Category: Staffing Management

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How to avoid common mistakes when you create a shift schedule

A shift schedule clashes with paid leave

Creating a shift schedule can be nerve-wracking, especially for new managers. Conflicting advice is everywhere, bad habits endure, and outdated practices are easy to pick up without even realizing it. There are lots of things that can go wrong, and the consequences can be financially painful.

Don’t worry if you’ve just been handed this task for the first time or have been doing it for a while but lack confidence in your process. Simply being aware of the most common shift scheduling mistakes will ensure you’re on the right track and keep your business running smoothly, regardless of your experience.

Create a PTO policy

One of the biggest mistakes in shift scheduling is not having a clear company policy for booking paid time off. Having an ad hoc approach to time off creates confusion, as workers request time off with no clear idea of the criteria for approval, while managers are left to accept or reject requests with no formal structure to guide their decisions. The result is unsustainable on both sides and quickly leads to uncertainty and resentment.

If you think this should be taken for granted then consider that as recently as 2013, 28% of U.S. companies surveyed by Oxford Economics didn’t offer any paid time off. That percentage leapt to 41% in smaller companies with fewer than 51 employees. Creating a robust and reliable shift schedule with no time off policy is an uphill battle, if not impossible, as staff leave for jobs with more benefits, throwing your plans into disarray as they churn.

If your company doesn’t have a paid time off (PTO) policy, then your first priority should be to get one in place to avoid employee turnover and bring stability to your staffing. Never underestimate how important this is to workers — both currently in your employment and those searching for work. A Glassdoor survey found that for jobseekers, vacations and paid time off are now more important considerations than pay raises.

A graph showing the number of US businesses offering paid time off
An Oxford Economics survey found that smaller companies are least likely to have a paid time off policy, which causes problems with staff retention.

Know your staff’s availability

Another frequent mistake is not to consider a given employee’s availability and their obligations outside of work. Someone might have childcare obligations every Wednesday afternoon, for example, or attend a night school class on Monday evenings. Constantly asking staff to work shifts you should know they cannot attend is not only frustrating, but it also suggests that your company doesn’t care, which can lead to employee churn.

Understanding the personal circumstances of the employees you are scheduling doesn’t mean making constant allowances for them; however, by taking this information into account, you remove the frantic search for available staff by knowing who to turn to and when in the event of last-minute call outs and no shows.

There are two kinds of availability data you should have on hand for your workers.

  • Routine availability — what are the regular times and days they are and aren’t available? Acknowledging this in their schedule will make them feel seen and valued.
  • Flexible availability — how flexible can they be? Are there days or evenings when they might be available for extra shifts? Knowing this makes plugging those shift gaps much easier.

Not only does this attentiveness make shift scheduling less stressful, but it has long-term benefits for your company as well. It is far more efficient and productive to retain staff than to constantly have to onboard new hires. It’s that simple: companies that schedule shifts that fit around employees’ lives are able to keep them longer. In a 2019 survey 80% of workers said flexible working would make them more loyal to a company.

A shift schedule clashes with paid leave
Use an employee scheduling tool like Workforce.com (http://workforce.com/) to prevent accidental scheduling of employees taking time off.

Think two weeks ahead

If there’s one scheduling trick you absolutely have to master, it’s the ability to plan ahead with confidence. A common persistent mistake is to avoid making schedule plans on the assumption that they will change due to circumstances beyond your control as employees call in sick or don’t show up. The idea that waiting until the last minute to nail down a schedule means you are being flexible is a persistently damaging one. This is simply not true and is a recipe for chaotic planning that leaves managers like the famous animated dog in Wallace & Gromit, frantically laying track in front of a speeding train.

Planning ahead doesn’t just become important around national holidays or seasonal sales spikes. For one thing, predictive scheduling laws already mean it’s illegal not to give workers several weeks notice of their upcoming shifts in multiple cities and states across the U.S. Even if those laws don’t apply where you work, looking ahead and using your company data to predict your staffing needs in advance is simply a more sustainable and efficient way of working than being continually reactive with no clear view of what lies ahead beyond the next staff scheduling emergency.

“I would start with how busy do I think I’m going to be, what numbers can I get to make that a bit more objective than just my feeling for it?” notes Josh Cameron, Workforce’s chief strategy officer. “Can I get the number of meals we’re going to be doing at a restaurant? Or do I need a certain number of people to look after each kid in a childcare business?”

Once you have a good feel for the regular rhythms of your business and how they relate to your staffing, you can concentrate on other variables. Josh explains: “What has changed? It’s going to be a sunny day. It’s going to be a rainy day. I’m going to have less kids in because it’s the day before Easter. That’s the stuff that’s hard to work out. That’s where most time should be spent. Once you know that, the rest of it gets easier.”

In other words, the key to being able to plan ahead is hard data specific to your business performance, which is why it pays to use scheduling analytics to manage your staff. By using past profits over time as a guide, tools such as Workforce mean you can confidently schedule weeks in advance and make changes as needed without the last-minute panic.

Predict staffing requirements
Workforce can track your wage costs against your income over time and automatically recommend
the best staff schedules based on predicted demand.

