Tag: scheduling

Posted on

How to Schedule Employees Effectively: 6 Proven Steps

live wage tracker, analytics, schedule employees

Summary

  • Employee scheduling is more than just filling shifts. It’s about balancing profitability with employee experience.  
  • Labor laws govern schedules in some cities and states, which can pose compliance issues for large hourly teams. 
  • Employee scheduling software can streamline shift assignments, but truly efficient systems can also factor in demand and compliance when managers fill shifts.

Creating and managing an employee schedule is a complex process that can take up hours out of a manager’s week.

Yet employee scheduling can have massive impacts on a business, especially for                  organizations with a large hourly workforce and significant labor costs. 

Poor scheduling can lead to overstaffing, which inflates labor expenses, or understaffing, which strains employees and impacts productivity. An unpredictable schedule can also contribute to burnout and high turnover, forcing you to constantly recruit and train new members.  

Many factors go into the scheduling process and creating the most effective schedule, including having the right expertise on your team, communicating with your frontline staff, and using the right employee scheduling software.

Here’s exactly how to schedule employees effectively.

1. Understand the laws that govern schedules in your city or state 

Scheduling employees effectively, at its most basic level, requires compliance with labor laws.

Over the past decade, different cities and states have passed their own predictable scheduling laws regulating shift work, starting with San Francisco in 2013. See if you are in a jurisdiction with predictive scheduling laws here.

Depending on the specific law, employers may have to schedule employees up to two weeks in advance. Further, these laws may levy employer penalties for unexpected employee work schedule changes, regulate “clopening” shifts, and define schedule recordkeeping requirements for business owners. 

These laws address the challenges many hourly workers face, including unpredictable, unstable, and insufficient hours. Certain staff scheduling practices, like on-call scheduling, make it difficult for employees to hold second jobs or plan for other responsibilities in advance.

However, employers may find it difficult to make last-minute scheduling decisions given the perceived lack of flexibility the laws impose on them.

Here’s where employee scheduling software like Workforce.com can help. Beyond tracking employee attendance and reliably scheduling employees in advance, it’s kept up-to-date with legal rules and regulations. Plus, managers can set their own employee scheduling rules.

The software notifies managers if they’re about to break a law or rule when placing people in open shifts, scheduling staff beyond their maximum hours, assigning minor workers for hours they are not allowed to work, or under other conditions for which they would be at risk of non-compliance with the rules.

how to schedule employees, shift work

2. Use labor forecasting to create optimal schedules 

Labor forecasting is a powerful tool in employee scheduling. 

Two main types of data go into these predictions. There’s data on external factors like the time of year, weather, or events happening nearby. Then, there’s data on your specific business’s conditions and operations, such as your historical sales data, booked appointments, busiest times, foot traffic, and employee availability. 

While no prediction is 100 percent certain, the more accurate and relevant data you connect with labor forecasting, the more confident you can be in your forecasts and identifying scheduling needs, reducing your chances of overstaffing, understaffing, and incurring unnecessary overtime. 

Workforce.com’s labor forecasting system factors in all the relevant data, both internal and external, to calculate staffing ratios that will equip managers to create the most productive schedule, ensuring that you have the optimal number of employees in every shift.

Imagine you run a retail business and intend to optimize your staff scheduling throughout the year. With labor forecasting, you can analyze past sales trends and customer traffic to predict busy and slow periods. For instance, if your data shows that holiday shopping spikes in November and December, you can plan ahead and hire seasonal and part-time employees to help with the increased demand. On the other hand, if January tends to be slow, you can scale back part-time hours to control labor costs and avoid overstaffing.

shift ratings, how to schedule employees

3. Match the right employees to the right shifts

Filling open shifts is complicated beyond just legal compliance and predicting business needs. Employees have different preferences and limitations, while managers aim to assign shifts fairly and efficiently. The challenge? Creating a schedule that works for both the business and its people.

Using a combination of scheduling algorithms and employee input for filling schedules can be a good strategy. This allows a business to benefit from advances in technology while also taking real-world human considerations into account.

So, how do you do that exactly?

First, let’s look at the facts. Before assigning shifts, ensure employees meet the necessary qualifications. Does a role require specific certifications? Is there a minimum age requirement? Workforce.com simplifies this by sending managers real-time notifications, helping them assign shifts only to qualified team members.

Next, factor in employee preferences. Employees can submit feedback through Workforce.com’s shift rating and feedback, sharing insights on staffing levels, engagement, and management after each shift. By analyzing this feedback, managers can build schedules that align with business objectives and employee preferences.

Using these insights, you can also make less desirable shifts more appealing, especially if you’re operating 24/7. Late nights, early mornings, and weekend shifts can be more challenging to fill. To encourage coverage, consider offering shift deferential pay for employees who would take on these odd hours.

4. Plan ahead for last-minute scheduling changes

Unexpected absences can happen, but they don’t have to disrupt your operations. A reliable shift swapping or replacement system ensures you can quickly fill gaps caused by no-shows or last-minute call-outs. 

Managers can use Workforce.com to reassign vacant shifts. Available and qualified employees can claim open shifts, either through a manager’s direct offer or a system-wide notification. Depending on your settings, employees can trade shifts and have those changes automatically apply to schedules or with manager approval for added control.

5. Apply automation to reduce admin work and avoid scheduling conflicts

Employee scheduling goes beyond assigning team members to shifts. It requires balancing different, and without a proper system in place, it’s easy for things to slip through the cracks.

Beyond operating hours and number of staff members, managers also need to to look at time-off requests, employee classifications, labor forecasts, and compliance requirements. Ensuring all of these factors align each work week is challenging, but Workforce.com’s scheduling app simplifies the process.

With Workforce.com’s scheduling tool, creating schedules will not be as time-consuming. It offers powerful functionality to speed up the process. For instance, recurring work schedules can be saved as schedule templates. Instead of creating schedules from scratch, you can simply copy, paste, and adjust the templates as needed, saving you time and minimizing errors.

6. Actively reassess and adapt

The common thread running through these steps is that nothing about employee scheduling is static. 

Laws change, individual employees may become more or less productive over time, and the most efficient ones may leave if they’re not getting sufficient hours or good shifts. 

