Tag: workforce management

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Workforce Planning: Overview, Steps, and Checklist

31 core competencies

Workforce planning is a systematic process that involves proactively analyzing current workforce gaps and forecasting future staffing needs to avoid potential shortages and surpluses of human capital.

It is based on the premise that a company can be staffed more efficiently if it takes initiative to regularly analyze and forecast its talent needs as well as the actual supply of talent that is or will be available.

Here are some of the benefits of workforce planning:

  • Rapid talent replacement: Having the capability to rapidly figure out positions that are vacant due to sudden (or unavoidable) employee turnover so that production or services don’t miss a beat.
  • A smooth business cycle: You can smooth out the cycles by developing processes that ramp up and down your talent inventory and work effectively during both good times and lean times.
  • Lower turnover rates: Employees are continually groomed for new opportunities that fit their career interests and capabilities. They transition easily and rapidly to them.
  • Lower labor costs: Labor costs are rapidly reduced as the right people are hired, at the right time, in the right place, and are managed correctly, all without the need for large-scale layoffs.
  • Fewer future layoffs: Managing headcount ensures that the company won’t have a surplus of talent.
  • Increased internal opportunities: Efficient workforce planning will free up HR professionals so that they can take advantage of talent-sourcing opportunities from a competitor as a way to find exceptional talent during tough economic times.

The primary reason for doing strategic workforce planning is economics. If done well, workforce planning will increase productivity, cut labor costs, and dramatically cut time-to-market because you’ll have the right number of people, with the right skills, in the right places, at the right time.

Workforce planning works because it forces everyone to begin looking toward the future, and prevents surprises. It requires managers to plan ahead and consider all eventualities.

While it is one of the most important issues that HR leaders and operations directors are talking about today, many have not gone beyond the talking stage as the task of actually implementing workforce planning is often seen as a daunting one. Don’t worry, we are here to break it down for you here so it’s not so intimidating.

 

Infographic of Workforce.com's four core components of workforce planning

Core components of workforce planning

While there is no standard “one size fits all” structure for the workforce planning process, below are some key elements of most plans, including some supplementary components that can and will work better for some companies than others.

The most common parts of a workforce planning model are:

  • Workforce Analysis: Analysis of the company’s current supply of labor and its needs, as well as a forecast of future workforce needs and requirements
  • Staffing Gap Analysis: Identification of gaps between the current workforce supply and demand, as well as gaps in the company’s present ability to anticipate future changes in workforce needs.
  • Solution Deployment: Implementing and executing a plan to address staffing gaps
  • Performance Assessment: Monitoring success metrics to ensure the workforce plan is meeting business needs

Being prepared is better than being surprised

If a company is more efficient, it can avoid the need for layoffs or panic hiring. By planning ahead, HR can provide managers with the right number of people, with the right skills, in the right place, and at the right time. Workforce planning might be more accurately called talent planning because it integrates the forecasting elements of each of the HR functions that relate to talent management–recruiting, retention, redeployment, and leadership and employee development.

Businesspeople who just wait and then attempt to react to current events will not thrive for very long. The new standard is to provide managers with warnings and action plans to combat full-blown problems before they become more than a blip on their radar.

The human resource management world is no different.

The rate of change in the talent market is dramatic. We now know how important talent is to the success of a business. It’s time to make the talent pipeline more efficient.

Many of the other overhead functions–like procurement, manufacturing, and even the mailroom–have developed effective “pipelines.” If human resources cannot develop effective pipelines, then the alternative option is to have its entire function outsourced to an external vendor.

HR should be aware of the business cycle

HR professionals often face the painful boom-and-bust cycle of budget cuts, rapid growth, and more budget cuts. What they want is stability. Unfortunately, the way that some HR people act or fail to act compounds the pain of the boom or bust phases.

Everyone knows that the business cycle has ups and downs. There are phases of growth and phases of recession; each seems to happen every few years. The surprising thing is that HR, rather than preparing customized approaches for the different phases of the business cycle, tends to do things the same way no matter what the economic climate, operating independently of the business cycle.

The main reason that HR suffers through these phases is that it has no business strategy or plan to participate in its company’s business cycle. Rather than seeing the big picture and setting a strategic direction, HR departments sometimes tend to coddiwomple with temporary programs that only address crises in the moment.

HR should have two distinct reasons for planning ahead. The first reason is to lessen the impact of the boom-and-bust cycle on the management and operation of the HR department itself. The second–and perhaps more important–reason for planning ahead is that HR manages the new hire pipeline for the organization. It’s crucial to maintain both that pipeline and the talent inventory at the right levels.

This is where workforce planning strategy comes in.

A closer look at workforce planning

To better prepare a company to handle current and future staffing needs, human resources should generally follow the four-step workforce planning process listed earlier in this article. Here is a closer look at what each of those steps entails:

1. Workforce Analysis

This first step in workforce planning involves assessing both the current state of your company’s workforce as well as its ability to address future changes in staffing needs. Additionally, it is also important here to analyze the current external labor market, company revenues, expenses, and growth opportunities.

There are three primary areas of the Workforce Analysis:

  • Current labor supply & demand: checking the supply of labor the company currently has available, as well as the level of labor it currently demands.
  • Forecast of future workforce needs: taking initiative on discovering what external and internal variables could impact workforce needs, and understanding where the company will need to be agile in the future to ensure staffing levels are always correct
  • Skills and interest inventory: Identifying current and required job and competency needs as well employee skill sets.

From the workforce analysis, you should uncover a deeper understanding of your company’s current staffing situation, including its strengths, shortcomings, opportunities, and threats.

2. Staffing Gap Analysis

In this step, you take the information gathered from the workforce analysis and use it to pinpoint the talent gap between the company’s overall staffing needs and the identifiable supply of labor.