Communicate transparently

Failing to clearly communicate company policy, schedule changes, or shift requests is another recurring problem that too many companies struggle with. A 2016 Harris Poll found that 69% of people in management positions felt uncomfortable simply communicating with employees, which can lead to important conversations being delayed or ignored.

There are two types of communication you need to improve in order for your shift planning to work as smoothly as possible.

  • General accessibility — are your schedules easily available, and are changes reflected in a timely manner for both workers and managers to adjust accordingly?
  • Direct contact — are there mechanisms in place for managers and workers to communicate directly over their schedules and any necessary changes?

Both of these are problematic if your scheduling is still being handled in an outdated way. Many companies still use pen and paper schedules or old Excel templates to plan their shifts. Neither option allows for easy access or instant communication, increasing the likelihood of problems when you least need them. Dedicated software like Workforce.com, however, automatically sends updated shift schedules to affected workers whenever a change is made.

An employee schedule on the Workforce app
When you create shift schedules using Workforce, every employee will be able to see their full schedule on their mobile device in real-time.

Use tools to make life easier

It’s not cheating to use specialized scheduling software to handle all the intricate parts of the shift planning process, as the most common scheduling mistakes can be prevented these days through automation. Keeping track of employee availability, using past performance to predict staffing needs for the future, and simply communicating scheduling issues to the relevant workers, even if they change, are all things you no longer have to juggle manually. Smart management means freeing yourself up to concentrate on strategic details rather than wasting hours on the basics.

If the prospect of tackling shift schedules has you in a cold sweat, then, hopefully, we’ve put your mind at rest. It may be one of the most important aspects of a manager’s job, but the pitfalls are easily spotted and avoided now you know what to look for. Go forth and plan with confidence.

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Prepare for the worst: A staff coverage checklist

wage tracker, waiter, hourly

As a manager, one of your most important responsibilities is creating a schedule for your business. Overstaffing is expensive, but having too few employees working means you risk giving your customers a subpar experience—and creating more stress for your staff. Even when your schedule is perfectly calibrated, sometimes employees call out at the last minute and you still end up short-staffed.

When dealing with staff coverage, your best option is to plan for the worst: employees are human, and everyone has emergencies spring up. The best way to keep staff coverage issues from having a negative impact on your business is to put processes in place that reduce last minute problems as much as possible and mitigate their impact when they do occur.

Here’s a staff coverage checklist that will help you head off issues before they happen and be prepared when they do.

1. Look at past trends to predict staff coverage needs

Your best way to predict future traffic is to look at past trends and extrapolate from there. The first step in preparing for the worst is to have adequate coverage scheduled to begin with, so make sure you know how busy your business gets on a given day, week, or season.

Do you have a clear idea of what your busiest days of the week are and months out of the year? Do you see more foot traffic in the morning or evening? Do you get more calls after 5 pm? One way to find out is to compare sales numbers and look for trends in the data or use a foot traffic analysis tool.

You can also check in with your staff who regularly work on the sales floor and might have a closer view of customer comings and goings. Another option is to use a predictive analysis tool to understand future customer demand.

Predict staffing requirements
Using Workforce’s powerful predictive analytics tools can help you anticipate staffing needs before they arise.

2. Start your schedule on a busy day

When you design your weekly schedule, it might seem natural to start it at the beginning of the calendar week, on Sunday or Monday. But when you think about coverage and staffing logistics, it actually makes sense to start your schedule on a busy day. For example, if your busiest periods are Thursday through Saturday, create your schedule starting on Thursday and then build it out from there.

Designing your schedule around your peak business days allows you to make sure those busiest shifts are fully staffed first, without risking overtime hours or understaffing because of projections you made based on less busy days.

3. Make the schedule as far in advance as possible

The farther in advance you create your schedule and share it with your team, the more time they have to see it and plan accordingly. It’s especially helpful for employees who have other commitments, like parents who handle childcare or student employees who need to study and attend classes.

Depending on where you are doing business, advance scheduling may even be a legal requirement. More and more states are implementing predictive scheduling laws which commit employers to giving employees their work schedule up to two weeks in advance. There are benefits to the business as well. Making and posting the schedule in advance gives your employees more time to trade shifts and find their own coverage, which takes the burden off of you.

If all else fails, the earlier you know that employees won’t be able to work a scheduled shift, the more time that gives you to find an alternate solution.

4. Make it easy to consult the schedule online

The easier it is for your team to consult the schedule, the more likely they are to check it regularly and early. Having it available online is especially useful for part-time staff who might not come into your business more than a few times per week and might not get a chance to see the schedule hanging on a bulletin board until several days after it’s made.

You can email schedules to your team or use scheduling software that allows you to post schedules and make them available to everyone at once.

An employee schedule on the Workforce app
When you create shift schedules using Workforce, every employee will be able to see their full schedule on their mobile device in real-time.

5. Have an easy way for the whole team to communicate

Make sure you have a convenient way to communicate with your whole team at once and for your employees to communicate with each other.

Having an easy way for you to contact your entire staff in one place can help you find last-minute coverage and communicate unexpected schedule changes, and it can help them swap shifts and know who’s available if they need to find their own replacement. You can use Google Groups or a text thread for this or a workforce management app with communications features.