Continually use the resources and data you have to understand what’s successful on your front line. The same old employee shift scheduling patterns might stop working over time. And your employees’ needs and levels of engagement will change. Effective employee scheduling requires that you’re aware of these developments and adapt to them.

Going beyond employee scheduling

Employee scheduling is significant, but true workforce success goes far beyond just filling shifts. Managing an hourly team requires integration between scheduling, time and attendance tracking, hiring and retention, and payroll.

That’s where Workforce.com comes in.

With Workforce.com, you don’t just schedule shifts. You hire the right talent, track time accurately, schedule employees strategically, and ensure accurate, on-time payroll. Everything is housed in one unified system, giving you a single source of truth for workforce management and HR.

Workforce.com has transformed employee scheduling, HR, and payroll worldwide. But don’t take our word for it—see it for yourself by booking a demo today.

Posted on

8 proven ways to reduce overtime & labor costs (2025)

painting of a bartender with a large clock behind him

Summary

  • Unnecessary overtime and an increase in labor cost can be caused by several factors, one of which is the lack of an efficient HR and payroll system.

  • Overtime is not inherently bad, but if it becomes excessive, it can affect your bottom line and cause employee burnout.

  • The right software can curb labor cost increases without sacrificing operations and employee satisfaction.

Labor costs and overtime take up a significant portion of business expenses. While extended work hours are occasionally necessary, they can quickly become a burden if they occur too often and strain your finances.

But what causes unnecessary overtime and increase in labor costs? Common culprits include failure to anticipate demand, antiquated HR and workforce management systems, and the lack of real-time operational visibility. These issues not only impact your bottom line but can also harm employee engagement and disrupt work-life balance.

So, how do you reduce labor costs and overtime without sacrificing operations and employee well-being? Here are eight practical ways Workforce.com can help you achieve just that.

1. Forecast labor demand.

An effective cost reduction strategy is to anticipate demand. Sure, no one knows what exactly will happen on the next business day or week, but having an estimate based on relevant data points can give you a good idea of staffing needed per shift. 

Workforce.com can forecast labor demand by analyzing indicators such as weather, foot traffic, historical sales, economic trends, events, holidays, booked appointments, and other relevant factors. With these insights, you can better anticipate demand for a given period, reducing the risks of overstaffing.

Starbucks Australia is one of the organizations that experienced lower labor costs when they started using Workforce.com. Because they have many store locations, anticipating demand was challenging since each store is different. However, with Workforce.com, they can create labor-efficient schedules based on demand up to four weeks in advance, ensuring the right amount of staff is always scheduled for the right number of customers.  

2. Quickly fill vacant shifts due to no-shows or last-minute absences.

No-shows or last-minute absences are inevitable in managing a team, but how they affect your operation and labor costs will depend on how effectively you address them.

When an employee notifies you that they can’t work a shift at the last minute, you must quickly cover the vacant shift. Otherwise, you may need to rely on overtime, driving up labor costs unnecessarily.

Workforce.com equips frontline managers to offer a vacant shift to other qualified team members. Case in point: The Winnipeg Jets. Before using Workforce.com, they had difficulty managing no-shows, especially when they experienced 80 replacements in a week, and there was no centralized way of managing these swaps. Using Workforce.com, managers can offer vacant shifts and fill them quickly, all in one platform, without calls, emails, or texts. 

“With Workforce.com, switching shifts is so much easier. I don’t know anyone who’s not using it,” says Kristin LaCroix, TrueNorth’s Director of Technology Services. “Everyone got on board with it pretty quickly.”

3. See labor costs in real-time when creating schedules.

Staying on top of labor costs means understanding your expenses before they’re incurred. Workforce.com offers that visibility. 

When scheduling or creating shifts, Workforce.com displays wage costs in real time, enabling managers to keep staffing levels aligned with labor budget allocations and customer demand.

“We know for each shift, what its cost is without having to crunch any numbers on a spreadsheet,” says Troy Persad, General Manager at Bridge Control Services. When building schedules, every shift tile displays wage costs, which he uses to optimize shifts according to the budget and crew’s needs.

The same goes for The Winnipeg Jets, “Workforce.com is preparing us to become a little bit more strategic in how we schedule,” shares LaCroix. “It helps us move staff to different times if we see inefficiencies, helping us provide a better experience to our guests.”

Workforce.com plays a massive role in helping you schedule in a way that keeps overtime costs low. Scheduling software tracks work hours and unavailability, automatically suggesting the most cost-effective people for coverage while avoiding unnecessary overtime. It lets you see wage costs for every shift, so you’ll always know how much your business spends on labor in real time.

This kind of automation reduces the overtime errors that come with scheduling via spreadsheets. For instance, Workforce.com will alert managers whenever they try to schedule a shift that will cause an employee to dip into overtime. It also keeps track of maximum work hours and prevents managers from scheduling employees for more than is legally allowed, depending on your state.

4. Track employee hours and overtime down to the minute.

Workforce.com’s time and attendance management software helps you track, manage, and calculate overtime and labor expenses. It alerts your frontline managers whenever an employee hits overtime and automatically records overtime hours and time and a half pay on digital timesheets. These timesheets display scheduled vs. actual hours and labor cost variances, making it easy to pinpoint where and when you are spending too much on overtime.

“There was no real way with our old system to compare variance,” says Kayleen Nemanishen, a configuration analyst for Ranch Ehrlo Society. “With Workforce.com, it’s super apparent – if somebody works 30 minutes longer than scheduled, it shows right on their timesheet.”

More importantly, automated employee time tracking helps you avoid tricky situations where employees claim to have worked more overtime than you have on record. By default, the Department of Labor assumes that the employee is right about the number of overtime hours they worked unless the business owner can provide proof otherwise.

With timesheets recorded daily, you avoid time reporting disputes, protect your business from paying out overtime that was never actually worked, and stay compliant with labor laws. This increases accountability and ensures your overtime tracking is airtight, helping you avoid costly DOL fines and employee lawsuits.

5. Set a labor budget.

Set a cap on an amount or the number of hours you can allocate every day to meet demand for every day, week, or month. This is all about finding the right balance between supporting your employees and improving your bottom line. Setting hard limits on hours worked encourages managers and employees to adapt and become more efficient with navigating overtime. 