There are three parts to the staffing gap analysis:

  • Surplus/shortage determination: Reviewing the current supply and demand of labor, as well as current and future workforce needs, and determining the presence of either a surplus or shortage of labor.
  • Potential retirements: Figuring out the demographic of who is eligible, when they are eligible, who will replace them, and what alternative work arrangements are available that could prevent vacancy issues stemming from retirements.
  • Talent action plan: Outline what specific actions all (HR or otherwise) managers will have to take in terms of talent management. The action plan designates responsibility and outlines the specific steps that should be taken in order to fill the talent pipeline, address skill gaps, and maintain the talent inventory at the levels required for the firm’s projected growth rate.Each action plan has a set of goals, an individual who is responsible for making sure the plan objectives are met, a budget, a timetable, and a measurable result.

3. Solution Deployment

This is where everything comes together. Once the workforce analysis is complete, gaps are determined, and a talent action plan is made, a solution is determined and then executed.

Deploying a workforce plan is not a once-and-done situation. It is an ongoing process built on agility and continuous improvement. Once current staffing gaps are filled and the overall workforce is strengthened, the deployment continues in the form of adjusting and adapting to changes in future needs.

Here are some of the main areas of solution deployment:

  • Succession planning: Designating the progression plan for key positions.
  • Leadership development: Designating high-potential employees; coaching; mentoring; rotating people into different projects.
  • Talent recruiting: Estimating headcount, positions, location, timing, and more for new employees.
  • Talent retention: Forecasting turnover rates; identifying current employees who are at risk and how to keep them.
  • Redeployment: Deciding who is eligible for redeployment, and from where to where.
  • Contingent workforce: Designating the percentage of employees who will be contingent, and in what positions
  • Career path: Career counseling for employees to help them move up.
  • Backfills: Designating key-position backups.
  • Internal placement: Developing job-posting systems for internal employees to get a leg up on new openings.
  • Outsourcing: Determining business functions that would be better accomplished by labor outside of the organization
  • Contractors and consultants: Determining what new business requirements would be best met by specialized workers or consultants

4. Performance Assessment

Finally, the last step of a workforce plan is performance assessment. Again, this is an ongoing process, alongside solution deployment, in which select members of your organization monitor predetermined workforce success metrics to make sure strategic objectives are being met. These metrics should speak to if the workforce plan is actually benefiting the organization at all, and should indicate if the plan was flawed to begin with or if it is not being executed properly.

The future of workforce planning

Putting together an abstract workforce plan is one thing. Executing it across your entire workforce is another. Managers need the right tools and systems in place to monitor staffing levels, productivity, labor costs, and more.

While workforce planning has been around for a long time and has gone through many changes and multiple iterations, one thing is for certain: it is getting much easier.

Thanks to modern advances in workforce management software technology, workforce planning is becoming easier to visualize, deploy, and actively monitor.

Benefits of workforce management software

In order to execute effective workforce planning and achieve your business goals, HR leaders need a whole host of software solutions at their disposal. Chief among these is obviously HR software for talent and performance management. But other solutions are also required, including workforce management and labor forecasting software, both of which are extremely important to workforce planning.

Here are some of the ways workforce management and labor forecasting can streamline your workforce planning:

Everything on a single system

Nearly all the workforce planning data you need is housed in workforce management software. From time clock and scheduling data to employee records like pay rate and ob titles, everything is held in a single, cloud-based system optimized for easy access.

More visibility into labor costs

By combining scheduling and time tracking into a single system, workforce management software allows managers to leverage real-time data on labor costs. They can view costs per team, individual, week, or location to better understand where and how they are spending money on talent. Moreover, managers can view potential wage costs on schedules, and compare scheduled costs with actual costs on timesheets to pinpoint overspending.

Increased user self-service

Onboarding and retaining employees is critical to workforce planning. With workforce management software, employee self-service is maximized – users have access to a simple system to view schedules, request leave, pick up and swap shifts, clock in and out, and approve timesheets.

Easy insight into labor needs

The right labor forecasting software optimizes your workforce planning with AI and machine learning. It predicts demand and automatically matches labor ratios to that demand, making it easy to determine shortcomings in your supply of human capital. Clearly seeing where you lack the staff necessary to fulfill labor forecasts helps you hire more purposefully moving forward.

Comprehensive BI reporting

Managers can generate reports on historical wage costs, employee engagement, absenteeism, overtime, and more. These reports can be filtered by team, location, or job title, providing more clarity for managers when they are analyzing workforce trends.

Ensure labor compliance

Upon deploying a workforce plan, it is important to make sure your organization is complying with all necessary labor laws. It is particularly easy to misclassify contract workers, owe back pay, or violate various provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Avoid all these issues when deploying your workforce plan with labor compliance software that schedules and pays employees accurately with the help of an extensive Wage & Hour Compliance library.

Optimize your workforce planning with Workforce.com

As a best-in-class workforce management platform, workforce planning is what we do. To learn more about how to streamline your business objectives with market-leading scheduling, compliance, and time tracking software, contact us today or sign up for a free trial.

 

FAQs

  • What is workforce planning?
    • It is a proactive and systematic process that involves analyzing the current supply of talent in your workforce, identifying gaps in your labor supply, forecasting future staffing needs, and developing shift plans to close gaps and meet budgets to avoid potential shortages and surpluses of human capital.
  • Who does workforce planning?
    • It is a collaborative effort between managers in multiple departments with a range of specialties since organizational alignment is important. Typically, HR and operations are most heavily involved.
  • Why is workforce planning important?
    • It is important for preventing over and understaffing as well as for building agility into a company’s talent management, retirement, and succession planning processes.
  • What tool do I use for workforce planning?
  • How does workforce management software help with workforce planning?
    • Workforce management software helps managers execute and monitor the success of workforce planning. It allows businesses to schedule and track time accurately and compliantly. It also lets them view reports on labor costs, attendance, and engagement, which are all vital for keeping a business agile in its ability to forecast and react to changes in workforce needs.
  • Is workforce planning difficult?
    • No! Workforce planning generally involves four core steps and is continuously improved as businesses move forward. With the help of various software solutions, workforce planning is simple yet very rewarding.
  • How is workforce planning different from talent acquisition?
    • Talent acquisition is simply a small function of HR involving the identification and acquisition of workers for your company. Workforce planning is much broader, involving assessments of current talent supply, future talent supply needs, gaps in labor, and much more.

