scheduling – Page 2

March 9, 2021June 29, 2023

The future of automated employee scheduling

The promise of algorithms completely taking over scheduling and eliminating all human input seems too good to be true — and it is.

Take Starbucks’ scheduling challenges in 2014, which was the focus of a 2015 investigation by the New York attorney general’s office that also looked into the scheduling practices of 12 other retailers. Starbucks was criticized for its use of their legacy software to algorithmically generate schedules, which many claimed caused chaos and uncertainty in employees’ lives. When they didn’t know when their next shift would be or whether their shifts would get canceled at the last minute, it became increasingly more challenging for many employees to find child care, take classes, hold a second job or plan for the future.

Algorithms optimize efficiency and are part of the equation for creating the best schedules, but organizations can’t forget about the other key factor: employee input and flexibility. Without the human factor, the employer benefits while the employee must suffer through potentially chaotic and unreliable schedules. While solely focusing on employee input, the workers benefit while the employer loses the efficiency that scheduling algorithms carry. Luckily, a win-win is possible when combining these strategies.

The role of technology in auto-scheduling

People have been trying to create shifts with algorithms and machine learning without ideal results for a long time, as far back as 20 years ago, said Josh Cameron, Chief Strategy Officer at Workforce.com, citing a paper that explored the academic literature on personnel scheduling problems as far back as 2004. One issue that has arisen with this is that the quality of a schedule is dependent on the type of data and amount of data that managers input. Quality data will help produce a better schedule, but, conversely, “rubbish in, rubbish out,” Cameron said.

Further, when managers create a schedule by hand, they’re considering many factors, not all of which can be quantifiable as data or easy to capture as data, he added. For example, employee shift preferences are not easy to capture because individuals have their own preferences that are constantly changing.

“When we use machine learning algorithms, that’s only about half the equation, and there’s a limit to how well we can do it,” Cameron said. “Regardless of how good algorithms get, there will always be limits on how much information we can reasonably collect from employees on their preferences.”

The approach Workforce.com is taking is completely novel to what other companies are trying to do, he added. Rather than solely investing in making the algorithm better, the company is going a step further, he said.

“We’re some of the first people to realize how potentially limited the approach is,” he added. “We stepped back and asked, ‘How can we also let employees get the most value from their schedule, in an equal win-win way?’ Because happy workers are productive workers.”

Relying solely on algorithms sets scheduling as a zero-sum game where employees have to lose out in order for the business to gain or vice-versa. Auto-scheduling is a harder solution to build, but at Workforce.com we treat this as our core belief that employee-employer relationships should be built on win-win.

The key steps to auto-scheduling

To create the best, most accurate schedule, managers need to be able to accurately predict demand, create the right shift pattern and fill that shift panel with the right employees. Each of these individual steps poses its own pain points for managers, but by investing in the right scheduling technology, organizational leadership can make this process smoother and more accurate.

Demand prediction is the first key step in scheduling. The more applicable information a manager can collect, the more accurate and confident they can be with demand prediction. The right software will take into consideration factors such as weather or time of year, but managers also have a human role in this. They can identify demand predictors that are unique to that location.

Once managers have confidence in their demand prediction, shift building is the next step. Software like Workforce.com can help managers create shift patterns for the amount of work that needs to be done while keeping in mind regulations that set limits on how few or many people can be working at a given time. Still, managers need to ascertain certain information from employees to help make this possible, such as by approaching employees and getting hard numbers on how long it takes to complete basic tasks within their shifts.

Shift filling is where the most innovation comes in, especially with the recent development of shift auctioning, a mechanism that allows staff to indicate their preference for shifts. An idea that initially came from University of Chicago researchers and built by Workforce.com, shift auctioning is what allows flexibility to truly shine through in the algorithm plus scheduling process.

Benefits of scheduling flexibility

Factors such as autonomy, task variety and level of flexibility help workers feel more satisfied with their jobs, according to the 2020 University of Chicago paper “Reservation Wages and Workers’ Valuation of Job Flexibility: Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment.” The paper looked at Uber drivers — gig economy workers who have control over when and how much they work. A major finding here was how much workers value job flexibility, so much so that Uber drivers needed a wage increase to take undesirable shifts. A step further, “drivers would demand much higher wages if they had to commit to pre-set work schedules.”

The appeal of flexibility for hourly, shift and contract workers is something also supported by other research. The 2013 University of Chicago paper “Work Schedule Happiness: A Contributor to Employee Happiness?” found that varying start and end times depending on the day was associated with greater employee happiness. And this association was generally stronger among hourly employees than salaried employees. Meanwhile, the 2015 paper “Why Schedule Control May Pay Off at Work and at Home” found that “having discretion as to when, where, and how much one works is an important remedy to both chronic and acute time pressures and work–life conflicts, with potential health, well-being, and productivity benefits.”

This connection is also pretty instinctual. Ultimately, using an algorithm-only method strategy of scheduling ignores the profound impact employee preferences and flexibility can have.

The reality for shift workers is that scheduling has a considerable impact on employee’s job satisfaction and quality of life — a fact that most people in an operations role are aware of. And currently, the way schedules are generally created is not the most beneficial for employees. What may help organizations with this transition is to try a trial run on a smaller group of employees and work out any kinks in the implementation process, Cameron suggested.

Putting employees first

Happy and efficient workers make for a competitive business. And smart scheduling especially matters for the happiness of hourly shift workers. While it’s tempting to invest in solutions that are totally dependent on technology, the truth is that no matter how sharp this technology gets and no matter how efficient it is, it won’t be enough to fully satisfy workers and thus maximize productivity. That requires the human touch to be factored along with the algorithm.

“Algorithms can be limited,” said Tasmin Trezise, president at Workforce.com. “What’s hard is balancing that with the demand drivers of business, their labor requirements, the employee input and the overall culture of the company.”

Being smart at demand prediction, shift building and shift filling will ultimately both make employees more satisfied and help control budget efficiency. Managers can accomplish this with the right tools — tools that give them the best potential technology and algorithms while also giving them the opportunity to put the employee in the process.