On Workforce.com, you can set labor budgets and track schedules and shifts against your set allocation. You can set and plan labor budgets by location or department. Budgets can be shown either in hours or wages.

Of course, setting limits doesn’t disqualify you from paying overtime worked beyond them. The law stipulates that any time over 40 hours has to be paid as overtime. So, if someone has exceeded your overtime budget, ensure you have an accurate way of recording, calculating, and alerting managers to all overtime pay owed. 

6. Offer flexibility with sending schedules in advance.

Flexibility is different for hourly workers. For them, it’s about knowing their shifts well in advance so they can plan other areas of their lives, such as childcare, medical appointments, or PTO. But is scheduling shifts far in advance always productive?

The answer is yes—if done correctly, Workforce.com can help you schedule in advance because it can predict demand and create shifts quickly. You can even create reusable shift templates for consistent schedules, streamlining the process week after week.

Publishing schedules in advance reduces no-shows and last-minute absences and helps control labor costs by minimizing disruptions. Additionally, it ensures compliance with predictive scheduling or Fair Workweek laws in cities where these regulations apply, protecting your business from potential fines.

7. Equip your team with the right labor tracking tools.

Unnecessary labor costs often stem from minor errors or administrative oversights, such as missed log-ins or accidentally scheduling employees beyond their allowed hours. These mistakes are easy to overlook, mainly when relying on manual processes or inefficient systems.

Workforce.com streamline time-consuming administrative tasks and reducing the errors associated with manual input. The Amenity Collective saw a drastic drop in time spent on admin work since implementing Workforce.com in their organization—from 20 hours a week to just 3 hours. 

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

Workforce.com offers a real-time view of what’s happening in every shift. It shows who clocked in, who’s running late, and who’s about to go into overtime. HR and operational data can be accessed anytime—no need to wait for month-end reports. 

In addition, Workforce.com has a powerful employee self-service system that enables staff to clock in and out easily, view their work schedules, get notified for open shifts, request leaves, and update their information. These tools lighten the administrative workload and reduce errors and inaccuracies. 

8. Cross-train to bolster your workforce.

If only a few of your team members can carry out specific tasks, you’ll end up in a situation where the same few people get overtime. This can lead to employee turnover , as excessive overtime disrupts work-life balance. At the same time, it can dampen employee morale as staff who aren’t offered overtime opportunities may feel unfairly treated, missing out on the extra pay.

The solution? Conduct cross-training programs for different roles. This way, you can fill vacant shifts with a larger pool of qualified employees. Cross-trained employees not only help you avoid scheduling unnecessary overtime but also allow you to divvy overtime in a fairer manner if needed.

Workforce.com’s performance management system makes this process more efficient. It lets you track employee progress and development, identify their strengths, and provide targeted training to expand their skill sets.

Stay on top of labor costs and overtime with Workforce.com

Running a cost-effective operation starts with the right tools. Manual processes increase the risk of unnecessary overtime costs and waste valuable time on tasks that could be completed in minutes with a more efficient system.

Workforce.com has a comprehensive suite of solutions to help you stay on top of your labor budgets, reduce overtime, and simplify payroll processing. Want to see what else Workforce.com can do for your business? Book a call today.

Posted on

The Essential Guide to Shift Planning

A few too many under or overstaffed shifts. Angry team members who feel they’ve worked more night shifts in the past week than their colleagues. Labor costs through the roof to cover a high amount of overtime. No call, no show absences.

These issues, and more, are all byproducts of ineffective or broken shift planning procedures. To add insult to injury, your HR team probably spends way too much time every month navigating Excel spreadsheets and shift templates to get it right. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. Employee management tools like Workforce.com are specifically designed to help guide you through the employee shift planning maze with your sanity intact. 

In this guide, we’ll run you through some of the important steps to adopt that will make shedding blood, sweat, and tears on shift planning a thing of the past.  

Planning a shift schedule

The best preparation you can do for shift planning is to know your business inside and out. Filling all your shifts is meaningless if done randomly. Here are the basics you should cover before assigning employees anywhere.

  • Monitor demand: The most efficient work schedules take into account and even forecast the unique demand patterns of your company. When are you the busiest? Which nights are typically quiet? What regular events impact your foot traffic?
  • Know your staff’s skills and abilities: This is where managerial knowledge becomes priceless. For example, knowing which workers are particularly good at handling customers or which ones are great at mentoring less experienced staff means you can always put the right people in the right place at the right time.
  • Check safety regulations: Don’t overlook the practicalities. If you’re legally obligated to have a certain number of trained first-aiders on shift or need to maintain a ratio of staff to kids in a childcare setting, this needs to be baked into your schedule from the start. 

By making these a core part of your shift management system, you’ll head off lots of future problems and build your schedules on rock-solid foundations.

Creating a shift schedule

Once you’re armed with intimate knowledge of your market conditions and predicted needs, it’s just a case of filling those empty shifts. With the right preparation, this part of the job should already be less intimidating, but here are the key things to keep in mind when you create a shift schedule.

  • Know your staff availability: Assigning workers to shifts they cannot attend isn’t just inefficient for you, but it’s also frustrating for employees. Keep track of things like childcare arrangements, evening classes, and other important things in your workers’ lives. It allows you to get your schedule right the first time and shows them that you are taking notice of what matters to them.
  • Communicate schedules quickly and accurately: Don’t leave employees in the dark about their shifts. The earlier you can inform them of their hours and the clearer the information is, the sooner you’ll identify any potential problems.
  • Use the right tools: Many companies still use spreadsheets or even pen and paper for shift planning. Not only are these methods inflexible and prone to error, but they’re also hard to distribute and make it easy to lose track of details. Specialist shift planning and time tracking software can automate the hardest parts of scheduling and send up-to-date shift information to your workers’ phones in real-time.
  • Always plan ahead: If you’ve taken all the previous steps into account, you should be able to confidently plan shift schedules at least two weeks in advance. Indeed, depending on where your business operates, you may be legally obligated to.

It can be a lot to take in, and for people new to shift planning, this is where the feeling of being overwhelmed can rear up again. Trust your data, be methodical, and even the most complex shift planning job can be broken down into manageable parts. Remember, you can always use scheduling software to automatically match employees to shifts based on your criteria.