 

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How short-staffed resorts can optimize scheduling

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

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

Why has COVID led to a shortage of talent?

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

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

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

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

1. Use labor forecasting

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

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

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

2. Make schedules agile and adaptable

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

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

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

3. Increase employee engagement

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

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

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

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

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

4. Automate breaks

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

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

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

5. Cross-train employees

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

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

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

Proper WFM practices mitigate short-staffing pains

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

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How to prevent workforce management system outages: mitigation through redundancy

Summary

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

  • Businesses should build redundancy and backup plans into their systems

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

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

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

Okay, now take a deep breath.

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

Have a business continuity plan

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

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

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

Use best-of-breed software

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

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

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

Regularly export timesheets, schedules, and other relevant data

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

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

Ensure systems have strong IT security infrastructure

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

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

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

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

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

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Simple shift replacement: A home run for the Lake Elsinore Storm

Summary

  • Last-minute schedule changes are difficult to manage without the right technology

  • Modern workforce management solutions make shift replacements easy

  • Minor league baseball team the Lake Elsinore Storm use Workforce.com’s shift replacement tool constantly

Uh oh, looks like Last Minute Linus can’t make it to his prep cook shift tonight. To make matters worse, it is a Friday – the busiest night of the week. Someone needs to cover his shift. So begins the feverish process of cold calling and texting dozens of employees to find a shift replacement. Sounds familiar, right?

If so, that’s a problem. There is simply no reason to overcomplicate replacing employee shifts. However, many in the hospitality industry are doing just this.

Businesses struggling with schedule changes

According to a study from earlier this year, 69% of schedules are made on paper or word processors. Because of this, navigating scheduling logistics is taking far too long. About 29% of employers say approving schedule changes and shift swaps takes the most time in the scheduling process. When dealing with shift replacements, 75% of managers claim to only call, text, or email employees to communicate. 

Combing through your phone and email contact lists like this takes valuable time, as does manually updating schedules with every last-minute change. 

Fortunately, there is an easier way to orchestrate all of this. 

Easy shift swapping

Workforce.com facilitates easy shift replacements all in one place for every employee and manager to see. No more texting seven different people to figure out who can cover who. Right from their phone, an employee can signal a need for a shift swap; this sends a notification to all their team members. These team members can then view information about the available shift and decide for themselves if they will claim it or not. Once a swap happens, all a manager needs to do is review and approve it with one click. Boom. It’s that easy.

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

Utilizing efficient shift replacement technology benefits both employers and employees. According to a whitepaper published by Workforce.com, shift replacement tools empower managers to reduce overtime and lower under/overstaffing. For employees, the technology provides a better work/life balance as well as the ability to build camaraderie through more effective communication.

Time savings in Minor League Baseball

Many businesses know firsthand the positive impact shift replacement software has on their scheduling efficiency. Recently, we reached out to the Lake Elsinore Storm, a minor league baseball affiliate of the San Diego Padres, to hear about their experience using Workforce.com. 


“One of my favorite features is the shift replacement feature where I can see who’s not available for a shift and who is available to pick it up and don’t have to worry about reaching out to people,” says Katie, an HR generalist for the team. The Storm has a heavy emphasis on hospitality, employing a staff of over for a variety of roles encompassing restaurant service, ticketing, concessions, and groundskeeping. 

Before implementing the software, Katie found that personally overseeing shift replacements was eating up a lot of her time. This has since changed with the switch to Workforce.com: “I don’t have to worry about reaching out to people last minute, getting on the phone, sending emails. I know that it just shows up on someone’s phone and they can pick it up.”

Right there lies the real beauty of Workforce.com’s shift replacement feature; it empowers employees with the ability to take part in the scheduling process. Through this empowerment, unnecessary work is offloaded from the manager directly to the employee, saving time and money while maximizing convenience.

For Lake Elsinore Storm, the time savings brought about by key features such as shift replacement were well recognized across upper management. “It’s almost like we have another assistant or another employee working with us that is really intelligent and smart and knows what it’s doing … it’s really a time-saver,” states Christine Kavic, the Storm’s CFO.

The Storm have many different employee teams set up on Workforce.com, each serving different areas of hospitality. From the taproom staff to stadium maintenance crew, all teams work in unison to make game days go smoothly. Because of this variety, Lake Elsinore Storm management understands more than most what it takes to efficiently schedule a workforce in the hospitality industry. A result of this is high customer satisfaction through exceptional service to the public – something the team prioritizes. 

“Without Workforce.com, we could not do what we do best, and that is entertain the community,” says Kavic. 

Experience it for yourself

Replacing shifts shouldn’t be a hassle; in fact, it should be the easiest part of scheduling. Since Workforce.com’s shift replacement tool has been a big hit (sorry, I had to do it) in baseball stadium management, maybe it’s time you try it for free to see how it works. You won’t believe how simple it is.

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How to reduce labor costs and attract quality staff in a post-Covid market

The challenge of attracting quality staff while trying to reduce labor costs is one that has taken on fresh urgency in the post-Covid labor market. This is particularly true where hourly shift work is concerned, as staff question their priorities after a year in lockdown.

Thankfully, there are several ways to find – and retain – good workers while still controlling your labor costs. It just requires a little recalibration of how you think about incentives and staff management.

Use flexible working rather than salary incentives

One myth that we can dispel quickly is that the only way to attract quality staff is by offering larger salaries. That’s been the assumed wisdom for decades but is now an outdated view of what people want from a job.

Increasingly workers are saying that flexible working hours are now their priority, with multiple studies showing that the ability to fit work around other areas of their life is a key consideration when job hunting. One pre-pandemic study found that if given the option of a job with flexible hours and one without, 80% of workers would choose the job with flexible hours. The same study found that 30% considered flexible working more attractive than extra vacation days or a prestigious job title.