This auto-scheduling method is the future of scheduling, especially for hourly shift workers. Workforce.com’s platform was created with a win-win philosophy in mind and we understand that employers and workers don’t need to be at odds over schedules. Technology built on this win-win philosophy is the future of automated employee scheduling with both parties getting what they want with forward-thinking solutions like Workforce.com.

February 24, 2021June 29, 2023

Ferguson Plarre saves over $100,000 a year using Auto-Scheduling

Ferguson Plarre, Workforce.com, retail, scheduling

Ferguson Plarre is one of the longest standing and most renowned producers of hand baked goods. The family-owned business has a rich history of providing customers with sweets and savories since the 1800s.

The company faced a number of workforce challenges such as difficulty navigating excessive amounts of administration and spending on overtime due to scheduling inefficiencies.

Since finding Workforce.com, Ferguson Plarre has seen great success in improving day-to-day operations and employee satisfaction. “It has just freed up so much time for my leaders to be able to actually focus on the projects that make us money and are better for the business, rather than sitting there putting spreadsheets together, trying to figure out what labor is going to cost,” said Chris Tankard, culture and human resources manager at Ferguson Plarre.

$100,000 saved on wage spend, hundreds of hours saved on administration

After implementing Workforce.com, the company saved $100,000 on wage spend and reduced hundreds of hours in administrative work. They saved the equivalent of two full-time staff members when it comes to cutting of administration across production, scheduling and reporting. These valuable savings allowed them to reallocate their resources to other more valuable areas of the business.

Following their implementation of Workforce.com, Ferguson Plarre has adopted a highly optimized scheduling process, allowing them to accommodate for the constantly shifting demand for their products, significantly reducing the time spent maintaining staff schedules, absences and staffing costs.

How legacy systems and processes can dramatically hinder success

Ferguson Plarre is committed to delivering freshly baked goods to its stores. With a staff of more than 150 employees, their goal is to provide the best quality products while catering for constant shifts in their day-to-day sales. As such, they require a staff management system that can optimize their schedule according to demand data.

Previous systems used at Ferguson Plarre failed to achieve the results they needed to achieve their business mission. Their previous scheduling software was a platform that employees throughout the company avoided. Staff were reluctant to use it due to issues with reliability. Meanwhile, the managerial team found a great deal of effort was required to make basic adjustments to staff schedules, pay rates and documents.

Not having access to the tools they needed led to higher staffing costs, frustrated staff and the inability to dedicate time and energy to areas of the business that add value. As a result, the company was left with significant sunk costs in a system that didn’t give them outcomes and satisfaction in return.

Implementing a system that helps your business grow

Tankard set out to find a user-friendly system that would be eagerly adopted by his team, a solution that would allow his frontline staff to start thinking like business owners. Finding a great system functions more like a partnership than a service, especially when it comes to managing areas of the business as important as your employees.

Here’s how the team at Workforce.com works with Ferguson Plarre to manage and improve their operations and business:

Auto-scheduling software

Ferguson Plarre uses Workforce.com’s automated scheduling platform to create more efficient shifts for their staff.
Scheduling according to demand allows Ferguson Plarre to schedule staff on a room-by-room basis, ensuring they never over- or under-staff stations.
The shift swapping software lets staff easily request altered schedules, reducing the time managers spent maintaining it. It also helps protect the bottom line as the platform shows how much swaps will cost.
Auto-scheduling ensures that Ferguson Plarre keeps unnecessary overtime to a minimum, reducing staffing costs across the company.

Digital timesheets

Automatic timesheet generation means Ferguson Plarre can generate and approve accurately costed timesheets in bulk each pay period.
Timesheet software automatically flagged any variance in wage spend, aiding Tankard and the team in adhering to their budgeting KPIs.
Workforce.com’s timesheet software synced to Ferguson Plarre’s payroll system, allowing them to export the data without any manual entry each pay period, significantly reducing the required labor hours.

Reporting

Workforce.com’s dashboards and reporting suite means Tankard and the team could access valuable workforce metrics and modify their business practices for efficiency.
Digital reporting and storage means Ferguson Plarre can easily access historical reports and monitor their performance over time.

Compliance

Workforce.com’s labor compliance engine applies the correct pay rates, overtime, and allowances to completed shifts, eliminating the need to manually calculate pay rates and amend timesheets.

Thorough implementation guarantees a fast return on investment

Business tools only begin to return benefits when they are implemented quickly and adopted fully across the company. It’s not uncommon to find businesses adopting newer and better processes, only to be caught in the implementation stage, receiving fractional value for an extended period of time. For Ferguson Plarre, a gold standard implementation process was imperative.

Workforce.com assigned a dedicated implementation consultant to Ferguson Plarre. This ensures that the implementation would run smoothly, so they could start getting value from the system as soon as possible. Workforce.com assisted Tankard and his team through the setup, integrating their existing systems into Workforce.com and ensuring that staff knew how to use the system.

Simplifying the administrative processes to focus on creating value

Workforce.com provides Ferguson Plarre with greatly simplified administrative processes, allowing them to focus on the things that matter.

Moving forward, Ferguson Plarre will continue to build on its rich history and continue to delight customers. As the business landscape continues to shift, they are well-equipped to face these changes because they have a platform that enables them to be agile and make data-driven decisions.

Workforce management has a lot of moving parts, but it doesn’t have to be a burden. Workforce.com can take out the administrative side of managing your team so you can focus more on growing your business. See our platform in action and book a demo today.

January 31, 2021October 18, 2024

6 best practices for creating a restaurant employee schedule

scheduling software, restaurant employees

The restaurant business runs on a careful balance of the right number of employees doing the right work at the right time.

But the first and most important step — putting together an effective schedule — is anything but simple.

Understaffing means restaurant workers will be busier than necessary and not have as much time for excellent customer service. Meanwhile, overstaffing means restaurant servers make less in tips, and the restaurant itself will overpay on labor costs.

You can avoid both of these wasteful work situations.

With the right processes, workplace culture, and restaurant shift scheduling software, you and your managers can avoid scheduling conflicts and create the most accurate schedule possible. Here are six best practices for creating an effective restaurant employee schedule.