Navigating predictive scheduling laws

If you manage shift workers and aren’t yet familiar with the concept of predictive scheduling laws, then you should brush up on the details even if you don’t operate in an area where they are in effect.

  • What are predictive scheduling laws? These laws, also referred to as “Fair Workweek,” generally require shift workers to be given at least two weeks’ notice of their schedules and mandated rest periods between shifts. This means no “clopening,” where the same employee closes up at night and reopens the first shift the next day.
  • Where are predictive scheduling laws in place? So far, one state (Oregon) and eight cities (San Francisco, Berkeley, Emeryville, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, and Seattle) have passed predictive scheduling laws. Other states have bills coming up for debate. There are regional variations, so be sure to find out if these laws apply to any of your operations and, if so, what the specific requirements are.

The penalties for breaching these laws can be steep as they apply to each infraction. If you have multiple shift workers whose schedules do not comply, the fines will mount. 

Careful planning and good recordkeeping will help ensure you are not exposed to unnecessary legal risks. As well as compiling your shift data automatically, employee scheduling software can be easily set up to catch infractions at the scheduling stage, eliminating the danger of falling foul of predictive scheduling legislation in your region.

Even if you are not legally required to follow these laws, it’s worth implementing some of the changes regardless. Studies have shown that workers who have advance notice of shifts and healthy breaks in between are more productive and stay with companies longer. If staff churn is an issue for you, taking a long-term approach to shift planning may help retain employees.

Managing time-off requests

No schedule is written in stone, of course, and employees will want to take personal time off. This doesn’t need to throw your shift planning into disarray, provided you have established a clear framework for managing employee time-off requests.

  • Create a PTO policy: If your company doesn’t have an existing policy dictating the rules of personal time off, create one as a matter of urgency. It doesn’t have to be pages of legal language. A common-sense policy that lays out what is expected of both employees and the company is all you need.
  • Implement a PTO policy: The crucial aspect of any PTO policy is notice periods. How much notice must employees give when booking time off? How quickly will the company approve or deny requests? These are the questions your policy should answer.

As a manager, keeping track of who has time off and when is vital. You don’t want to approve requests that leave you understaffed. Using scheduling software is the quick and easy way to avoid this, as it can automatically alert you whenever a time-off request creates a problem elsewhere on the schedule.

Dealing with staff shortages

Emergencies will happen, and staff will sometimes not be able to work for unpredictable reasons. While this is never ideal, staff coverage doesn’t have to be a problem. In fact, you will already have insulated your business against this issue by preparing properly for shift planning in the first place.

  • Plan shifts using past data: You should already know when your highest sales periods are and when business is typically slow. Prioritize having backup staff for shifts that typically get slammed and cannot be understaffed.
  • Communicate schedules early: You should also be in the habit of assigning shifts a few weeks in advance. This won’t save you from staff with transport problems on the day of or trips to the ER, but it will give employees the opportunity to alert you of unexpected occurrences that aren’t same-day emergencies. Even a day’s notice is better than no notice at all.

The most robust way of minimizing the impact of staff unavailability is to allow employees to swap shifts to plug these unexpected gaps.

Webinar: How to Schedule While Understaffed

Accommodating shift swaps

The idea of shift swaps, or shift replacements, can create anxiety for some managers. Giving employees the option to request shift replacements seems to fly in the face of shift planning. A shift trade policy can actually be a benefit to both the staff and the company when properly managed. Not only does it help fill the gaps caused by unexpected staff shortages, but 87% of workers now want to have more control over their work schedules. 

  • Create a shift replacement policy: As with a time-off policy, this doesn’t need to be complicated. Simply make clear the period in which shifts can be dropped and picked up by available employees, subject to managerial approval.
  • Communicate the policy: Let your staff know that they are encouraged to request shift replacements if needed and won’t be penalized for doing so. Encourage them to use the process, and many of your last-minute staffing problems will fix themselves.
  • Automate with technology: Shift replacement processes are only as effective as the level of automation invested into them. Instead of scrambling last minute to find replacement staff over text and email, replacements should be completed on a single, online system. When an employee requests coverage for a shift, their peers should automatically get notified and a bidding process should follow. – this workflow takes the logistics of seeking replacements off a manager’s plate. 
  • Retain managerial oversight: Just like booking time off, you should still approve requests carefully to make sure that appropriately skilled staff are swapping like-for-like shifts and that any trades don’t nudge workers into overtime.

If you still handle your shift planning using spreadsheets or pen and paper, then tracking and implementing shift trade requests does become exponentially more complicated. Scheduling tools make the process painless by allowing employees to make their requests digitally while empowering managers to offer open shifts to specific workers. Any changes or requests will be instantly available to both employees and management through notifications through employee communications software.

Now you can be confident in your shift planning

Shift planning is less intimidating when you approach it fully prepared and break it down into a methodical process. Taking control of shift planning doesn’t just make the life of managers less stressful, but it also results in more efficient use of your employees and a company culture that is less likely to be derailed by staffing issues.

There’s nothing involved in this process that can’t be done using manual techniques, but if the complexity still overwhelms you, consider shift planning software to ease the strain.

Shift planning software uses automation to facilitate the building of schedules and timesheets, making the organization of shift work much easier. 

Try it out for yourself today, or, check out the free webinar below on the ROI of shift planning software, featuring exclusive research from Forrester Research:

Webinar: Building a Business Case for WFM

Posted on

5 Surprising Lunch Break Statistics in the US (2023)

Summary

  • Research shows how taking lunch breaks enhances employee engagement and productivity. Despite this, lunch breaks are getting shorter and many employees fear being judged for taking them. 

  • While there is no federal law stating that companies should offer breaks, many states have implemented their own. 

  • Employers should properly schedule and track compliant lunch breaks to avoid lawsuits and improve workplace culture. 

What do lunch breaks look like in your office? Are your employees “desktop diners,” eating their packed lunches in front of their screens (most likely scrolling through social media) before getting on with their workday? Do they venture out in search of fresh air and some time away from their screens? Or has your company ended up with a workplace culture where employees skip break time altogether? 