Offering flexible hours not makes your company more attractive to workers, but it makes staff more likely to stay with you for the long term. A survey for FlexJobs found that 80% of workers would be more loyal to their current job if it gave them more flexibility.

The reason for this is that the way we perceive value in work has changed. “If you’re a parent and you have three kids to pick up from school every day at 3:30, then flexible working actually adds a lot of value to you”, explains Josh Cameron, Workforce’s Chief Strategy Officer. “If you can pick or swap out of the shifts, that’s more important to you than getting an extra $2 an hour, because you have to pay someone to pick up and look after your kids. The extra dollars are not adding value.”

Systems such as shift bidding are an excellent way to incorporate flexibility into a business, help reduce labor costs by not adding additional expense on your payroll, and are easily managed using staff management software such as Workforce.com.

You don’t need to cut wages to reduce labor costs

It’s a mistake to think that the only way to reduce labor costs is to cut staff or lower wages. One of the best ways to save money is by getting more value for what you already spend, and one of the most common ways that businesses fail to do this is by losing track of productivity against wages.

You can save money in real terms by ensuring that hours worked and hours scheduled match up, cross-referencing with hourly income using workforce analytics to check you are getting the productivity you’re paying for. It may sound basic, but you’d be surprised how many companies still have their data spread across multiple files or systems and simply assume the numbers match at the end of each day.

“Most people never check the schedule matches what people actually work,” says Josh Cameron. “They might have a really good shift plan, and that’s in one system, but then the attendance data is in another system, and people are clocking in and clocking out of that. And the manager is basically just blindly ticking things because that’s what was clocked. If they even wanted to cross-check that, it would be a big exercise. People don’t do it. What’s much better is to have the schedule and the attendance in one system, so you can tick these things off throughout the day or at the end of the shift and if there are differences, you can go see why that happens.”

Listen to feedback to stop staff churn

Once you’ve attracted good workers with flexible hours and made sure you’re getting full value for those hours worked, it’s important to remember that you can help to reduce labor costs by keeping those staff in your business. Replacing employees costs money in advertising the vacant roles, onboarding and training, and lost productivity as working routines are disrupted. Gallup found in 2019 that US businesses lose a trillion dollars every year simply from the cost of replacing staff.

How do you stop staff from leaving? Listen to what’s bugging them about their job, and fix problems wherever possible. The idea of employers giving performance feedback to employees is widely accepted, but it’s also important for employees to be able to give feedback on the company.

“If you’re asking why people quit, by allowing people a way of giving feedback on their shifts, they feel ‘Hey, I have a way of being heard in this job, I actually am important,’” says Josh Cameron. “Managers can look at that feedback and analyze it and be like, ‘This is what’s causing problems. We’ve got these structural things that make it hard to work in this shift and that’s making it hard for people.’”

This is why Workforce.com allows staff to give feedback not just in general, but on the specific shifts they work. This allows managers to identify the pain points that cause staff to leave, and make changes. It may be something as common as a particular manager being hard to work with. It may be that a certain location gets uncomfortably hot on summer afternoons. Whether the answer means shuffling the staff roster, or something as easy as investing in an aircon unit, you’re empowered to spot the leaks in your staffing and plug them before they cost you any more revenue.

Think beyond the hiring process

There will always be sledgehammer approaches to reducing labor costs, but the current labor market conditions where potential employees are empowered to say “no” to jobs that don’t work for them, require a more nuanced approach. Companies save money when they hire the right people and get the best out of those people, and that means making sure they want to stay with you for the long term. From offering more flexible working arrangements to identifying the problems that drive staff away, Workforce.com can help at every stage.

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How to Calculate Time Cards Manually: Foolproof Step-by-Step Instructions

Calculating your employees’ time cards accurately is crucial to your business. Not only does it ensure you’re paying your employees the right amount, but it also helps you make sure you’re not scheduling anyone for too many or too few hours, and it allows you to understand what staffing levels your business needs to function at its best.

New small business owners may find that calculating time cards manually works well for them initially, especially if they have a small number of hourly employees and few work hours to track. Even more established businesses that are using Excel spreadsheets, timesheet calculators, or other time tracking methods for calculating hours should know how the math works. That way, even with a computer, you’ll be able to spot and correct any inevitable errors.

Once you understand how to do manual time card calculations, it’s also important to know what problems you may face with that method, such as how much time it takes and how easy it can be for employees to commit time theft. Then we’ll show you how time and attendance software can address those issues and make the entire process a breeze.

How to do the math for time cards by hand

Manually tracking employee hours by hand is an old method, but it works. Here’s how to do it.

Step 1

Convert an employee’s start and end hours for the day, as well as any unpaid break time, to 24-hour time, also known as military time.

For example, your employee began working at 9:22 a.m., took a lunch break from 12:30-1:15 p.m., and ended their day at 5:08 p.m. In a 24-hour time span, the hours past 12 p.m. must be converted, so 1:15 p.m. becomes 13:15, and 5:08 p.m. becomes 17:08.

Step 2

Convert the minutes into decimal format—instead of minutes out of 60, make them percentages of 100. To do this, you can either use a chart or simply divide the minutes by 60.

In our example, this means your employee’s clock-in and clock-out times become 09.37 and 12.50 for the first half of their shift and 13.25 and 17.13 for the second half of their shift.

Step 3

Subtract the employee’s shift start times from the end times.

12.50 – 09.37 = 03.13 and 17.13 – 13.25 = 03.88

Step 4

Add the working hours from step three together to get the total for the day.

03.13 + 03.88 = 07.01

So your employee worked a little over seven hours total.

Step 5

Repeat these steps for each day worked within the pay period, and add all the days together for the total hours the employee worked within the workweek. Multiply the total by their hourly rate to determine their gross pay before deductions.

Bonus Step

If an employee works overtime and is paid an overtime rate, you’ll want to calculate and note it separately to make sure they receive the correct overtime pay.

 

 

The issues with calculating time cards manually

While doing the math by hand works when calculating employee hours, there are also plenty of reasons to be wary of it, from the amount of time it takes to the ways it makes your business vulnerable to theft.