1. Ask candidates about their scheduling preferences and constraints

The restaurant industry has one of the highest turnover rates — 81.9 percent as of 2019. Turnover has many negative downstream effects on a food service business, including an increase in the time and money needed to find, hire, and train new employees.

And your restaurant scheduling process could be contributing to employees’ dissatisfaction. Consider the length of a shift when you schedule hourly employees.

Unless a restaurant employee specifically requests it, scheduling short shifts are a quick route to a disengaged workforce. A shift of four hours or less can have financial consequences. An employee may actually lose money working a short shift thanks to commuting costs and potential additional costs like elder care and/or child care.

Avoid creating schedules with too-short shifts by asking employees for shift feedback. Do they think the restaurant is adequately staffed for rushes? Or are they chronically understaffed at critical points in the day?

Keeping shifts in the 6- to 8-hour range will help employees stay fresh and engaged and give them plenty of time to earn tips.

Be proactive in the interview process and ask your potential hires about their scheduling preferences. Perhaps they prefer evenings since they are in school during the day? Or want to be scheduled on weekends because they enjoy busier shifts? Some will ask you to split up their off days when you build out a schedule while others like consecutive days off.

You may not be able to accommodate every schedule request or preference. But by asking, you can improve employee engagement and reduce turnover in restaurants. You’re showing your team that you care about them as people, not just as employees.

2. Build flexibility into your scheduling

As a manager, your flexibility when building a schedule counts, too. While many on your team are fine with a schedule that varies days and hours, some hourly employees need stability because of other responsibilities that limit when they can work at the restaurant. Honoring those requests will make those employees more loyal, productive, satisfied and less likely to leave.

You also can add more flexibility to your restaurant scheduling with shift swapping capabilities. Shift swapping software is like a scheduling assistant that gives managers the peace of mind that all shifts will be covered. They can rely on employees to find their own work replacements through the scheduling app, provided that the switch is in compliance with labor laws and not threatening the restaurant with unnecessary overtime pay.

3. Provide the schedule as far in advance as possible

Last-minute and unclear schedules can have negative consequences on hourly employees, making it more difficult for them to plan their lives outside their jobs.

Finding child care, holding a second job (which many restaurant workers need to do to afford basic necessities), or taking continuing education classes all become more difficult when shift workers don’t know what their hours will be.

A wave of predictive scheduling laws in the 2010s required that organizations with shift workers provide employees with their schedules up to two weeks in advance, giving employees more stability and flexibility.

This type of law only exists in certain cities and states, but the reality is that any hourly restaurant employee would benefit from predictive scheduling policies.

Look at the calendar; don’t make employees wait until the last day of the month to see the schedule. Be transparent and consistent since staff schedule changes can be disruptive for employees. Building and posting the work schedule ahead of time relieves some of the stress that can accompany a flexible schedule.

One way to start scheduling in advance without the hassle of paperwork is with a schedule spreadsheet.

While this is a good start, the more data you have available, the more options you can access, the more accurately you and your managers can create shift schedules with the right number of employees at work at the right times.

Consider a more comprehensive solution like Workforce.com’s online scheduling software.

The software analyzes operational data about the specific restaurant, outside forces like the time of the year and weather, and even how long it takes employees to complete specific tasks.

So, it can predict how busy your restaurant will be at any given time, thereby helping you and your restaurant managers accurately forecast labor needs.

When you plan well-informed, data-driven schedules, you can plan for optimally-efficient labor costs.

4. Hire the right employees

Some 36 percent of restaurateurs say that hiring, training, and retaining staff are their biggest challenges. Building a restaurant schedule that reflects properly staffing a restaurant goes a long way to easing those challenges.

With over 660,000 restaurants in the United States, pay and the right employee work schedule are big differentiators when people choose a job. Your ability to balance the proper number of employees with their schedule requests will determine their level of job satisfaction and your ability to make payroll.

Fewer employees means your restaurant staff is more likely to feel overworked and burned out. With too many employees, they may not get as many hours as they need in a job. This is especially true for smaller restaurants, which must carefully manage their labor costs.

As Lil Roberts, CEO and founder of fintech company Xendoo, has suggested, you can use behavioral-based questions in the interview process to assess potential candidates.

These behavioral questions shouldn’t be binary, which might yield a yes-or-no answer that isn’t helpful. The question, “Are you organized?” would give a more generic answer versus something like “If I opened your closet, what would I see?” Roberts said. A more organized candidate might end up being a phenomenal host or hostess, she added, while someone with different strengths may be a better server.

If you’ve had many employees who don’t consistently show up to work on time, you and your managers can reconsider the questions you ask candidates. Vet candidates for vital qualities like culture fit and job expectations.

“If you’re a business owner and you’ve got a revolving door [of employees leaving], you need to not say, ‘Oh, the workforce is bad.’ You need to look internally and say, ‘What process can I change?’ ” Roberts said in an August 2020 Workforce.com interview.

Given that restaurant turnover is chronically high, reliable workforce scheduling is a proven way to attract and retain quality employees.

With an overwhelming 95 percent of restaurant owners agreeing that technology improves the efficiency of their establishments, as managers go to hire new employees, having Workforce.com’s scheduling platform is particularly effective for restaurant operations. The simple, paperless onboarding feature sets the right tone for new staff once they are hired.

5. Don’t forget about time off, sick days, and holiday schedules

In spite of your best efforts, you’ll have last-minute changes when scheduling employees. Employees get sick and have personal emergencies.

Be clear with your staff that it’s OK for them to take sick days off of work. Some organizations have cultures where employees feel shamed or discouraged for taking time off to take care of themselves, and that’s a health hazard in a place of business where people are preparing, cooking, serving and eating food.

6. Manage scheduling in real time based on changing conditions

The unexpected does happen occasionally, meaning that restaurant managers must be able to change their employee shifts at a moment’s notice. Managers need a scheduling tool that allows them to react quickly and confidently.

The Workforce.com Live Wage Tracker allows managers to adjust staffing levels in real time. Both overstaffing and understaffing can be dangerous for a restaurant, which generally runs on small profit margins. Any staffing decision that can cut labor costs will help.

With the Live Wage Tracker, making operational decisions on the fly to tweak your restaurant employee schedule is as seamless as possible.