There’s plenty of evidence showing that taking a proper lunch break in the middle of the day is vital for people’s well-being and maintaining a better work-life balance. Employees who take their lunch breaks have been found to have higher levels of job satisfaction and productivity and are less likely to suffer from burnout. 

Whitepaper: How to Reduce Burnout of Hourly Employees

Here are five statistics we’ve collected that should give you a clearer picture of the state of the American lunch hour. With these findings in mind, we have prepared some tips on how your human resources team can implement break policies and create a work environment that does lunchtime right.

1. Employees who take their lunch break are more engaged

In late 2017, Tork carried out a survey amongst 1,600 North American employees throughout the United States and Canada. The Take Back the Lunch Break survey findings show that North American workers who take their lunch break show higher levels of engagement than those who didn’t.

The respondents who took their lunch break scored higher with metrics that are normally linked to engagement: job satisfaction, the likelihood to stay with their current company, and the chances that they would recommend their company as a good place to work. Ninety-four percent said that they feel happier when they take their lunch break.

Another study found that 39% of employees who regularly took their lunch breaks reported having a better work-life balance. 

2. Taking lunch breaks boosts productivity

Research also shows that work performance and productivity increase when employees take their lunch breaks during work hours.

Tork’s Take Back the Lunch Break uncovered some interesting stats on this. They found that:

  • 94% of respondents said that stepping away from a task they’re working on helps them to get a fresh perspective on it.
  • 91% of employees and 93% of bosses surveyed agreed that taking a break helps them maintain mental focus.
  • 88% of employees and 91% of bosses said that they feel refreshed and reenergized after taking a break.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has found that work environments that increase employee anxiety and depression cost the global economy an astounding $1 trillion per year. ezCater’s The Lunch Report study uncovered links between lunch breaks and mental health:

  • 40% of employees said taking a lunch break reduces stress.
  • 39% felt more productive after a break.
  • 37% reported feeling less burnt out when they regularly took time to rest. 

3. Younger employees fear being judged for taking their breaks

Findings from The Lunch Report also show that a quarter of Gen Z workers hesitate to take their lunch break because they worry about what their bosses might think.

Another reason Gen Z and millennial workers cited for skipping their lunch break is that they feel they have too much work to do: 

  • 21% said they don’t have enough time for a proper break.
  • 1 in 5 don’t take breaks so that they can finish work ASAP.
  • 19% said that they have too many meetings or tend to have meetings during lunch hour.

4. Lunch breaks are getting shorter

A study from 2018 found that the average lunch break is getting shorter as we move further away from the concept of the “lunch hour.” The average break in 2018 was 39 minutes; this was down from 43 minutes in 2014. 

The study found differences in lunch break lengths across the country. Workers in Salt Lake City, De Moines, and Cincinnati take the shortest breaks, while those in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Miami break the longest.

5. Some people don’t take their lunch breaks … and some do so at their desks

Tork’s 2022 study, as part of its continued Take Back The Lunch Break campaign, reveals how many employees are not taking any breaks multiple times a week — 39% of respondents said that they “occasionally, rarely or never take breaks.” The study found that 91% of people are working just as much or more than before the pandemic. Despite this, people are still not taking the breaks they need. 

The study also found that “women are over twice as likely (67%) not to take a break than men (33%).” Women who do remote work are more likely to spend the breaks they do take doing household chores than their male counterparts. 

The Lunch Report also found that 1 in 10 employees never break away from their desks, and 70% “eat while they work at least once a week.” They found that only 10% of Gen Z workers said that they never eat at their desks. In comparison, 26% of millennials and 48% of baby boomers said that they never dined at their desktops.

How employers can create a lunch break culture that fosters a happier workplace

As an employer or a People Ops professional, there are a number of ways you can ensure that your company culture is one that does lunch breaks in a way that is beneficial to your co-workers as well as your organization’s bottom line. 

Know the law

On a federal level, there are no laws that dictate whether or not you need to enforce lunch breaks in your workplace. When employers do offer breaks, federal law states that any breaks under 20 minutes need to be paid by the employer. Any breaks over the 30-minute mark are classified as off the clock.

Some states have implemented their own laws on lunch breaks in the workplace. In Kentucky, for example, companies need to offer their employees a meal break. This is a reasonable unpaid period (normally between 20 and 30 minutes) taken any time after the third and before the fifth hour of consecutive hours of work. Kentucky companies must also offer rest breaks of 10 minutes after every four hours of work. This time is paid. 

Management should set an example

Many workers still feel uncomfortable taking their breaks for fear of being judged by their superiors. This doesn’t help when many C-Suite executives and management personnel can often be seen skipping lunch breaks themselves or eating at their desks. 

A simple way to create a company culture of taking lunch breaks is for management to actually take their lunch breaks and do it visibility. In the case of remote teams, management can use things like “Out to lunch” statuses on Slack and by blocking parts of their daily calendars for lunch.

Actions like these give your employees “permission” to embrace their own lunch breaks and not feel like outliers when doing so. Tork’s study found that over 9 in 10 employees claim they are more likely to stay at a company where management actively encourages their teams to take their lunch breaks. 

Create or enhance your break room

Having a designated break room within your office is a great way to harness a healthy lunch break culture within your organization. If you do have a room you can utilize as a breakroom, or if you already have one, there are a number of things you can do to encourage your employees to actually make use of it:

  • Provide enough seating space for everyone.
  • Decorate the space to make it feel welcoming.
  • Make sure it is well-equipped with the appliances and storage space needed, e.g., fridge, microwave, and coffee-making facilities.
  • Encourage social interaction by leaving activity items such as cards and games.

Consider catered lunches

Some companies occasionally offer in-office catered lunch to their employees as an incentive. While this is an added expense, research shows that paying for your employees’ lunch from time to time can have a positive impact on morale and engagement. 

The Lunch Report found that 23% of respondents would return to the office full-time if catered lunches were made available for free, and 65% said that they would plan to work on-site more often if complimentary lunches were provided.

Manage your company’s lunch break culture more effectively with Workforce.com

Enhancing your lunch break culture is highly beneficial to your business, but it does add a layer of complexity to your scheduling. Workforce.com offers employee scheduling and time tracking solutions that help make your life easier and ensure you remain compliant with any state laws.