6. Cross-train your employees

If your team members are trained to cover multiple different jobs, you have more flexibility when you’re creating your weekly schedule, and you also have more options for coverage if someone calls out. Cross-train your employees so they know as many different tasks that your business requires as possible. This could be anything, from working the cash register to answering a specific type of customer query to mixing your bar’s signature drink.

As a bonus, cross-training your team allows them to gain new skills and gives them more options to grow within your business.

7. Allow shift swapping

Once you’ve created the schedule, changing it is a headache. Allowing your team to swap shifts can take some of the burden off of you while still giving them as much flexibility and autonomy as possible. Having employees trade shifts and look for coverage for shifts they don’t want will reduce the risk of last-minute problems —and employees who want more shifts can easily pick them up from their colleagues.

If you allow your employees to swap shifts, make sure there’s a clear approval process, and collect requests in writing so you don’t lose track of them. Otherwise, you might end up having to pay overtime you hadn’t budgeted for.

Workforce allows vacant shifts to be offered to available employees quickly and easily.
Approving and reassigning swapped shifts is quick and easy using Workforce.

8. Create an availability chart

An availability chart is a visual tool that can help you see at a glance which employees are available on what days. One option is to make a weekly calendar that you hang in your office or keep on your computer with the names of each team member who is available on a given day. Or you can work backwards and create an exclusion chart, where you only put the names of employees who are definitely not available on certain days.

An availability chart can help you see at a glance who is available to cover a shift and avoid wasting time contacting team members who are not. For example, if one of your employees only covers opening shifts or weekends, calling them to close on a Tuesday is a waste of your time.

9. Establish an emergency window

Set a specific time period each day in which employees should let you know if they have an emergency and cannot cover their scheduled shift. Last-minute problems are annoying but occasionally inevitable.

One way to mitigate their impact is to create clear guidelines around how and when employees should get in touch with you. For example, you might require that they get in touch by X time the morning of their shift or X number of hours before their shift starts. And you can request they let you know by phone, email, or text message—whatever is most convenient for you and ensures you’ll have as much warning as possible to find a solution.

10. Ask staff to request time off well in advance

Take a look at your workplace’s time-off policies and make sure you have a system in place for staff to request time off well in advance. Don’t forget to include clear guidelines on how requests should be made (in person, through an app, or by filling out a form, for example). The farther in advance you can evaluate time-off requests, the more you can plan ahead to make sure all of your business’s needs are covered.

11. Hire part-time team members to cover staff coverage gaps

Consider hiring reliable part-time employees who can help you with coverage and can occasionally take on extra shifts to fill in last-minute gaps in your schedule. Part-time staffers often have other commitments outside of your business, like another job, school, or childcare responsibilities, so make sure you know if/when they are available for coverage, and add that information to your availability chart.

Use the right tools to manage staff coverage

Now that you have the best possible processes in place to manage staff coverage, the next step is getting the tools you need to help you put them into place. The best tools will help you automate most of the scheduling process and flag any issues, like overtime or schedule conflicts, so you don’t have to find them manually.

That’s why Workforce.com features include automatic advanced scheduling, analytics, attendance, and labor compliance—an all in one workforce management solution.

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More uncertainty for employers as Labor Department withdraws independent contractor rule

headcount planning strategies

After months of anticipation, the U.S. Department of Labor withdrew its Independent Contractor Final Rule on May 5.

The Final Rule was published in the final two weeks of the Trump administration. Almost immediately following President Joe Biden’s inauguration, it became the subject of a delayed effective date (from March 8, 2021, to May 7, 2021) and notice of proposed rulemaking, in which the Labor Department proposed to withdraw the Final Rule before its delayed effective date.

In light of the Labor Department’s withdrawal of the Final Rule, employers will continue to be subject to the existing “economic realities” standard applied by the agency for determining whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor. However, employers should remain vigilant as the Labor Department may soon revisit this issue.

The Final Rule had sought to clarify the relevant factors the Labor Department would consider to classify workers as independent contractors or employees. This designation is important because independent contractors, unlike employees, are not afforded minimum wage and overtime protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Because the FLSA provides minimal guidance to employers regarding worker classification, the Labor Department and the courts have developed their own standards, including the so-called “economic reality” of the relationship between the employer and the worker.

Before the Final Rule, the Labor Department and most courts had long utilized a six-factor test for determining whether a worker should be classified as an independent contractor or an employee. The Supreme Court originally set out this test in United States v. Silk, indicating the following factors:

  1. The employer’s versus the individual’s degree of control over the work.
  2. The individual’s opportunity for profit or loss.
  3. The individual’s investment in facilities and equipment.
  4. The permanency of the relationship between the parties.
  5. The skill or expertise required by the individual.
  6. Whether the work is part of an integrated unit of production.

Since the Silk ruling, most federal courts and the Labor Department analyzed employee classification using a variation of the multifactor weighing test with all factors being given equal consideration. Indeed, in its primary regulatory guidance issued in July 2008, the Labor Department confirmed in Fact Sheet 13: Employment Relationship Under the Fair Labor Standards Act its reliance on the economic reality test and listed seven factors to be considered, which largely mirrored the six factors identified in Silk and added the “amount of initiative, judgment, or foresight in open market competition with others required for the success of the claimed independent contractor” as an additional factor to be considered.