Meanwhile, for those food service businesses with multiple locations, you can get complete oversight of staff numbers in all teams and at all locations. You can see how many employees are currently working and which teams or locations have the largest variance from your shift schedules.

See how to build your restaurant’s employee work schedule with ease and accuracy. Sign up for a free trial of Workforce.com’s restaurant employee scheduling software today.

November 13, 2020June 7, 2022

The fair workweek squeeze on employer scheduling

Employers are experiencing an intrusion of regulations and disruption around how they operate. Fair workweek laws have sprouted up across the country in numerous large cities including New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, and statewide in Oregon and New Hampshire. The recent wave of new rules affects scheduling for hourly workers in retail, hospitality and other sectors.

Many aspects of business are constrained by important rules to maintain safety, free trade, environmental standards, equity, and transparency in the marketplace. Fair workweek, or FWW, scheduling laws present a challenge that goes beyond rates of pay and fines, though. Such scheduling laws are disruptive in the way the rules restrict how employers operate and schedule work.

The intent of fair workweek laws may be to strike a balance between two interests (employer and employee) regarding the schedules people work and when they are asked to work them in order to deliver predictable and stable schedules. But despite the intent of balance, the reality is that FWW laws permeate deeply into the employer operations, dictating specifics about how the employer organizes and manages shift work in their business.

If an employer is not equipped to manage FWW, they can face higher operating costs and fines. These regulations put a significant burden of change and cost onto employers while providing a meaningful upside for workers. With added responsibility, it’s important for employers to understand these laws and their implications in the field.

The employer is not simply one side of this balancing equation. They are caught in the middle between regulators and employees, which requires more delicate navigation. In addition, natural forces of the marketplace such as the weather, the economy, landlords and competitors, major events, and unexpected events such as the COVID-19 pandemic ensure an environment of constantly moving parts for employers to navigate.

Fair workweek disruptors for employers and employees

For employers, these disruptors are very real, unpredictable and largely out of their control. To stay afloat, employers need to control how they react and how they operate.

A successful business is agile and smart. It faces the impacts to its business and makes changes to adjust various operating aspects, including schedules. Often these changes must happen quickly and without notice.

Not every schedule change is huge. It could mean changing operating hours for a day or two each week or needing more workers one evening. A more significant change could encompass pivoting to drive-up service, staggering shift start times or transitioning more workers to part time.

Also read: Ethics and the future of workforce management

The constant for employers is change and uncertainty. The FWW constant is that the rules apply to situations regardless of the degree of schedule change.

Workers face real and unpredictable forces as well. The weather, car trouble, a sick family member, the demands of school or a spouse’s job can change how they operate.

Having unpredictable schedules and variable hours week to week can put a disruptive strain on the personal lives of employees putting them in the middle of their job and their personal demands. So why are we here?

The origins of fair workweek

The FWW movement was born out of concern for the employee side of the shift work equation. Voices grew loud about how the schedule volatility burden was being put onto workers. From the worker’s perspective, employers over-tilted on solving for the impact outside forces have on their business. Workers were living through highly optimized schedules that entailed last-minute shift changes, minimal advance notice of schedule assignments and awful “clopening” shifts.

Employers weren’t intending to rely on haphazard work schedules to keep their business running. They didn’t look closely enough at the human side of scheduling to understand the impact these schedules were having on their people.

Managers weren’t using a methodology for scheduling that produced high quality schedules for workers. Because employers didn’t quantify the impact of schedules on worker experience and the cost to their business, they missed realizing that focusing only on business issues wasn’t good for their overall employee health and system of operating. Employees wanted a move away from this business-centric approach to a more worker-centered model.

Regulators certainly couldn’t remove the volatility in the marketplace that causes employers to change schedules. And they couldn’t eliminate the personal situations employees face that necessitate needing predictable, stable schedules. But the regulators could, through FWW laws, remove the volatility that employees experience around schedules.

Searching for a new scheduling model

In comes the squeeze. FWW has put employers in the middle of marketplace VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) and workers. Employers are in a real pinch – the laws prescribe how employers must act and react. The economic laws of nature also mandate terms and conditions. To even out the strain of uncontrollable external volatility and uncertainty on the one side and rigid internal employee-focused scheduling rules on the other, employers have to operate differently.

The way forward is to “operate differently” not just simply “schedule differently.” FWW rules circumscribe more than just assigning and changing schedules. FWW rules apply to several business functions before and after a schedule.

FWW rules must be part of hiring and reporting, scheduling and compensating, training and operational performance. The rules are different in each jurisdiction and more localities and states will add new laws. Managing the complexity and ambiguity is a challenge.

Operationally, FWW will change how employers forecast labor demand, how they convert demand into shift schedules, how they assign employees to shifts, how they react to real-time disruptions or changes in their business, how they plan for the cost of labor, the scheduling and payroll systems they use, who and how they hire, and how their company survives and thrives.

For employers looking to navigate these new regulations, there are important steps to take:

Recognize that FWW is much more intrusive than a minimum wage increase or paying a premium. FWW compliance will change how you run your business.
Incorporate FWW into your financial planning. Prepare for a 3- to 9 percent increase in labor costs to account for additional wage premiums paid to workers.
Assess your readiness to align to the FWW rules. Be certain of what you need to do. Use an independent third party to assess how fair workweek processes are handled and to identify gaps in processes, technology, and training.
Assign a fair workweek owner who is responsible for FWW transformation and sustainment. Task this person with documenting the risk profile for the organization and creating a plan for training, controls and system changes.
Define what good FWW alignment and compliance look like for your business and your people. Set goals for compliance and develop plans to achieve them such as updating procedures, incorporating incentives, adding new KPIs, etc.
Assess your technology platforms (payroll, HR systems, and employee scheduling software) and determine their ability to handle the required processes, payments, scheduling checks and document retention required.

The objectives of the fair workweek are well-intentioned, but the realities can be adverse for businesses. It will take time, investment, and adjustments for employers to rebalance the scales of FWW.

The pressures of FWW mandates coupled with the extreme conditions of the marketplace today put a spotlight on labor scheduling. Fair workweek requires adjustments to processes, systems and how people are scheduled. Getting the changes right will lead to improvements in employee satisfaction and managed increases in labor cost.