Storing physical time cards and keeping them secure

Calculating manual time cards requires either the manager or employees to keep accurate physical time cards, which can be damaged or destroyed. The time cards and the documents you use to calculate them must be stored securely, taking up office or storage space. Accessing these documents for auditing or other reasons can be difficult and time-consuming, particularly if the records aren’t kept in an organized manner.

Spending time doing calculations and Chasing information

You may not mind having to take the time to calculate time cards manually, but if you have more than a few employees, it’s going to take a while to do the calculations and complete your payroll duties.

If employee time cards are handwritten or if your time clock runs out of ink, there may be times recorded that are illegible, which means you need to spend time contacting employees or managers to figure out what the times are supposed to be. Correcting mistakes also takes extra time since you have to track down the physical timesheets and redo the math.

Risking the possibility of employee time theft

Time theft is easy for employees to commit when you use paper time cards or calculate time by hand, and it’s difficult for employers to track. Employees can commit time theft in a number of ways, such as by saying they worked more regular hours than they actually did, by clocking in and then not starting work for 20 minutes, or by having a friend at work clock them in when they aren’t there, so people don’t know they’re late.

This could also happen unintentionally. If an employee forgets their clock-in or clock-out times, you have to rely on their memory or on their manager or co-workers remembering the number of hours the employee worked, which could easily lead to inaccuracies that result in employees being overpaid or underpaid.

Leaving the door open for potential fraud

When you calculate your employees’ time cards manually, there’s more wiggle room for employers to commit fraud. This can happen accidentally, for example, if an employer loses track of the number of hours an employee worked or intentionally if a manager is skimming time off employees’ hours to stay in budget. Either way, shorting employees on their hours worked or overtime pay is wrong, and for companies, it can result in overtime rule violations, penalties, and fines.

Difficulty understanding the big picture

A general lack of oversight and control is another negative. When you need to check all your employees’ hours by hand, it’s hard to know who’s about to hit the max number of hours they can work, if you’re staying within your budget for staffing costs, or what the optimal staffing levels are. These are things you want to be able to know with a quick look.

How time and attendance software can solve the issues

By using a digital time and attendance solution, you can improve your business by ensuring employee time cards are accurate, secure, and easy.

electronically track and store time card information

With Workforce.com’s time and attendance software, there are no physical time cards or recordkeeping to track. Everything is done through the app, making accessing time card records simple. Because all the information is kept in a secure online system, you don’t have to worry about maintaining organized files in an office or fear they’ll get damaged.

Automate calculations and Clock-in/Clock-Out notifications

When your employees clock in with Workforce.com, they do so either on an app on their mobile device or on a tablet kept at their workplace. Notifications can prompt them when it’s time to clock in or clock out, and their hours are calculated automatically, so you never have to concern yourself with illegible handwritten time cards, employees forgetting to clock in or out, or having to calculate time cards by hand.

Protect against employee time theft and fraud

Workforce.com’s software’s electronic photo verification controls make it next to impossible for employees to have their co-workers punch in for them, and system controls can prevent employees from clocking in early themselves, reducing the possibility of employee time theft. Labor compliance reporting helps make sure employers are following labor laws, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act, to prevent fraud and protect your business.

The flexibility of Workforce.com’s software and mobile app helps you track your employees’ time easily from wherever you—or they—are. If your employees aren’t tied to a retail location, you can use GPS to track their location remotely, see if they’re on the job or somewhere they aren’t supposed to be, and set restrictions for clocking in or out on the job site.

Easy oversight from a computer or mobile device

With these tools, you can have detailed oversight of your employees’ digital time cards, whether you’re at your desk or on the move. Workforce.com’s platform allows you to easily see who’s nearing their maximum working hours for the week, who is nearing overtime hours, easily swap employee shifts should the need arise, and know at a glance what staffing levels are optimal.

Make tracking and calculating employee time cards easy

Time and attendance software takes the headache out of calculating time cards for your employees, resulting in more accurate payroll spending while making employee scheduling easier. Workforce.com has automatic systems in place to help you streamline your processes, save time, and protect your bottom line. Book your demo today.

Workforce.com is a leader in Employee Scheduling on G2

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Work Schedule Planning [Guide + Examples]

Predict staffing requirements

Planning work schedules for employees can be a time-consuming process. Planning schedules for hourly workers can be even more frustrating, like trying to solve a never-ending jigsaw puzzle in which the pieces are constantly changing. It doesn’t have to be so bad. If hourly schedules are the bane of your life, follow these suggestions to make them less of a chore.

What to consider before work schedule planning

As with any complex process, don’t just jump in and start filling in shifts. The more time and energy you devote to preparation, the smoother the end process becomes.

Monitor and map your demand

You’d be shocked how many businesses fail to take into account the basic need to track customer demand when work schedule planning for your hourly employees. Step back and take stock of how your business works on a day-to-day, week-by-week, and month-by-month basis, and let that guide your planning. What are your busiest and quietest periods? Are you in a sector where demand is seasonal? These aren’t questions to be asked once, but something you should query regularly. Patterns change, and it’s all too easy to find yourself overstaffed or understaffed because you didn’t notice in time.

Use past performance to predict your staffing needs

There are several ways you can predict your future staffing requirements based on past performance.

  • Staffing Ratio: Looking at your typical staffing ratio can offer a rough guide to working out how many new hires are needed and in which areas. For example, if you generally have 10 workers to every manager, then deviations can tell you if you need more managers, less staff, or some other variation.
  • Statistical Regression: For businesses where income is closely tied to staffing, such as call centers, using a statistical regression model allows you to track when your most profitable periods were and see what the staff levels were for those periods, helping you find the most efficient size for your workforce.
  • The Delphi Method: For larger companies, this approach involves convening a panel of senior managers and external consultants to pool their insights and offer a roadmap for future staffing needs.

If all of this sounds intimidating, or if you have a new or small business where such data is limited, don’t worry. There are workforce management tools that can automatically provide this analysis for you.