Breaking with the Labor Department’s prior practice of treating these seven factors as equally weighted, the Final Rule sought to pare the inquiry down to five factors and stated that two of those factors — the “nature and digress of the individual’s control over the work” and “the individual’s opportunity for profit or loss” — should be “afforded greater weight.”

As such, the Final Rule directed that only if the two core factors were inconclusive should the three remaining factors — namely, the skill or expertise required by the individual; the permanency of the relationship between the parties; and whether the work is part of an integrated unit of production — be considered.

Although many praised the Final Rule for simplifying what has become an inconsistent patchwork of approaches to the economic realities test in courts across the country, the Labor Department has since stated that the Final Rule was inconsistent with the FLSA’s text and purpose, and would have a confusing and disruptive effect on workers and businesses alike due to its departure from longstanding judicial precedent. Accordingly, the agency announced May 5 that the Final Rule was withdrawn effective immediately.

The Labor Department has not stated whether it intends to issue new guidance or regulations addressing the classification of independent contractors. Further complicating this issue for employers, both the initial delay of the Final Rule and its subsequent withdrawal are the subjects of a lawsuit pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas brought by four employer-focused interest groups who seek the court’s intervention to declare the withdrawal unlawful and make the Final Rule effective.

The lawsuit is in its initial stages, and it remains to be seen how it will be resolved.

For the time being, all Labor Department regulations and guidance concerning independent contractor classification in place before the Final Rule’s publication continue to apply. However, given recent remarks by President Biden and U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, the Labor Department may revisit the independent contractor standard.

If that occurs, it is expected that the Labor Department would take a more aggressive approach toward enforcement of worker classification laws and seek to further narrow the subset of workers who may be properly classified as independent contractors under the FLSA, particularly gig economy workers.

Notwithstanding the pending legal challenge to the withdrawal of the Final Rule, employers would be wise to evaluate their practices as to classification of employees and ensure that any independent contractors are properly classified under the Labor Department’s current 2008 guidance.

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Predictive scheduling laws: What they cover and how to comply

Over the past five years, the United States has seen a wave of new predictive scheduling laws aimed at providing employees with more predictable work schedules.

These predictive scheduling laws are designed to provide stability to individuals so that they can attend to their child care, health, education and, in many cases, second jobs. Early predictive scheduling laws only applied to retail establishments and restaurants, with limited penalties and no private right of action (i.e. employees could not sue for violations of the law).

However, more recent predictive scheduling laws cover a much broader array of industries, with far more draconian penalties, and allow for employee-initiated class action litigation. While these laws are well intentioned, they do present significant challenges for employers in terms of staffing, costs, document retention and general compliance.

This is because the legislation is relatively new and varies by city. Moreover, these laws often require dramatic departures from historical hiring and scheduling practices. The result is a patchwork of new laws, with limited guiding precedent and substantial penalties for noncompliance. As an employer, you would do well to heed these laws and take appropriate steps to ensure you are compliant.

Where have predictive scheduling laws been passed?

Many jurisdictions have considered, or are considering, passing predictive scheduling laws. So far, two states — Vermont and Oregon — and eight municipalities — San Francisco, Berkeley, Emeryville, San Jose, Seattle, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia — have passed laws. The laws in these jurisdictions are similar but different enough to discourage larger employers from creating company-wide policies and procedures for national compliance. Looking at 2021 and beyond, that list is likely to grow. Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina and Rhode Island all have predictive scheduling laws or equivalents under consideration.

Though most laws require employers to pay their employees predictability pay when their schedules are changed without advance notice, many laws contain different requirements regarding the amount of predictability pay owed, as well as exceptions to predictability pay entitlement. Accordingly, the differences in predictive scheduling laws not only require different scheduling policies, they require tailored and distinct payroll practices as well. Failure to properly pay employees under predictability pay rules can create federal and state wage and hour exposure as well.

It is also worth noting that some states have gone in the opposite direction, prohibiting the use of predictive scheduling legislation. Since 2017 Tennessee, Georgia, Iowa and Arkansas have all made it illegal for local government to require employers to adopt scheduling or hiring practices other than those already required by federal law.

What do predictive scheduling laws require?

While predictive scheduling laws from many of the jurisdictions contain several nuanced differences, there are general requirements that are common to many of them.

  • Advance notice of work schedule, generally at least 14 days.
  • A written estimate of each employee’s anticipated work schedule (at the time of hire).
  • Predictability pay in the absence of sufficient advance notice of work schedule.
  • Exceptions to eligibility for predictability pay.
  • A right to rest requirement to prevent “clopening” (i.e. no employee should be required to close up at night and open up the next day), as well as amplified pay for close-in-time work shifts.
  • Offers of additional hours to current part-time employees before hiring a new employee.
  • Posting requirements.
  • Stringent documentation and document retention requirements. This generally includes work schedules, written scheduling estimates, documents evidencing predictability pay, and documents related to offers of additional hours.

Though not common, some jurisdictions, such as Seattle and Philadelphia, encouraged employers to engage in an “interactive process” with employees who request a modification to their work schedules. Notably, this idea of an “interactive scheduling process” is one that has endured and presents additional managerial burdens for employers.