November 12, 2020March 28, 2024

Retail workforce management success goes beyond productive operations

Productivity is one sign of a good operation, but many factors are at play to ensure success in the retail industry.

Jim Highfill, president at Lazarus Human Capital Services, sheds light on some of the challenges in retail workforce management and provides insight into what companies can do amidst a changing business landscape. With over 30 years in retail, he shares best practices on ensuring productive operations, creating efficient staff schedules, staying compliant with labor laws and adapting to different industry changes.

The real meaning of successful and cost-effective operations

If you’re a CFO, would you be open to a 10 percent increase in yearly sales resulting in an additional net profit of $100 million but no increase in productivity? Highfill conducted a thought experiment posing that question among 20 CFOs of multinational companies, and half of them rejected the idea.

“The point is, increases in productivity result from technology, process improvements, or clear communication, team involvement and training, the latter being most important,” he said. “It’s not always as simple as requiring more sales generated from fewer labor hours. When the workforce has clear goals and direct involvement in achieving them, they are more productive, more conscientious towards cost mitigating practices, and more rapidly adopt technology and process improvements.”

HR teams also have a crucial role to play as a human capital partner. They need to advocate for the workforce and ensure that communication of goals and the employees’ role in achieving those goals is clear and consistent.

“HR is a force multiplier when equally involved in any discussion of operational change,” he added.

Crucial factors when creating staff schedules

Staff schedules are at the core of any operation, especially for retail businesses. More than ensuring that all business areas are covered, there are other significant factors to consider.

“Everything starts with the forecast of sales, customer traffic and other related indicators that can predict labor demand. If you’re seeing large variances in productivity week to week, check the forecast variance first,” he said.

Also read: On-shift scheduling doesn’t have to be a headache for managers or employees

The other thing to identify is where and when labor is required. Companies typically use data for labor modeling, but they need to keep in mind how the human factor can also come into play.

“Even the most talented store managers can have what I call operational bias where they may over- or under-allocate hours to certain departments based on how well they understand those departments. Store-level modeling provides both a guide for allocating hours and evaluating any impacts of variance from the model. If you really want to leverage your company’s data science efforts, this is a level of granularity that shouldn’t be ignored,” he said.

Labor modeling is also crucial to identifying the right ratio of full-time to part-time employees. Weighing pros and cons and variables like flexibility, turnover and knowledge dilution helps strike a balance and create the right mix.

Most importantly, managers need to consider the needs of staff when creating schedules. It seems obvious but can be easier said than done, especially when managers get a handful of requests. “Using an employee self-service software is a great way to make it easier and more cost-efficient for the manager to handle this process, and when used with automated scheduling software, it can be a true game changer,” he said.

Workforce management challenges in the retail industry

Like with any industry, retail players are faced with a set of challenges. Highfill cited overcoming fear, facing political uncertainty, evaluating technology and figuring out the role of gig work as the top challenges that the retail businesses had to contend with.

Fear is usually a result of market volatility, and it can be felt from the executive, managerial and employee levels.

Also read: Work schedule laws and enforcement to expect in 2021

“You could almost call it a psychology problem,” he said. “There’s fear of business viability and financial uncertainty. Fear on the corporate level usually manifests itself as austerity on the store level in the form of draconic staff cuts in brick-and-mortar locations as more emphasis is placed on ecommerce. How does one cut back on staff costs without creating a death spiral where sales drop and more staff is cut and so on and so forth?”

Retailers need to recognize that their strength is in customer engagement. He explained that while it feels risky to invest in store resources, it is essential to preserving relationships with customers.

Political uncertainty is another thing that retail players need to navigate as it can influence how labor laws are being applied.

“HR departments must be prepared for a wide variety of scenarios on the federal, state and local level. It’s a monumental task,” he said.

Workforce management software is vital to retail businesses, but finding the most suitable technology can be difficult.

“The plethora of options can create a decision paralysis, especially for those that are navigating the selection process for the first time,” he said. “My advice is to evaluate five or six options, narrow it down to two for a proof-of-concept. Make a decision, go forward, and don’t look back.”

The rise of gig work is also something that retailers need to navigate. While it offers flexibility, it can also have an impact on an organization’s culture.

“Certainly there’s a place for gig workers in most sectors of retail. But there will likely be a lot of pain involved over the next several years as retailers try and figure out what best matches their needs while preserving the shopping experience and culture of the company,” he said.

Ensuring labor compliance when managing a huge workforce

Technology is vital labor compliance as it can help take into account various laws into the system and automate notifications when there’s a risk of penalty or non-compliance. However, companies need to pay attention to how technology is being adopted into the field.

Also read: Tracking time and attendance a basic but crucial workplace function

“Executives may see scheduling as a logic problem, which it is in many ways. However, on the store level, it is an emotional issue as well. It’s the emotional part that creates bias reflected in schedules, which can cause compliance issues. A well-meaning manager might give favorable schedules to longtime loyal employees to the disadvantage of others, or may fail to recognize that an employee has not been given the number of weekends off, ” he explained.

Retail employee scheduling software provides a clearer picture and helps managers recognize potential areas where non-compliance may happen, enabling them to optimize schedules before issues can occur.

Building resilience in retail

With COVID-19 throwing a curve at the workplace, managers need to be agile enough to optimize their strategy given how quickly things can change.

“The volatility in the labor market will be with us as long as the pandemic is active. Managers are faced with having to reduce or increase staff on short notice as areas experience fluctuating levels of economic lockdown. It not only has an operational impact but a psychological impact as well,” he said.

Given the uncertainty of today’s business landscape, leaders need to step it up and think creatively. Beyond productivity, they must prioritize engaging their people and empowering them to thrive no matter the circumstance.

“Managers must be creative. Cross-functional training, job sharing, and constant communication and goal alignment are the main ingredients in a recipe for maintaining a cohesive team that will thrive in this period of uncertainty and change,” he said.

August 17, 2020June 29, 2023

Labor analytics add power to workforce management tools

Employing labor data analytics typically leads to more informed business decisions. From labor forecasting to measuring employee morale, data analytics allows for more precise and impactful results.