Prepare a clear and concise paid time off policy

You can head off many work schedule planning issues early on by making sure your paid time off (PTO) policy is robust, clear, and up to date. Employees who know what time they are entitled to are empowered to make meaningful decisions about their schedule.

Your PTO policy should include details on the following:

    • The types of time off covered: Sick leave, vacations, personal/bereavement days, national holidays.
    • How PTO is accrued based on hours worked and how many days workers are eligible for.
    • How PTO can be used. For example, is it taken in units of an hour or less, or as full or half days?
    • How much notice is needed to book time off and are there any blackout periods during which time off cannot be taken, such as key retail periods.

The exact contents of a PTO policy will vary from one business to another. But as a rule of thumb, the Society for Human Resource Management says that most current policies offer between 15 and 20 days of PTO per year, plus any company-observed holidays.

Don’t assume that because you implement such a policy that workers will use it. A 2018 study for the Annual Review of Sociology revealed that many workers were afraid of repercussions to their job if they took full advantage of flexible working hours. It’s not enough to have more equitable scheduling; you have to reassure your employees that they should take advantage of it.

Your work schedule planning checklist

Once you have done your top-level preparation, you’re ready to start work schedule planning for your hourly workers. Use this checklist to make sure you don’t overlook anything important.

Identify your needs. You’ve already laid the groundwork for this in the preparation process above. It’s the basic question at the heart of all workplace schedules: How many people do you need where and when? Don’t be tempted to guess. The Workforce Business Intelligence Board’s 2020 HR State of the Industry Survey found that only 21.1 percent of organizations have used workforce analytics.

Choose the right people. Employees aren’t generic widgets used to plug gaps. The more you know about your employees’ strengths and experience, the greater your ability to not just drop them into a schedule but plan well-balanced shifts that run smoothly.

Cross-reference your resources. Scheduling isn’t just about people; it’s about making sure they have what they need when they need it. For example, when are deliveries made? Who signs them in? Who moves the stock and how? Miss this step and your schedule falls apart when staff members have to leave one task to deal with another.

Check against safety regulations. Don’t assume this is only an issue for construction workers and similar manual jobs. Even a low-risk workplace should have trained first aid personnel on each shift. Check the OSHA guidelines to see how many you need.

Fill out the shifts. An obvious step, but one that still requires strategic thought. You can take a top-down approach in which the manager sets the schedule, or a bottom-up process in which employees can request open shifts. Workers who have more control over their working life are happier and more loyal. So, if your business model allows it, a hybrid of the two will likely yield best results. Let Workforce’s analytics guide you. Working in the dark on staffing management makes for bad business.

Be prepared. No-shows and last-minute changes will happen. It’s frustrating, but you can minimize disruption by keeping a standby list of dependable part-time workers or employees looking for overtime to deal with these problems. Always do so in consultation and with prior agreement with these workers—nobody wants to have their evening plans ruined by a demand to come into work, and it may even be illegal to do so.

Evaluate, evaluate, evaluate. Whenever the natural break in your shift cycle falls, audit the performance of your scheduling over that period. Are there still crunch points with not enough staff or regular periods of over-staffing? Scheduling is not the sort of job that is ever finished. It will always be in flux to some degree, so use a tool like Workforce to automatically collate the data you need to make informed choices.

Communicate. Encourage an open dialogue with your hourly workers. Is the system working for them as well? There may be mutually beneficial changes that are invisible from a management perspective. You don’t have to cede control of how the business is run, but giving employees more say in their working hours is a great way to cut down on the churn of shift staff.

Follow these steps and you’ll find that work schedule planning, even for hourly workers, is a much more manageable task.

Why legal compliance is key to successful work schedule planning

Smart scheduling is important for more than just your immediate business needs. There are swathes of legislation regarding how and when people work. The good news is that following these laws should mean staff stay with you longer and are more productive when they’re on the clock.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) pertains to hourly workers, which means that pay for hours worked must add up to the minimum wage for your company to be legally compliant. Always check your local state laws in this area, as currently 29 states have a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage.

Non-compliance naturally comes with stiff penalties, so understanding and following the law is vital. Wading through the details can be hard, and details can be missed, so using employee scheduling software that automatically checks your schedules against national and local labor laws will give you peace of mind.

There’s one more thing you will need to be aware of when work schedule planning for hourly workers in sectors like retail and hospitality. You may see it referred to as predictive scheduling or “fair work week.” But over the past six years, multiple cities and states have enacted legislation aimed at reducing exploitation of people with practices such as “clopening.”

“Clopening” laws give your employees breathing room

When an employee is the last to close up at night and is also the first on shift the following day to open up, that’s clopening. It leads to stress, burnout, and high staff turnover. Under “fair work week” laws, businesses must adhere to minimum periods between shifts. In Philadelphia, for example, you must allow at least nine hours between shifts. But in Seattle, it is 10 hours, and in New York, the limit is 11 hours.

Predictive scheduling gives employees visibility on their upcoming workload

These laws also make it a legal requirement to use predictive scheduling, which means setting shifts for hourly employees at least two weeks in advance so that workers can better plan childcare and other quality of life essentials. So far, the states and cities that have enacted laws are San Francisco, Emeryville, and San Jose in California; Oregon; Seattle; Philadelphia; New York City; Chicago; and the District of Columbia. More predictive scheduling legislation will follow, so make sure you are up to speed on the rules specific to your location, as there are regional variations.

Slip up on a small detail, and you could face a big penalty. Seattle, for instance, has a $500 minimum penalty applicable on a per-employee and per-violation basis. Make a mistake that impacts 10 employees, and you’re looking at a five-figure fine. That’s why Workforce provides a labor compliance solution with up-to-date regional templates for workplace legislation, automatically checking that your schedules comply with the latest rules wherever you are.