How to comply with predictive scheduling law

  1. Determine applicability. Employers operating in a jurisdiction with a predictive scheduling law in place should first determine whether they qualify as a “covered employer” under the applicable law. While many laws only apply to certain employers in the restaurant and retail industries, other laws have a more expansive definition of “covered employer.”
  2. Create policies and forms. Once an employer determines that it is covered, it should develop policies and forms tailored to each applicable law. Sample forms that would be helpful to have on hand include, but are not limited to: a notice of change in work schedule, a notice of offer of additional hours, an estimate of work schedule and hours, and a template work schedule. Additionally, employers should consider maintaining working checklists that managers can use to ensure compliance.
  3. Train managers. Once the policies and forms are prepared, employers should train their managers on the applicable laws, as they will largely be responsible for facilitating and documenting compliance.
  4. Ensure proper data maintenance. Because compliance with predictive scheduling laws requires retention of a high volume of documents, employers should ensure they have proper mechanisms in place for storing documents and data.
  5. Audit for compliance. In order to ensure compliance with any applicable predictive scheduling laws, employers should periodically conduct internal audits to ensure policies are being followed and documents retained.
  6. Use technology to predict staffing needs. In order to avoid predictability pay, employers may want to use technology and data analytics provided by software such as Workforce.com to anticipate future staffing needs. Setting schedules based on reliable data may decrease the need for unanticipated scheduling changes and thus reduce the likelihood of predictability pay.
Predict staffing requirements
Workforce can track your wage costs against your income over time and automatically recommend
the best staff schedules based on predicted demand.

Predictive scheduling compliance doesn’t need to be a problem

If you run a business that is affected by predictive scheduling laws, or think that it may become a reality in your state soon, then it’s easy to look at these new requirements and only see the additional administrative burden. There are benefits to businesses, however.

Academic research has shown that employees with stable, predictable schedules are happier, healthier and more likely to stay with their employer for the long term. You can also mitigate many of the requirements of predictive scheduling by using labor compliance software from Workforce.com to manage your employees. Not only does it handle the collection and auditing of shift data, it can keep track of relevant labor legislation and automatically warn you if any of your workers’ shifts are in breach of the law wherever you operate. So don’t be afraid of predictive scheduling. It’s easier to comply with than you think, and can make your business run more smoothly.

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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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Allied Universal boosts its hiring as demand for security services surges

security services, Allied Universal

Security services will play an important role as businesses reopen their doors and rebuild their staff in 2021.

Anticipating this growing need, security staffing services provider Allied Universal recently announced plans to hire hundreds of new employees across the country. Two recent hiring events in the Phoenix area alone were held to add 500 new security professionals there.

Building the hourly workforce

The greatest number of Allied’s open positions are hourly, said Morgan Price, senior vice president-recruiting and talent acquisition, though there are open positions across the organization.

“From security professionals to various leadership positions in operations, human resources, and other functions, we have tremendous opportunity,” Price said.

Allied included a virtual solution to interviewing and hiring to engage a large number of potential employees who may otherwise not apply or interview for a position, Price said. Adding that virtual component also makes the entire application process easier and more efficient.

“With altered school schedules for children or just the inconvenience of arranging transportation, being able to take the first step of employment through our virtual open houses helps Allied Universal find the best talent available,” Price said.

security staffing services , Allied Universal

Safety through security staffing services

Price said that Allied executives are seeing an increased need for security staffing services and facilities management. They plan to hold a number of virtual hiring events over the remainder of the year nationwide and beyond 2021.

“Our clients and the public at large rely on us to keep our communities and businesses safe and secure, especially during these challenging times,” said Steve Jones, chairman and CEO of Allied Universal, in a press statement. “Our security staffing professionals play a pivotal part ensuring facilities can continue business as usual. Other businesses that had to close can rest assured that their assets will remain protected.”

For full-time positions, company benefits include medical and dental coverage, life insurance, 401(k), holidays and more.

Hiring and scheduling security personnel

Hiring unqualified security guards can be a detriment to a company’s reputation and its financial livelihood, according to the “Officer Reports” blog. To find quality security guards, they say, be the kind of company that your current guards want to tell their friends to apply at. 

Once hired, experts recommend that employers maintain consistent scheduling practices for an hourly workforce of security personnel. It creates optimal productivity, reduces fatigue and helps employees retain focus toward the end of a shift. Teamwork also is important among security professionals, so also consider scheduling the same people on at the same time if they work well together.

To get around unreliable manual communications such as call trees and text messaging, security company managers are realizing the advantages of employee scheduling software. Besides managing staffing levels, automated scheduling solutions offer effective communication tools, particularly in the event of unforeseen emergencies or last-minute schedule changes.

Complying with fair workweek and predictive scheduling laws also is important. A regular schedule cuts down on overtime, leads to happier employers and better workers, experts point out.

 Focus on employee safety

Price said that throughout the pandemic Allied Universal’s top priority has been employee safety. The company is doing everything possible to deal with the personal impact this is having on all of its employees and their families. 

Morgan Price, SVP-recruiting and talent acquisition

“Since the start of the pandemic, Allied Universal has delivered more than 3 million masks and hundreds of gallons of hand sanitizer to our frontline employees and staff,” Price said. They also have a dedicated safety team constantly monitoring all COVID-19 developments ensuring that Allied continuously educates its employees to understand and follow CDC guidelines.