The advantages of implementing workforce management solutions also are clear. Automating time and pay calculations and empowering employees through mobile apps give managers valuable tools to control scheduling, compensation costs and organizational needs.

Using both resources powers the ability to make even stronger choices for workforce management.

Power tools with the power of analytics

Backing workforce management tools with the power of labor analytics creates a formidable partnership. This can help save money, establish formal business practices and remove the guesswork hindering management and operational issues. Employers can make more informed talent decisions, and:

Predict future hiring requirements.
Calculate current staffing needs.
Analyze compensation and overtime.
Optimize employee engagement.

Also read: Labor analytics: A how-to guide for company leadership

Predict future hiring requirements

The growth of an organization can be hobbled by its ability to find qualified employees. Since there are times when hiring comes in a flurry, recruiting becomes post the position, make the hire and pray they work out. Oftentimes new hires are not as productive as the existing staff and can cut into the team’s productivity. Forecasting labor needs through analytics establishes measured hiring practices. And implementing tools such as Workforce.com’s shift ratings and feedback solution provides managers with the ability to carefully balance veteran staff with new hires.

Calculate current staffing needs

Managers can get burned by being overstaffed and understaffed if they rely on traditional shift patterns and gut instinct. Overstaffing creates disillusioned employees with little to do, a lack of focus and a negative attitude toward co-workers. Productivity suffers and compensation costs needlessly soar. Conversely, understaffing leads to employee stress, burnout, poor performance, rattled customers and high turnover. Shift feedback tools help managers forecast their needs and curb chronic overstaffing and understaffing.

Analyze compensation and overtime

Few things catch an employer’s eye faster than seeing overtime on the compensation ledger. And like melting snow off a mountaintop, their irritation trickles down to frontline managers. Indeed some overtime can be justified, but there are workforce management solutions to adjust scheduling to seasonal or even hourly rushes that will manage compensation costs and limit unneeded overtime.

Optimize employee engagement
An engaged workforce produces a happy workplace. Balancing staffing needs and incorporating flex schedules builds confidence that management is looking out for their interests. Allowing employees to provide feedback also gives them a voice in organizational operations.

The Workforce.com Shift Rating and Feedback mobile app prompts staff once a week to provide their insights on common workplace topics. Their feedback in turn helps managers rate staff and build skill profiles. Those profiles benefit managers by pairing employees with varying skill levels as they build out schedules. Managers making quick, informed decisions gives employees the knowledge that their input has provided valuable guidance.

When workforce analytics and tools are functioning well, it’s not only the business that benefits. Employees want to take more initiative. Empower them with workforce management mobile solutions to solve problems. For example, they can:

Communicate their needs for scheduling and time off.
Quickly swap shifts on their own.
Get and provide feedback that can improve their performance and drive organizational productivity.
Develop their skills and utilize their potential.
Build camaraderie across the team.

Equip executives and managers with the analytics and tools they need to understand labor issues and make more informed decisions. Implement Workforce.com’s shift ratings and feedback solution to quickly and easily bolster your employee and scheduling analytics.

August 16, 2020August 14, 2020

Angel Assistance spreads its wings for families in Atlanta

Attending Georgia State University on scholarship after living in a small town, Savannah Samples didn’t originally envision her part time jobs would eventually bloom into the business opportunity she’s pursuing today.

The young founder of Atlanta-based total family assistance company Angel Assistance started out doing nanny work to support herself alongside full-time studies.

“I always did nannying as well as doing other things — doing laundry, doing dishes, cooking dinner, taking the kids places, all the different kinds of stuff the moms usually do. When they got home they would be all, ‘oh thank you so much, you helped so much, not just nannying but doing everything,’ ” Samples said.

Also read: Shift swap software empowers managers and employees to take charge of scheduling

She worked hard — a necessity when coming from humble beginnings. She found one regular in her sophomore year of university, and another the year after — and as word-of-mouth referrals from those two poured in, the list began to grow. Two became twelve, and she now had a loyal client base. But juggling the number of clients on top of schoolwork took a toll on her.

“Everybody kept referring me, a good problem to have, but I only have so many hands. And this mom I was working with at the time who owned two businesses, said why don’t you just start up your own company?”

From side gig to full-fledged business

She decided to go for it despite no entrepreneurship background and little knowledge about government requirements. It took two years of her learning the ropes of business ownership alone for Samples to hire her first full-time employee.

From there, it snowballed. Angel Assistance, once a one-person company, now employs six full-time “angels” and 30 clients, around 23 of whom have set recurring weekly schedules. The company’s services? A common misconception about it is that they do elderly care, or purely nannying. That isn’t the case.

Case study: Building a safety policy was vital to Shawmut Design and Construction’s health

“We wash, we walk the dog, we cook you dinner, we grocery shop, organize your closet, do summer, winter switch up on closets, make your beds, everything you can’t get from a deep cleaner, you can’t get from a babysitter, you can’t get from a chef, from a dry cleaning service. We do all in one. So family assistance totally, with individuals as a family as well,” Samples said.

This scale-up meant Samples needed to find a reliable employee scheduling app to ease her managerial load. Employees would contact her to manually schedule shifts, and repeatedly fielding calls would make her “go insane.” She tried one brand of workforce software, but despite the good customer service as time went on the app would glitch to the point where it caused operational issues.

Employees wouldn’t be able to see their schedules, and clients would be waiting for an angel to show up at their door to no avail. It also didn’t have as much features as she would like.

“I like the app and the people that I did talk to when I first started were great […], but the app glitched enough to where it was causing issues with our clients where angels weren’t showing up to the location because they couldn’t see their schedule published. So I knew something was going to have to happen.”

Finding the right scheduling app

Workforce.com’s name came up when Samples asked around for possible alternatives. She became interested in it once she did some research: It had more features than the previous app, and the possibility of developing more in the future.

Angel Assistance now uses Workforce.com primarily for its employee scheduling app. They’ve adapted to use it for their specific needs as well, instead of just Samples holding the manager title, Angel Assistance’s families have manager accounts of their own, enabling these recurring clients to see and respond to the shifts of their assigned employee. This was in contrast to their previous app, where families ended up with a “put it out in the universe and hope the angel shows up” situation.