When it comes to work schedule planning, expect the unexpected

Hourly work schedules may seem chaotic and prone to sudden change, but staffing management doesn’t need to be a headache. By accepting things will change and having a firm but flexible framework for the planning process, you can head off problems before they arise. Workforce can automate the most time-intensive parts of the process and make sure you follow the law in the process. The benefits to your business of a coherent and reliable scheduling system are higher productivity, greater worker retention, and better morale. And, of course, less stress for you.

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Wage and hour violations during staff gatherings lead to substantial Labor Department fines

wage and hour law compliance, wages

Employee meetings are typically meant to discuss policies, reinforce training and build organizational transparency.

Two companies discovered the hard way that if not properly monitored, such gatherings can violate wage and hour and overtime laws, leading to the Fair Labor Standards Act violations and steep financial penalties.

Investigations by the Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division determined that Keystone Adolescent Center Inc. owed workers $44,858 in back wages for time spent in meetings, while Maggiano’s Little Italy restaurant in Philadelphia owed 82 employees $116,308 in back wages for minimum wage and overtime violations stemming from pre-shift meetings.

According to investigators, supervisors and behavior specialists gathered every two weeks at Keystone Adolescent Center’s five Greenville, Pennsylvania, facilities where they discussed policy changes, completed required training and reviewed safety procedures to help the at-risk youth they serve.

Also read: Labor Department reopens the floodgate to liquidated damages in wage and hour investigations

Keystone also used the meetings to distribute paychecks, yet failed to pay 80 workers who attended these meetings and required training outside of their regular shifts for the time they spent at them. The investigation determined that — by excluding this work time from employees’ pay — Keystone Adolescent violated the FLSA, leading to the recovery of back wages for the workers.

Wage and hour violations during staff meetings

According to an April 5 Labor Department press statement, investigators found that Keystone paid employees for time spent at staff meetings and required training only if those meetings and training occurred during their scheduled shifts. 

The employer failed to pay workers attending outside of their normal work hours for time they spent in those meetings and required training. Failing to record and pay for this time violated FLSA overtime and recordkeeping requirements, according to the statement.

“Employers must pay employees all the wages they legally earn, which includes paying them for any hours they work outside of their scheduled shifts,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director John DuMont in Pittsburgh.

Complying with federal, state laws

Aimee Delaney, a labor and employment law expert at law firm Hinshaw & Culbertson in Chicago, said that any time an employer requires a non-exempt employee’s attendance at a meeting, training or other mandatory event, the employer needs to realize that this time is considered hours worked and is compensable under state and federal law. This also means that if the time spent at the mandatory meeting puts the employee over 40 hours for the week, the employee is entitled to overtime for any time over 40 hours.

Aimee Delaney, wage and hour violation
Attorney Aimee Delaney, Hinshaw & Culbertson

The employer also needs to understand that state law may require overtime at different thresholds.

“One easy question an employer can ask itself when trying to determine if the time is compensable is whether the meeting or other event was mandatory, as that is usually a sign that the time must be paid,” Delaney said.

Compensation for pre-shift meetings

Oftentimes restaurant managers hold pre-shift meetings to motivate their employees, reinforce training or update the day’s menu. It is time for which employers typically should also be paying their workers, which is the lesson Maggiano’s Little Italy restaurant learned the hard way after a Labor Department investigation.

Investigators found minimum wage and overtime violations of the FLSA. In addition to the $116,308 in back wages, the Wage and Hour Division assessed a civil money penalty of $68,060 as investigators deemed the violations as willful, according to an April 12 Labor Department press statement.

The division determined that by failing to pay workers for time they spent attending pre-shift meetings, the restaurant failed to pay the required federal minimum wage. Maggiano’s Little Italy required dining room servers to attend 15- to 30-minute meetings before the start of their scheduled shifts. When employees worked more than 40 hours in a workweek, this unpaid time triggered overtime violations, according to the Labor Department.

“Restaurant workers are often among the nation’s lowest paid, and most vulnerable, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic,” said Wage and Hour District Director James Cain in Philadelphia. “When employers fail to account for all hours employees work, they deprive workers of their hard-earned wages. Other employers should use the outcome of this investigation as an opportunity to review their own pay practices, and ensure they comply with the law.”

Delaney noted that the Labor Department has a number of resources that explain the law and regulations on this topic specifically and there are specific rules on when activities by a non-exempt employee outside of work hours must be considered hours worked and/or compensable.

She also pointed out that vigorous enforcement of wage and hour and overtime laws is nothing new.

“While there may be a number of areas that employers can expect stricter compliance enforcement on with the new administration, this is a fairly settled area of the law and violations of this nature have been and will continue to be enforced regardless of a change in administration at the top,” she said.

Make wage and hour compliance headaches a thing of the past with Workforce.com’s industry-leading time and attendance software. Book your demo today.

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Top 5 workforce management tech trends in 2021

Organizations were forced to rethink operations in 2020 and shift their strategies overnight, prompting new investments in workforce management technology. So, what’s to come in 2021? 

We’ve compiled a list of the top 5 and specific workforce.com technology features we predict will be key trends this year. These include COVID recovery, labor compliance, automated scheduling, advanced workforce analytics and increased cloud and mobility functionality. 

Labor compliance and minimum wage changes

The Biden administration is pushing to raise the federal hourly minimum wage to $15 by 2025. While legislation has yet to be passed, organizations will be preparing for minimum wage changes and complying correctly. Companies that fail to comply are at risk of facing stiff financial penalties and negative public attention.

Webinar: What the Biden administration means for the minimum wage laws

Staying abreast of these changes will be crucial, and organizations will be looking to have an automated system in place that will make the transition easier. Organizations will require solutions that can simplify and automate labor law compliance. They will need a proactive platform that accounts for all applicable federal, state and local labor regulations from employee scheduling to payroll processing.

Workforce.com continues to invest in our fully automated and user customizable compliance engine, pioneered in Australia to manage the world’s most complicated and expensive wage laws and costs. Instead of manually updating or having to calculate different wages for schedules, overtime and payroll, organizations will be able to have changes automatically forecasted and updated. We predict labor compliance to continue to become increasingly complicated due to political, regional and union influence.