Allied, which is based in Santa Ana, California, has 265,000 employees and revenues of more than $9.5 billion. The company will grow by thousands of new employees as the long-anticipated $5.28 billion acquisition of rival security company G4S came to fruition March 16. Allied will add G4S’s workforce of 558,000 employees and operations in about 85 countries stretching across six continents, according to published reports. 

Allied also announced in January the acquisition of Atlanta-based SecurAmerica, which has 13,500 employees and $467 million in annual sales, and Waco, Texas-based Eagle Systems Inc., which has 210 security officers and revenue topping $10 million, according to the Orange County Business Journal.

Looking to grow like Allied Universal? Workforce management solutions are important for scaling and day-to-day frontline operations. Book a Workforce.com demo today.

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5 retail scheduling best practices – higher sales per labor hour

retail scheduling

Effective retail scheduling isn’t easy. 

Do it well and you’ll engage your associates, reduce turnover, cut costs and build customer loyalty. But poor execution leads to lost revenue, disgruntled employees and inadequate customer service in many ways. 

With the right processes, workplace culture, and retail shift scheduling software, you’ll avoid employee scheduling conflicts and build the most accurate schedule possible. Customer loyalty rises as employee morale and productivity improves. 

If you are a manager or business owner in the retail industry, here are the five retail scheduling best practices.

1. Build predictable schedules

Inconsistent schedules are a major complaint among retail workers. More stability helps employees balance the rest of their lives and responsibilities while still getting enough hours.

Plus, a Harvard Business Review study revealed that stable employee scheduling in retail actually builds productivity and profits. Researchers discovered that sales in stores with more stable scheduling increased by 7 percent and labor productivity increased by 5 percent.

Managers should consider the needs of their staff when building a schedule. It seems obvious but can be easier said than done, especially when managers get a handful of time-off requests. 

While the retail industry can be unpredictable, store managers should avoid scheduling retail workers on short notice. Employees need time to plan for everyday needs like transportation and child care.

Also avoid scheduling employees for “clopenings” — where an employee closes the night shift and opens the following morning. Too often employees are forced to get by on just a few hours of sleep between shifts. 

The Economic Policy Institute notes that irregular work hours, such as clopenings, lead to longer work hours. Policies that reduce or eliminate clopenings and other unstable work schedules will lead to a more productive workforce while helping to avoid unnecessary overtime. 

Perennial work-life imbalance is a proven detriment to stress and health. And in the retail industry, constant juggling of employee scheduling to maintain profits and keep labor costs to a minimum isn’t really necessary.

When employers establish predictability in work schedules, it helps develop clear career paths for employees and provide more opportunities for training. Effective scheduling also is critical so that employees feel like they are supported and part of the organization instead of just punching a time clock.

While having a predictable schedule is better than scheduling on the fly, avoid manual timekeeping methods. They can be manipulated by employees to steal time and also are subject to wage-theft abuse by employers. 

Using automated scheduling software is a great way to make it easier, more cost-efficient and less prone to fraud for a manager to handle this process. Managers can create and share work schedules for all employees to see on their phones, as well as send automated reminders to them before each shift.

schedule template, retail, restaurant employees

Once a workable shift calendar is established, stick to it. And give employees plenty of notice if you plan to change what the average shift looks like.

2. Adhere to predictive scheduling laws

Is your business in a jurisdiction that already has or will have predictive scheduling or fair workweek laws?

Employee scheduling laws vary by city or state, but they generally include four common provisions, according to the National Retail Federation. They are: 

  • Advanced posting of schedules.
  • Employer penalties for unexpected schedule changes.
  • Record-keeping requirements for employers. 
  • Prohibitions on requiring employees to find replacements for scheduled shifts if they are unable to work.

Predictive scheduling dictates advanced scheduling notice. In general, most require two weeks notice, but it can be more. 

Violation costs can add up quickly. New York City, for example, requires retail employers to pay $500 or damages (whichever is greater) for on-call shifts or shift changes with less than 72 hours’ notice, according to the National Law Review.

If you’re running a retail outlet in a city that isn’t yet affected, don’t wait for it to become law. Fair workweek laws will continue to spread across the United States to protect shift workers, so stay ahead of the game by starting to make changes in your organization now. 

Simplified and automated solutions such as Workforce.com’s scheduling software assures that you’ll avoid costly infractions and comply with federal, state, and local labor regulations. You’ll know exactly where you stand with predictive scheduling and fair workweek laws. 

3. Allow employees to swap shifts

Most retailers have a large number of part-time staff. A Korn Ferry survey found that of all retail positions, part-time hourly store employees have the highest turnover rate, with 76 percent average turnover in 2019. 

While a part-time workforce is a necessity, it also presents volatility in your retail scheduling. Store managers spend a lot of time sorting and tracking employee time-off or shift cancellation requests. Last-minute scheduling changes also means managers spend valuable time off the floor to find a replacement.

A well-designed shift swapping policy can work for both sides and ensure that both the retailer and employees eliminate guesswork and get the staff scheduling they need.

Rather than bog down managers with scheduling headaches and leave employees to guess whether their shift is covered, allow your staff to swap shifts through an automated scheduling solution. 