Being someone who does organizing work herself, Samples especially appreciates how Workforce.com has room for consolidating information about her angels. Other than the time clock and location features, which they also use, she mentions the qualifications tab: a place where she can keep a file on each angel that contains their background check, driving record, profile, and more. “I love that Workforce.com has the qualifications tab where i can put all of those on the app; if we need them we can pull them up and look at them.”

Also read: Scheduling headaches: How to better manage your hourly workers’ schedules

Forward-looking enthusiasm

Workforce.com has also helped Samples cut down on her role as middleman between clients and angels. She handles two to three different families per day herself for about four hours each, and keeps in touch with others in-between, with a short break for lunch. But the work doesn’t stop there.

She gets home at around 9 or 10 p.m., but sometimes the phone keeps ringing. “I’m to the point now where I have to put my phone on ‘do not disturb’ past like, 11 o’ clock because otherwise I probably wouldn’t sleep.”

Despite her busy schedule, Workforce.com does help. With the employee scheduling app having features for leave requests and shift time changes, employees don’t need to contact her as much as before.

Her eventual goal? To fully transition to overhead management.

“It’s a lot, and I don’t mind it because it’s what I do and obviously I love what I do,” she said. “But I know I can’t give my 100 percent to families because I’m doing management. I’ve had some kids 4 or 5 years old, so I feel bad that I’m not giving them full attention because I have to answer the phone for a management call for 20, 30 minutes.”

She may be a business owner now, but Samples — and Angel Assistance — retains the core that made clients trust her years ago: the sincere compassion and heart for the families they serve.

June 10, 2020April 11, 2023

How far in advance must a work schedule be posted?

Predictive scheduling laws have changed the way many businesses make their schedules. While there are many details in these rules — like record keeping requirements and providing compensation for schedule changes — what people most talk about is employers’ responsibility to provide employee schedules in advance.

Also read: Shift swap software empowers managers and employees to take charge of scheduling

The purpose of these laws is to give employees more predictability and stability, providing them a chance to plan ahead. If they know their work hours in advance, they will more likely be able to plan for a second job, child care or other responsibilities that must be planned in advance.

Still, these laws mean that businesses must stay compliant with new regulations, and for employers with multiple locations across the country, they may have different rules to comply with. Following is some of the basic information about each of these laws.

Also read: Employers grapple with laws about work schedules

How far in advance must a work schedule be posted?

The timing varies. Currently, there are several laws in cities across the United States. Four cities in California have predictive scheduling laws: San Francisco, Emeryville, San Jose and Berkeley. Other cities and municipalities include New York, Seattle, SeaTac and Philadelphia. Chicago joins these July 1, 2020.

Meanwhile, Oregon is the only state with such a law in effect, while New Hampshire and Vermont have more limited scheduling-related laws.

These laws have specific stipulations for which businesses must comply to the rules, and they also have many other details employers must be familiar with. However, looking at this from a more basic point of view, here is how much notice employers whom the laws apply to must give employees in each location:

San Francisco: 14 days notice; went into effect March 1, 2016.
Emeryville: 14 days notice; went into effect July 1, 2017.
San Jose: No advance notice component, but employers must offer additional hours to existing, qualified part-time employees before hiring more employees; went into effect March 13, 2017.
Berkeley: No advance notice component, but employees may request flexible or predictable working arrangements twice per year and after a major life event.
New York: 14 days notice; went into effect Nov. 26, 2017.
Seattle: 14 days notice; went into effect July 1, 2017.
SeaTac: No advance notice required, but employers must offer additional hours to existing, qualified part-time employees before hiring more employees covers only large hospitality employers and transportation employers.
Philadelphia: 10 days notice; went into effect April 1, 2020.
Chicago: 10 days notice; goes into effect July 1, 2020.
Oregon: 14 days notice; went into effect August 8, 2017.

Complying with predictive scheduling laws

How far in advance must a work schedule be posted? These regulations provide clear numbers on the minimum employers must do, but that doesn’t mean they can’t go above and beyond that.

Employees are beginning to return to work after months of quarantine. The conversation around predictive scheduling will have to evolve because of the coronavirus, said Ari Hersher, partner at Seyfarth law firm. Employers can begin improving on the communication they have with employees.

“Employers should do what they can to communicate as far in advance about their anticipated schedule as possible,” he said, adding that the clients he works with that are subject to predictive scheduling laws give up to 21 days notice on schedules.

Managers can communicate scheduling in advance and explain the flexibility needs of the business at the same time, creating an open line of communication between employer and employee.

“Employers can say, ‘We’ll give you 30 days notice, but please understand that our scheduling needs are volatile,’ ” he said. “People should [try to] understand each others’ needs and be mindful of them.”

David Kopsch, principal consultant at Mercer, agreed that giving more notice will benefit employers right now. The return-to-work environment is stressful. Employers must create employee work schedules without knowing what sort of customer demand to expect, and some employees may be fearful to return to work in a customer-facing job.

Organizations can provide schedules to employees up to four weeks in advance, Kopsch said. From there, they can call and confirm with employees three weeks in advance, make whatever changes are necessary and officially post the schedule two weeks ahead of time, which would allow employers to comply with any of the predictable schedule laws.

“We are seeing much more communication coming from employers, and what [employers] are sharing with us is employees like it,” Kopsch said. “They like this high level of communication. They like the engagement and the concern and empathy that employers are demonstrating,”

June 2, 2020March 29, 2021

The most common scheduling problems for employers and how to address them

shift scheduling, technology, custom fields

Hourly employees have common scheduling problems, which helped spur a series of fair workweek laws now in effect in the state of Oregon and in many cities across the United States. The impact of these laws on businesses should not be ignored, though.

The COVID-19 pandemic has also added another layer to the scheduling complexity environment. Industries like retail, food service and hospitality that have been greatly impacted by the pandemic are also the industries primarily affected by predictive scheduling laws.

Depending on state or local laws, businesses all face scheduling challenges. Here are some of the most common scheduling problems and how to address them.