Workforce.com’s scheduling automatically populates shifts with compliant lunch and rest breaks according to local state law. Your employees can view all of this information right on their phones. The Time Clock App allows employees to easily clock out and back in for breaks, as breaks are tracked in real time.

With Workforce.com, your staff will take the breaks they need, and you will avoid unnecessary fines. To find out more about how Workforce.com can handle your scheduling needs, give us a call today. 

Or, for more information on how to improve your scheduling, check out our free webinar below:

Webinar: How to Optimize Your Staff Schedules

Posted on

How staffing agencies can better manage a remote workforce

Summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

Streamline communication channels

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

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

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

Plan for interruptions and unpredictability

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

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

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

Find an efficient scheduling system

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

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

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

 

 

Use digital tools to manage a remote workforce

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

Time and attendance

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

Paperless onboarding

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

Payroll

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

Labor compliance

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

Simple and direct systems make remote staffing work

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

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

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

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

Posted on

The Pros and Cons of 12-Hour Shifts

Summary

  • Knowing the pros and cons of 12-hour shifts can help scheduling managers determine if the model fits with the specific demands of their business and the availability of their employees.

  • The pros of 12-hour shifts are that they minimize shift handovers, reduce absenteeism, and save employees time and money.

  • The cons of 12-hour shifts are that they can increase labor costs and burnout while also making labor compliance more difficult.

Do 12-hour shifts make sense? Or is it better to schedule a standard eight hours a day per employee? Which one is for you?

Knowing the pros and cons of 12-hour shifts can help scheduling managers determine if the model fits with the specific demands of their business and the availability of their employees. Scheduling managers can set optimal hours for their employees, whether by following a scheduling pattern or scheduling employees according to user demand, while also ensuring they meet labor compliance requirements.

The Pros:

There are definitely certain advantages to 12-hour shifts, including:

Simple 24-hour coverage

For businesses that need 24-hour coverage, 12-hour shifts make schedules simpler since you only need two shifts per day to have total coverage (i.e. a day shift and a night shift). Because of this, 12-hour shifts tend to be much easier to routinely schedule than a multitude of smaller 8-hour shifts. Simplified 12-hour shift patterns can also be used, meaning administrative staff will spend fewer hours constructing schedules and filling shifts while dedicating more time to accomplishing more important tasks.

Fewer shift handovers

Working 12-hour shifts reduces miscommunication and variability between shifts while also allocating more time for employees to work on projects on a continuous basis. Focusing on projects for longer periods of time with less variability in the staff managing them means objectives get completed on time and to a higher standard, as opposed to a “too many cooks in the kitchen” situation.

Most importantly, 12-hour shift patterns mean fewer shift handover problems. In a hypothetical scenario, let’s say a building needs security guards to work 24 hours a day to ensure it’s secure. If there were three guards scheduled for eight hours each, all of them would need to be filled in on important events/information occurring outside of their shifts. But if only two guards are scheduled for 12 hours each, only the two of them would need to be briefed on the security issues surrounding the building. Reducing the occurrence of shift handovers in this way helps to minimize employee skill and cost variability. It also helps minimize issues that can occur between shifts like miscommunication, equipment mistakes, and wasteful meeting times.

Reducing employee absenteeism

Employees working 12-hour shifts work fewer days, meaning they are usually more likely to turn up on the few days they’re scheduled. Employees have more to lose by skipping a 12-hour shift than an eight-hour shift since they would be sacrificing a greater number of working hours and, consequently, accrued annual leave hours. Moreover, greater responsibility tends to come with a 12-hour shift, further reducing the frequency of no call, no shows.

The greater number of days off that come with working 12-hour shifts may also reduce absenteeism. Employees can put this valuable time towards family, running errands, or dealing with other personal matters that might typically conflict with a traditional 8-hour shift schedule. Moreover, it seems as if the workforce is increasingly moving in the direction of more time off. A whopping 92% of US employees want a four-day workweek, which has been found to reduce stress, improve work-life balance, and actually increase productivity.

Saving money

Working fewer days per week means employees can save on other costs, like travel costs to and from work. If they worked eight-hour shifts, five days a week, they’d have to spend money traveling to work five days a week, while if they worked three 12-hour shifts per week, they’d only have to travel to work three days a week, helping them save on travel costs.

As per Jerry, a car insurance company, each American spends over $4,500 every year commuting to work, and that doesn’t consider the opportunity cost of the travel time involved. The opportunity cost in itself averages nearly $1,700 per employee per year. Saving on these costs would be a massive benefit.

The Cons:

Deploying 12-hour shifts also comes with several disadvantages, some of which include:

Increased risk of burnout

Working longer shifts can be emotionally and physically exhausting and can lead to burnout. Most notably, longer shifts might mess up sleep cycles for employees which can negatively affect their health.

This is especially true for employees who work night shifts – they typically get two to four hours less sleep than usual. Moreover, it can be quite difficult for night-shift workers to sleep during the day. Over time, this can cause health issues like insomnia.

In healthcare, where most nurse schedules typically involve 12-hour shifts, working longer hours may reduce the empathy nurses have for their patients and diminish the standard of care they provide to their patients. In the hospitality industry, employees may not be able to provide the same level of service throughout their 12-hour shifts. For factory work that involves manual labor, working 12-hour shifts may be physically draining and impossible to sustain. This also negatively impacts employee morale since working long shifts can take its toll on their health.

Higher labor costs

Depending on overtime laws in your location, 12-hour shifts may lead to higher labor costs.

For example, in New York, any hours worked over 40 hours a week are eligible to be paid at the overtime rate (1.5 times the regular pay rate). So, if you schedule employees to work four days a week, working 12-hour shifts each day, that means they’d be working a total of 48 hours. Forty of those hours are paid at the normal rate, while the remaining eight are paid at 1.5 times the normal rate. Employers need to be mindful of these overtime costs and schedule employees accordingly.

Typically, switching from an eight-hour to a 12-hour shift schedule can increase wages by around 2%. Ensuring cost-neutrality when switching to 12-hour shift scheduling is quite difficult, especially when no plan is in place. Even the slightest rise in labor costs can be extremely detrimental to a business’s operations. However, purposefully planning and designing a new scheduling process for cost-neutrality with the right workforce management strategy may actually eliminate an increase in labor costs.