Any employee can request a shift swap in the Workforce.com mobile app. Assuming their manager approves the request, employees available and qualified for that shift will get notifications on their phones. Any of them can indicate in the app that they’d like to swap. When a manager approves the swap, the system automatically updates schedules, which everyone can see in the app.

retail employees scheduling

4. Improve clarity around retail employees’ schedules

Retail employee schedules have been written out on paper or logged in an Excel spreadsheet for decades. It may be a tried-and-true method for some business owners but the only absolute tradition is that manual scheduling leads to confusion.

With pen-and-paper employee schedules, employees often are unaware of last-minute changes. There is no visibility since managers only post the schedules in a break room or near a time clock.

As you can imagine, there are unintended time and attendance violations that managers, HR and payroll must investigate and address. The lack of transparency in scheduling can also lead to disengaged employees who may think managers have a hidden agenda and that favoritism plays into their shift scheduling process.

Knowing whether you’re overstaffed or understaffed and how resources are being managed is at best an educated guess and at worst a crapshoot.

An automated scheduling solution for retailers puts schedules online and visible for all to see. 

workforce software, restaurant, retail employees scheduling

There’s no need for last-minute phone calls or texts to see who is scheduled for that day’s shift. Managers can easily see who’s coming in, what time they’re scheduled to start and which location they’ll be at all from their phone.

With Workforce.com’s workforce app, retail managers keep lines of communication open with all of their full-time and part-time employees. Seeking employee input when possible can help them feel like they have a little more control over their schedules. 

“We are seeing much more communication coming from employers, and what [employers] are sharing with us is employees like it,” said David Kopsch, principal consultant at Mercer in a June 2020 story posted to Workforce.com. “They like this high level of communication. They like the engagement and the concern and empathy that employers are demonstrating.”

5. Assess staffing needs to avoid overtime

Labor forecasting is a must when scheduling your retail workforce. 

Predicting customer demand peaks and valleys to plan ideal staffing levels shouldn’t be left to chance or a manager’s gut instinct.

You may read suggestions that you determine the lowest number of staff required to run your store. “Begin with a bare-bones number and build from there,” some expert may tell you. That is a fool’s errand and completely unnecessary when you use effective labor forecasting software and implement an automated scheduling solution.

According to the Harvard Business Review study, “Practices such as having barebones staff in stores and unstable scheduling (schedules that vary on a day-to-day basis) have flourished in the guise of enabling greater profits for retailers. 

“In study after study for over a decade, operations researchers have found that retailers understaff during peak hours. Increasing staffing, they found, could increase sales and profits. And yet this message on the costs of lean scheduling fell on deaf ears.”

Overstaffing and understaffing can be dangerous for any retailer, which typically runs on small profit margins and must monitor the company’s labor budget. A staffing decision that smartly cuts labor costs while maintaining superior customer service benefits your bottom line.

Varying the types of employees that you schedule helps keep your full-time employees from accumulating overtime hours that can drive labor costs up. And allowing part-time employees to work alongside experienced full-timers provides valuable on-the-job training that they can’t get anywhere else. 

The Workforce.com Live Wage Tracker allows managers to adjust staffing levels to optimize profits. 

live wage tracker, workforce.com software, restaurant , retail employees

Building retail schedules every week that can change at a moment’s notice is a constant challenge. But with retail scheduling best practices and implementing automated retail scheduling software, you can save time, reduce turnover, build employee morale and cut costs. Book your demo today.

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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. 

auto-scheduling

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.

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5 Options to Track Employee Hours

track employee hours

Summary

  • Some businesses get away with tracking time manually with pen and paper.

  • Time clock machines with biometrics, card swipes, or punch-in codes are worth considering in most cases.

  • Automated time and attendance software is the easiest and most comprehensive way to track employee hours.

Without a time tracking program in place, it’s easy to lose track of which hourly employees did what and for how long, leading to mistakes in payroll. 

Inaccurately tracking hours also creates compliance issue landmines. There are stiff penalties and fines for organizations that ignore local, state and federal wage-and-hour and overtime laws. 

It’s a mistake to maintain relaxed standards or have no policy at all to track employee hours. 

Time tracking allows you to accurately see how long any given task takes to complete, and who on your team works most efficiently whether they are hourly or salaried employees. Knowing how much time is spent on certain tasks helps employers to efficiently select how their workers should be using their time.

Still, there are some employers who don’t track employee time because they don’t want to offend employees. Introducing time tracking can be seen as micromanaging or an intrusion on employees’ privacy and shows “a lack of faith” in your own employees.

Instead, they rely on an employee monitoring their own time. Showing trust can build commitment to the company but it can open the door to fraud. 

Before implementing an employee hour tracking solution, answer all questions your employees may have about the process. If employees don’t see the value of time tracking or it is not accurately communicated, your team may not buy in. A key component of streamlining the process of tracking employee hours begins with your honest, transparent communication.

Not tracking employee hours can result in thousands of dollars in lost revenue and invite expensive wage-and-hour violations. Following are five ways that you can track employee hours.

Whether you need to clean up your compensation and compliance practices, track employee activity on a job site, or gauge exempt employees’ time on a project, there are several ways to track employee hours.

  • Manual timekeeping — pen and paper.
  • Time clocks or punch-in tools.
  • Automated time-and-attendance solutions.
  • Mobile apps.
  • GPS clock-ins.

