mandatory procedures.â
Keeping in contact with all employees
Hiscoe said the pandemic has severely disrupted his own schedule and halted all travel for him.
âAs a quintessential extrovert, this has been a challenge in an age of social distancing, both professionally and personally. As a leader, I pride myself in making connections with our people, projects and partners.â
Hiscoeâs limited travel schedule established unforeseen ways to manage his stress.
âI made sure to regularly work out, which helped immensely. And during quarantine, I have really enjoyed being home with my family and having dinners together.â
Knowing who is where and when is crucial to their safety and well-being. With staff working in an office, remotely or in the field, automate how your employees clock in and out withWorkforce.comâs GPS-enabled time clock app that works everywhere in the world.
One of my employees has been vocal about the coronavirus being a hoax. I had to have a talk with him during our last few days in the office at the end of March because he was openly criticizing and mocking coworkers for “being afraid of the flu” and practicing social distancing. While the rest of us isolated and worked at home, he went on two different vacations out of the state and did not isolate upon returning as required.
We’re now phasing people back into the office, and he believes that all of the safety guidelines are violating his freedom. He still won’t practice social distancing without being told, he will not wear a mask without being told, and he even planned another vacation when the company has asked us not to travel except in the case of emergencies. âŚ
I am at an absolute loss regarding how to get this employee to take these safety precautions seriously when he still sees the coronavirus as a political issue instead of a public health issue. I am very worried that he will bring the virus into the office and get others sick. Do you have any advice for handling this employee and protecting the rest of my staff?
Alison suggests that this employer “should be prepared to fire him.” I couldn’t agree more, and would go one step further and just say that this employer should fire him, period.
COVID-19 is not a hoax, it’s a public health emergency. There are rules businesses must follow as a condition to reopen and stay open during this pandemic, including the maintenance and enforcement of certain basic safety guidelines such as social distancing and face masks.
If an employee is refusing to follow these rules for any reason, that employee is putting the health and safety of the business’s employees, customers, other visitors, and their family members at risk. That employee has no place remaining employed. If you’ve counseled and warned and the behavior hasn’t changed, you’ve done all you can do.
If, as Alison suggests in her answer, you want to offer the employee one final warning, I’m okay with that. This employer, however, has done everything it can to secure compliance with its safety rules, and the employee has still failed to comply. If the employee genuinely believes that COVID-19 is a hoax and that safety rules are “violating his freedom,” nothing an employer says or does will change his mind or secure compliance. It will be a constant battle against an employee who refuses to believe science and do what is necessary to protect himself and others.
I see little choice other than pulling the plug, terminating the employee, and letting him take his backward and dangerous thinking elsewhere.
Many managers cannot pinpoint their employee headcount at any given moment.
On top of that, data published in global leadership consultancy DDI’s 2019 Frontline Leader Project establishes that 57 percent of employees quit because of their boss. DDIâs study also reports that 14 percent have left multiple jobs because of their managers and an additional 32 percent have seriously considered leaving because of their manager.Â
Many managers are ill equipped and poorly trained to efficiently run a workforce. Whether itâs tallying employee headcount or engaging workers, employers can arm managers with the tools to ensure they become valued top-line supervisors prepared to retain and sustain their employees.
Start with scheduling software
One of the most confounding aspects of a managerâs responsibilities is properly scheduling staff. Tracking employee rosters, hours worked and remaining PTO on paper or on outdated spreadsheets is fraught with opportunities for mistakes.
According to a 2017 survey, 38 percent of employees who track time said they still use manual processes like paper time cards and traditional punch clocks. By eliminating tedious and time-consuming paper-based systems, managers can easily and accurately schedule the right person in the right place at the right time.Â
Efficiency is the key to workforce scheduling software. Determining staffing levels is a constant challenge and can be the most perplexing aspect of staff scheduling. Labor analytics fueled by a comprehensive software solution can forecast resource needs and gaps. It also integrates both timekeeping and attendance functions. Employee profiles â who is available when, or who is on paid time off â are available with a few clicks.
Know organizational needs to create a smart schedule
Donât let your schedule dictate you. Be the boss â literally and figuratively â with software that puts you in charge of the process. Eliminate the gut instinct and implement a software solution to accurately assess customer needs and employee resources. Effective, analytical employee scheduling lowers the companyâs labor costs and maximizes customer satisfaction by matching resources to demand.
Make changes on the fly? Go for it!
There are plenty of times when the unexpected occurs. From freak snowstorms that impede travel to a flu bug sweeping across the workplace, scheduling adjustments have to occur quickly and effectively in times of an emergency.Â
Scheduling software allows for quick communication with workers. Incorporating a scheduling tool with mobile technology including a communications app builds 24/7 schedule access and puts real-time communication at a managerâs fingertips.
Shuffle the deck: Matching A + B + C players shouldnât be a game of chance
Good managers know how to mesh the strengths and weaknesses of their employees.Â
Pairing varying talent levels can be a game of chance unless there is data behind the decision. Scheduling software removes the guesswork and incorporates analytics-based information into the decision making process.
Measure, assess and fine tune
OK, so a schedule is a tool and not an employee. Still, like all staff members, scheduling should undergo regular performance reviews and frequent analysis.Â
Incorporate employee feedback and business performance indicators into the assessment. Robust scheduling software will collect crucial data to assess and reveal insights. By understanding and evaluating the data, managers can better optimize their scheduling process.
Like a carpenter has a hammer and a plumber relies on a wrench, supervisors need the proper online tools to effectively manage their employees.Workforce.comâs scheduling software helps managers control costs, enhance communication, build engagement and focus on the bigger picture of the business. Shifts can be scheduled a month in advance. Give your managers every opportunity to succeed beginning with scheduling software by Workforce.com.