Labor compliance difficulties

Beyond the obvious administrative issues of manually creating a 12-hour schedule, errors in labor compliance and break scheduling are additional causes for concern. You need to be mindful of minimum wage laws and overtime laws to ensure you remain legally compliant.

Breaks, especially, are very tricky to administer when dealing with 12-hour schedules. While no federal law requires you to give your employees breaks, you still need to provide them to ensure your employees remain productive. Now, if these breaks are between five minutes and 25 minutes, they’d have to be considered paid work time, but if they’re longer than 30 minutes, you can make them unpaid work breaks. You’d have to manage which breaks are paid or unpaid, adding to the difficulty of managing breaks.

Monitoring overtime laws to ensure employees get paid at the right rate for the hours they’ve worked can also be an administrative hurdle. Every location has different overtime laws, so you need to be mindful of these.

Involve employees in their scheduling decisions

While there are pros and cons to 12-hour shifts, a good way to determine if they’re right for your business is to involve employees in their scheduling decisions. Doing this empowers your staff and helps you determine whether 12-hour shifts are right for your business. Changing to 12-hour shifts represents a major cultural change. Involving your employees from the outset might pay off in the long run.

A good place to start is with a survey or open meeting intended to identify your employees’ priorities. Management should encourage workers to rank the importance of issues such as days off, consecutive workdays, weekends, overtime, and family and social needs. Once these group criteria are determined, management can begin looking at 12-hour options that address workers’ concerns and satisfy the company’s business objectives.

Want to know what role employee scheduling software plays in all this? Contact us today. 

Workforce.com is a leader in Employee Scheduling on G2

Posted on

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!

Posted on

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.

Posted on

The Lake Elsinore Storm team up with Workforce.com to increase operations visibility

 

Minor League Baseball has been the city of Lake Elsinore’s pastime for a long time now – since 1994 to be exact. Perhaps nobody understands this better than the local team’s very own director of operations, Jason Natale.

“I’ve been coming here since I was about five years old. I sat on top of the dugout, had my birthday parties here … Storm Baseball was a big passion for me.”

Jason’s childhood passion continues to this day, as he is now the operations manager for the Lake Elsinore Storm, an affiliate of the MLB’s San Diego Padres. While the team’s goal is to win on the field, Jason’s primary goal behind the scenes is to ensure all 6,000 fans enjoy a clean and organized service experience at every game. 

CHALLENGE

Knowing what it’s like to be a fan himself, Jason takes pride in maximizing operational efficiency to increase fan engagement and satisfaction. “I’m a perfectionist,” he says. “I want everything to be pristine for the guests before they show up.” Achieving these results often proved difficult, however, as Jason conducted the majority of his work manually across multiple platforms; this limited the visibility he had into his workforce.

Simple administrative tasks like checking the attendance and locations of crews, managing overtime costs, and viewing sales per labor hour were taking too much time and energy. Most importantly, they slowed his reaction time to frontline issues impacting a wide range of the stadium’s operations entities. 

Since the Storm do not have the same revenue volume as teams in the major league, they rely heavily on providing a high quality service experience for their fans. Multiple entities operate under the Storm umbrella, from stadium cleaning to concessions, to curate this positive service experience. Jason needed increased clarity into the pain points affecting each of these entities in order to continue building customer satisfaction. 

SOLUTION

The perfectionist in Jason pairs perfectly with Workforce.com. The intuitive cloud-based system gives him the visibility he needs to optimize productivity and react quickly to frontline issues across his workforce. It handles all the time and attendance data for Jason’s employees, while also integrating with the stadium’s POS system, allowing him to compare labor hours and sales metrics. 

With Workforce.com, Jason uses his time more efficiently to prepare and operate the stadium for games. The software eliminates any frustration and stress that normally comes with inefficient administrative processes, making his job easier, and in the end, fan satisfaction higher. 

RESULTS

Jason now experiences success in operations throughout the stadium after Workforce.com joined the team. Here are some of the many ways the new workforce management system has increased operational excellence for both Jason as well as the team as a whole:

Optimizing sales per labor hour

With Workforce.com Jason can easily track cashiers turns, or sales per labor hour – a major KPI for the team. He can look at how much in sales a worker does in a shift and compare that to their labor costs. From these metrics, he can determine how to lead, schedule, and train employees better, increasing employee value.

Greater workforce visibility

Jason makes better decisions in the moment now with the help of leading indicators. With a live wage tracker, both the mobile app and kiosk app capture clock-ins, giving Jason live insights into whether he should call someone in, or send someone home, based on forecasted demand. Key alerts also greatly assist Jason, notifying him when he needs to address an abandoned shift.

“I can track my employees from my mobile phone. If someone didn’t show up, I can just look at my phone, and it’ll notify me, saying this person isn’t here. And I can reach out to HR and go from there.”

Minimizing overtime hours

Jason uses attendance features and push notifications in the app to control overtime hours among his employees. 

“With the pandemic, we are limited in staff, so a lot of our staff do get overtime,” Jason states. “So I am definitely getting notified when a person is beyond their hours and how to make sure they get home at the right time.”

Tracking attendance with GPS

With multiple service teams covering a large stadium, GPS clock-ins via the mobile app are critical for Jason’s visibility into daily operations. 

“I can track my people, I know when they’re coming, I know when they’re on site. It’s reassuring that it is all GPS located, so they’re not clocking in from down the street somewhere,” says Jason. 

Improved customer experience

Perhaps most importantly, the Storm are experiencing a major boost in sales following their partnership with Workforce.com, indicating an overall improvement in customer experience. In 2019, the average fan spent $24 per game across parking, ticketing, retail, and food; now the average has doubled to $48.

For Jason, a love for the sport of baseball has developed into a passion for optimizing service operations and increasing customer satisfaction. Baseball is about more than what’s happening on the field; it’s about the service experience as a whole, from cleaning seats to preparing hotdogs. In Workforce.com, Jason found a reliable teammate to optimize the operations driving this all-American experience.