Higher wages will also mean increased labor cost and a need for companies to be smarter around how they schedule, track and spend on wages. Workforce management features that can boost employee productivity while providing wage oversight for owners and front-line teams to proactively manage will be key.

A way to address this will be the Workforce.com Live Wage Tracker, which provides a real-time view of staff count, exact costs and where there may be overspending per shift factored for compliance. It equips frontline managers to make decisions quickly and adjust staffing levels accordingly throughout the day. With this, businesses can be more efficient in controlling their labor costs and optimizing real-time operations.

live wage tracker

Also read: The rundown on wage law compliance: What organizations should know

COVID-19 recovery and employee well-being

As the world recovers from COVID-19 and shift work industries return to normal, it will remain paramount for organizations to have a workforce management platform in place for ensuring employee health, safety and feedback.

As workers return to their shifts in numbers, clear communication will be vital to responding to queries and staying agile as a team. Workforce.com innovations this year include the live 360-degree shift feedback and ratings feature so comments can be gathered from employees after each shift and proactively managed. Their responses enable managers to quickly address issues and apply necessary changes to future shifts. This tool promotes transparency and will provide an avenue for employees to speak up and be heard.

Watch: Introducing shift feedback and ratings

Tracking accurate time and attendance but minimizing contact with communal punch clocks will also continue to remain a priority for organizations. Instead of these older physical devices we predict an accelerated rise of next-gen mobile, app, GPS and tablet clocking in solutions that addresses these concerns.

For instance, with workforce.com GPS Clock ins instead of just one device for clocking in, staff will be able to use this feature to clock in on their own mobile device. Employees who are on the go can also use it to accurately log their start and end times, as well as their break and location while on shift. This results in a lower hardware and maintenance cost of ensuring accurate timesheets while reducing multiple touches to a communal device.

 GPS clock in

Workforce.com has also developed a completely free tool called Reopen to help businesses manage their capacity and social distancing requirements as they open. By allowing customers to make an appointment online, this will assist businesses in managing the number of people within their premises at a particular time. Organizations will be able to set opening hours, and customers can book in a time slot using their phone.

Auto employee scheduling

We predict further advancements in automated employee scheduling in 2021 with an introduction of advanced algorithms and automatic demand prediction, shift building and shift filling. The future of auto-scheduling looks to be creating ‘win-win’ shifts for employees and employers that drive maximum efficiency whilst optimizing for employee choice and flexibility

Demand prediction is considered the first key step in auto-scheduling. The more applicable information that can be collected about how busy it’s forecasted to be, the more accurate and confident the staff coverage. Workforce.com can currently integrate with any existing business system (I.e POS, MES, HMS, ERP’s etc) to capture this demand data and predict staffing requirements. This can then be adjusted for location unique factors such as events, weather, seasonal changes, trends and manager discretion.  

I.e., This Super Bowl will be 20 percent busier than last year. Next Tuesday will be as busy as the average of the last three Tuesdays. Next Friday will be 40 percent less busy because it will be raining.

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 where managers will be able to effortlessly fill shifts factoring multiple constraints, such as labor costs, qualifications, roles and labor laws. If an employee is unavailable, managers can offer that shift to other available staff. Workforce.com can then show managers how much a potential shift swap costs, enabling them to stay on budget. 

Being smart at shift building and shift filling against projected business demand will ultimately both make employees more satisfied and help control budget efficiency. Managers will be able to accomplish this with the right tools that give them the best potential technology and algorithms while also giving them the opportunity to put the employee in the process. Technology built on this win-win philosophy will be the future of automated employee scheduling with both employee and employer achieving desired outcomes.

These advancements in “one-click scheduling” are predicted to drastically save on manager administrative time, optimize labor cost and reduce over/under staffing.

Advanced workforce analytics and open APIs

Increased adoption of the workforce.com open API is expected to bring huge advancements in workforce analytics and promote internal innovation, integration and personalization. By leveraging the power of connectivity, enterprises can quickly eliminate the chaos of using multiple applications leading to rapid innovation and deeper insights into their workforces. 

Companies that can efficiently discover patterns, spot potential problems and optimize their workforce quickly will stay ahead in 2021. This is only possible when organizations have access to their data and have the mechanisms to generate reports that are clear, easy to understand and make the most sense for stakeholders such as HR, payroll, managers and employees. 

With Workforce.com’s advanced reporting suite and API, organizations will be able create custom reports and workflows for efficient analysis. Companies can choose to use customizable built-in reports or create their own by pulling information from any data point. 

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

Cloud, mobility and ease of use

2021 will continue the rise of native SaaS cloud applications over clunky enterprise workforce management software with organizations preferring improved frontline manager/employee mobility options and ease of use. Employees should love to use the tools provided or they generally won’t use them at all.

Simple and modern UI has long been missing from workforce management solutions with organizations needing to solve their problems and complete tasks in the easiest and quickest way possible. Workforce.com remains the leader in workforce management design as we continue to invest in simplicity and ease of use to increase employee engagement, usability and lower support and implementation issues.

It’s also becoming paramount for organizations to lead with a mobile first strategy for their workforce management. Workforce.com will continue to expand our employee mobile app that staff and managers can use to clock in, see timesheets, create schedules and communicate with the rest of the team. employee mobile app

Implementation expectations adhere to these ease of use and quick-to-learn principles with organizations expecting higher standards and tighter deadlines when rolling out or switching from a legacy solution. Workforce.com implementation is now easier and faster ensuring that users can start using the platform in no time reaping benefits of upgrading faster.

In 2021 we predict an increased migration to cloud computing services like workforce.com due to increased functionality, reliability, scalability, security, continual R&D and decrease in cost.

There are currently 300,000 users on the Workforce.com platform, with a 4.75 app star-rating average and 99 percent client retention. Find out why and try Workforce.com today.

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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. 

staff restaurant employees,

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. 

schedule template, restaurant employees

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.

scheduling software, restaurant employees

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. 

workforce software, restaurant employees

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. 

live wage tracker, workforce.com software, restaurant employees

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.