Also read: Shift scheduling strategies can be improved through technology

The most common scheduling problems for employers

1. Overstaffing and understaffing

The clear problem for businesses with overstaffing is that they’re unnecessarily increasing their labor cost with no return on investment, said Ari Hersher, partner at law firm Seyfarth. And labor costs are already one of the biggest costs for businesses, along with real estate.

Meanwhile, if a shift is understaffed, the business is not efficiently meeting demand. Its employees may be overworked and need to work extra hours, and the business may have to pay these workers unplanned overtime, Hersher said. Meanwhile, in jurisdictions with predictive scheduling laws, an employer may need to pay additional wage to staff that are added last minute, he added.

2. TIme

Creating a schedule takes time, and managers already have busy jobs. Using technology solutions could help, yet the Sierra Cedar “2018-2019 HR Systems Survey” found that only 42 percent of organizations use labor scheduling applications.

Also read: 3 Steps to Navigating Effective Wage and Hour Compliance

3. The need for flexibility

Managers need flexibility to create schedules, Hersher said. Employees may quit, call in sick or simply not show up, and then managers must figure out how to quickly find a replacement.

Employers in jurisdictions with predictive scheduling laws may have further responsibilities, he said. Some of these laws have employers document that someone called out of their shift, offer proof that they called and store the information for three years in case of audits. For managers who supervise a large number of employees, the number of call outs they get in a week may be substantial.

Sometimes there are tech solutions, he said, but the patchwork landscape of predictive scheduling can complicate that. Employers with locations in cities or states with different laws need a way to take all laws that impact them into account.

Also read: Predictive Scheduling Laws — What Are They, Where Do They Exist and Employers’ Reaction

4. Compliance

According to XpertHR’s survey “Top HR Compliance Challenges for 2020,” 10.1 percent of employers surveyed said that pay and scheduling issues is their top compliance concern, topped only by benefits (16.2 percent) and recruiting/hiring (28.3 percent).

The most common scheduling problems for employees

1. Overstaffing and understaffing:

Understaffing has an obvious impact on employees, leaving them overworked and with low morale, Hersher said. And industries like retail and food service with many hourly workers already see high turnover.

Meanwhile, given the right context, overstaffing also may impact workers negatively. They may get sent home, therefore not getting paid for hours they expected to work. Employees who earn commission for sales or tips for service may also find this situation bad, Hersher added. If there are only six customers and seven servers or sales associates, they wouldn’t expect to earn a fair wage for their time.

2. Predictability and cost of living:

Many hourly employees work in cities with high costs of living, and they could be working multiple jobs, Hersher said. A lot of these may be part-time jobs. For these workers, advance notice in what their schedules will be has a lot of value.

As the Economic Policy Institute explained it in a 2018 article, “Volatile hours not only mean volatile incomes, but add to the strain working families face as they try to plan ahead for child care or juggle schedules in order to take classes, hold down a second job, or pursue other career opportunities.”

The power of analytics

Predictive analytics could help many of these issues, Hersher said. Retail has experienced an explosion of data studying people’s buying habits, how long they stay in a store and how much they purchase, which should allow employers to staff more efficiently.

This could benefit employers and employees in a few ways. With predictive data, employers could still create schedules in advance, which means predictability for employees. And if employers are able to create more accurate schedules, their risk of either understaffing or overstaffing decreases, which could help deter some of the negative impacts that understaffing and overstaffing may have on both employers and employees.

“The more you can spot trends, the better you can anticipate needs and the more you can reduce changes,” he said.

April 23, 2020June 29, 2023

Workforce management software: Don’t underestimate its value

Workforce management professionals face more responsibilities than ever before, and workforce management software can help them manage their many responsibilities.

While workforce management used to be a more focused term — mostly encompassing payroll, timesheets and scheduling — now it encompasses a broader array of duties including recruiting, onboarding, training, technology and more. Some of these duties are owned by HR, while IT, finance or operations take care of others. Balancing this variety of duties is not simple.

Also read: How technology fits into an HR manager’s job description

Between 2020 and 2025, the workforce management software market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 4.21 percent, according to India-based market research organization Mordor Intelligence. The report also found that the global workforce management software market was valued at $2.7 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach a value of $3.5 billion by 2025.

Why use workforce management software?

Organizations are interested in using HR and workforce management software for multiple purposes, and many organizations plan to use certain types of software in their long-term plan, according to the 2019 “HR State of the Industry” report from the Human Capital Media Research and Advisory Group, the research arm of Workforce.com. While 37 percent of the organizations surveyed already use a management software system that addresses all core areas of talent management, 10 percent plan to purchase it in the next year and 8.4 percent plan to in the next three years.

The same trend exists for organizations interested in software that specializes in one talent management category. According to the report, 46.4 percent of employers already used recruiting technology software, 9.2 percent planned to in the next year and 6.5 percent in the next three years. With scheduling/time and attendance software, 59.9 percent of respondents already used it, and 9.3 percent and 5.8 percent plan to in the next year and three years, respectively.

Among this huge workforce management software landscape, organizations may have challenges choosing a provider and managing the software. Vendors are releasing new versions of workforce management software every other day while similar companies are also emerging, noted MarketWatch.

Also read: Workforce management takes time and effort

One important functionality of a workforce management software solution is the capability to create schedules based on varying rules and regulations. For example, numerous cities and states have passed legislation including laws guaranteeing workers the right to request scheduling accommodations and predictable scheduling laws. Meanwhile, an organization may have specific internal rules that apply to just one team of employees, or they may have global employees who don’t fall under American law.

The benefits of workforce management software

Workforce.com software, for example, addresses this by allowing users to input a rule or regulation and have it automatically added to the system. This isn’t the case with every time and attendance software, but capabilities like this allow workforce management professionals to create good schedules despite the many rules that impact how they can and can’t schedule employees.

Also read: 3 steps to navigating effective wage and hour compliance

The benefits of workforce management software solutions are clear. They can save organizations time and automate complicated processes. Still, some organizations haven’t made the leap yet, citing reasons like lacking the time, budget or resources to choose products, assess vendors and deploy new applications.Experts advise companies in this predicament to start small with core software solutions that address payroll, time and attendance, paid time off and benefits. Delaying workforce management software investments will hinder a manager’s ability to automate the necessary tasks and focus on the parts of their job that can’t be automated.