Posted on

5 best ways to deal with short staffing

Summary

  • Labor shortage persists across the nation, spanning multiple industries

  • Unemployment benefits, COVID fears, and career reevaluations fueling shortage, among other reasons

  • Beat short-staffing with labor forecasting, scheduling in advance, increasing engagement, automating breaks, and cross-training

In what people are now dubbing The Great American Labor Shortage, businesses across the United States are suffering from severe understaffing issues – and small businesses are taking the biggest hit.

Indeed, recovery is happening slowly. The National Restaurant Association says that, as of July, the industry is within 1 million jobs of its pre-pandemic peak – this is after three consecutive months of increasing employment levels. Nevertheless, short staffing still persists. The NFIB found in July of this year that 49% of small businesses reported having job openings they could not fill – the historical average is 22%. Restaurants are still experiencing the most difficulty with this, even in the face of recovery. Many of them, both local and franchise alike, are having to slash opening hours a significant amount due to low availability of staff. You know it’s bad when Alabama Chick-fil-As are closing early nearly every day of the week. 

Needless to say, this is as concerning as it is stressful for hardworking business owners, HR and front-line managers everywhere. After such a tumultuous year as 2020, one would think that things could only get better with the economy opening back up. Clearly, the staffing recovery is happening much slower than people hoped for or expected. 

Why the shortage exists

So why is this all happening you may be wondering? Well, there are several contributing factors to the problem; each probably plays a role in its own way. Understanding these causes will better inform how to schedule an understaffed business more effectively.

The first and most obvious reason is that people are afraid of COVID-19 still. Recently, the Census Bureau found that 3.9 million people are not returning to work because they fear catching or spreading the virus. The increasing prevalence of the Delta variant only adds to this already strong concern for personal health.  

And why bother risking going back to work when you can live comfortably without a job? Herein lies the second potential reason for the labor shortage: unemployment benefits may have acted as disincentives. The American Staffing Association reported that some people made as much as $6 more per hour on unemployment insurance with pandemic bonuses. Due to these benefits, perhaps it makes sense that people don’t want to return to work. 

However, the problem is not that simple.

26 states withdrew federal unemployment benefits in June and July, months before the Sept. 6 due date. In a recent study, it was found that there was no meaningful difference in increases of shift work between states that ended benefits and states that continued benefits. In fact, states that ended the benefits only saw a 2.2% growth in shift work between May and July, as opposed to a 4.1% growth in states that continued benefits. Clearly, there are other, more personal factors keeping people from returning to work.

While unemployment benefits and pandemic fears are the most discussed causes, they might coincide with a longer-running trend. 

The United States has a rapidly aging population and in turn, a shrinking workforce. Many industries are affected by this trend, and the pandemic only served to exacerbate it. Older workers probably chose to retire early in the face of remote work. Others may have relocated to work remotely in an attempt to spend more time with their families. 

Whatever the reasoning may be, the fact remains that industries across the United States are struggling to attract young workers to replace retiring older workers. The healthcare industry knows this well, as they are facing a nursing shortage. The NCBI reports that 1 million RNs are over the age of 50 and that in 10 to 15 years, about one-third of the current nursing workforce is due to retire. Slightly alarming, right?

These staffing shortages impact a variety of markets, ranging from hospitality to healthcare. With a multitude of factors causing the shortages, it can be extremely difficult to address each problem directly. There are, however, a few simple techniques you can use in your scheduling system that may help. 

Solve the shortage with better scheduling 

One of the best ways to handle an understaffed workforce is to adopt more efficient scheduling techniques. With smarter scheduling, managers can get the most value out of their limited number of employees. As the old saying goes, “work smarter, not harder.”

1.) Use Labor Forecasting

Automated employee scheduling software exists now that makes the creation of schedules quite simple. Labor forecasting is perhaps the most impressive example of what this technology can do. It looks at historical sales data and other external factors, predicting how many employees are needed for certain shifts. Not only does this ensure proper staffing numbers but it also helps maximize productivity. Managers should use labor forecasting analytics during staffing shortages to accurately schedule their scarce employees at the right times to best meet predicted demand.

2.) Make Schedules in Advance

Tools like labor forecasting software help expedite the scheduling process; this allows managers to send schedules to employees far in advance. Doing this gives employees ample time to plan their personal lives accordingly. With a dedicated workforce management platform, these schedules are published in one place for everyone to see, no matter where they are. When faced with a staff shortage, publishing schedules early is extremely important because it ensures dedication to upcoming shifts. It also allows for early communication regarding potential conflicts – shift conflicts are often a nightmare to deal with last minute while shorthanded.  

3.) Increase Employee Engagement

Simply publishing schedules early isn’t always enough. Managers need to empower their employees with tools for communication. Shift swapping software lets workers signal via phone notifications if they need a shift covered; co-workers can then choose to claim a shift with the tap of a finger. Utilizing a shift-swapping tool lets employees adapt quickly and efficiently to schedule conflicts. 

Shift feedback is also critical for handling a short-staffed business. By allowing employees to briefly rate different aspects of their shifts, managers gain valuable insight into how their employees perform under certain conditions.

4.) Automate Breaks

With understaffing comes the risk of overworking. It is tempting for workers to skip breaks in order to keep up with demand; however, this can be disastrous for a manager trying to avoid labor compliance violations. With automated workforce management software, managers can input their own required fields for employee break times. These breaks then show up automatically in every schedule created. If an employee misses a break, starts it late, ends it early, etc., the manager will be notified. 

Errors in break times are very common in short-staffed environments, but by scheduling more efficiently with the proper software, these errors can easily be mitigated. 

5.) Cross-Train Employees

Finally, it is worth considering cross-training employees to perform multiple job roles. In a short-hand environment, it is always useful to have people on duty capable of performing a variety of tasks when needed. Cross-training makes scheduling much easier since the manager will almost always have people with the right qualifications on duty. 

Dealing with a staffing shortage is no easy task. The issue is something business owners in many industries have had to deal with forever, and there are really no definitive answers on how to solve it. However, utilizing more efficient scheduling techniques will nearly always help. Scheduling is one of the main things under the complete control of a manager, even in the face of a labor shortage.

Curious to learn more? Check out our webinar below featuring the founder of Grategy Coaching, Lisa Ryan.

Webinar: How to Schedule While Understaffed

 

Want to take immediate action? Innovative scheduling software like Workforce.com gives managers the necessary tools to start allocating labor more efficiently. 

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