1. Manual timekeeping

If your company is small, using a pen and paper to track employee hours may be a workable option. A manual pen-and-paper system or an Excel spreadsheet at least offers a minimal way to track employees’ time at work. But its limitations quickly become evident as a company grows. 

Manual timekeeping can lead to many difficulties for employers who want to accurately track employees’ time.timesheet, paper time sheet

Managers face reams of paperwork on a regular basis, and it’s easy to misplace or lose timesheets. Employee paperwork also is cumbersome to store, and accessing the documents for recordkeeping or auditing is a challenge.

Manual timekeeping can also make calculating payroll seems like an endless task. If a manager’s time is spent sorting through messy, handwritten employee timesheets and contacting them with questions, they have less time to build the organization through more strategic tasks. 

Correcting mistakes also could hold up the payroll process, which affects all employees.

Accurately tracking employee time becomes an issue. Employees and employers can only add or delete time manually, so they depend on memory to recall who came in when and at what time they took a break or went home.

Wage-and-hour fraud becomes a real possibility. Time theft practices like buddy punching are difficult to detect. Even if several employees falsely change their clock-in time by just five minutes every day, employers can unwittingly pay dozens of unworked hours over the course of a month. 

Of course, the pendulum can swing the other way. Manual timekeeping opens the door to employer fraud. Unsuspecting employees can be cheated out of thousands of dollars in working hours. If and when the fraud is uncovered, wage-and-hour or overtime violations will lead to substantial penalties and potentially steep fines. 

When payrolls are prepared manually, the process is not only time-consuming, mistakes are inevitable and payroll errors are costly. With the trend toward automation, more and more companies are incorporating advanced technology into the workplace to accurately track employee hours, among other functions. 

Pen-and-paper timekeeping simply doesn’t offer the accuracy, versatility and security a digital time and attendance solution will provide. By leaving so much room for error, you risk losing big money for your company. 

2. Time clocks

Time clocks were introduced to track employee time in the late 1800s. While typically more accurate than pen-and-paper timekeeping, time clocks have flaws.

Time clocks vary widely in levels of sophistication. And as with manual timekeeping, time clocks leave plenty of opportunity for time theft and abuse. There is no guarantee that your employees are on the job when they say they are. 

Time clocks also are expensive. They require specialized equipment that is subject to malfunctions and require ongoing maintenance. 

Though card swipes or fingerprint biometrics will provide more accuracy, they are particularly costly, especially when a business owner has multiple locations. Wortime clocks, employee scheduling

However advanced the time clock may be, they’re an impractical choice for a mobile workforce that will routinely work hours at different job sites.

Cleanliness should always be a concern in any workplace. You wouldn’t set out boxes of dirty tissues. Why should a time clock that’s not sanitized after constantly being touched be the lone option for employees starting and ending their working hours? 

The functionality of a time clock is limited and typically cannot integrate with your other workforce management solutions. 

3. Automated employee time tracking solutions

Automated workforce management systems aren’t just for the Fortune 1000 anymore. Solutions exist that are built to support behemoth enterprise organizations yet are flexible and customizable enough to solve a small business’s need to track employee hours.

Companies quickly realize the ways they save time and money once they start using an automated time tracking solution to track employee hours. Timekeeping software becomes your online paper trail that produces accurate, objective accounts of employees’ time and prevents dishonest employees from inflating their hours.

Besides being a strong deterrent to costly time theft, quickly and easily accessing timesheets through an automated solution dramatically improves the accurate calculation of payroll. Time theft is easy to trace and can be quickly solved after you’ve begun to track employees’ hours. You will notice patterns of behavior and can act accordingly.

Before implementing an employee hour tracking solution, answer all questions your employees may have about the process. If employees don’t see the value of time tracking or it is not accurately communicated, your team may not buy in. A key component of streamlining the process of tracking employee hours begins with your honest, transparent communication.

Implementing Workforce.com’s time tracking solution provides your managers with an effortless time-and-attendance system that stays on top of employee productivity, eases administrative tasks and requires minimal training. Managers don’t have to send countless emails or wait for employees to turn in their timecards. The approval workflow handles it, with timesheets attached for easy review and simple approval.

Managers receive notifications when employees clock in and out, when they are running late or must call off at the last minute and when they’re about to incur overtime costs. 

Tracking time with Workforce.com’s automated solution also boosts compliance with regulatory laws. Wage-and-hour and overtime laws vary by state and locality, which makes payroll a calculation and compliance headache. 

Workforce.com’s proactive compliance tools, which were pioneered in Australia to manage the world’s most complicated wage laws, ensure simplified and automated adherence with U.S. federal FLSA, state and local labor regulations. It also includes built-in overtime pay calculations for all 50 states and territories to keep your numbers in compliance.compliance, wage and hour , overtime

Integration with all workforce management systems becomes simple and easy. You control wage costs even further by integrating Workforce.com’s software with your current payroll, POS and HR tools via the cloud for faster, more efficient workforce management operations. 

Verifying and exporting timesheets to your payroll system software is straightforward and fast thanks to the available integrations. Timesheets that have been verified and match scheduling are auto-approved, saving your managers time.

Ultimately, if your employees don’t feel comfortable using your time tracking solution, it will affect their productivity. Since they will use it every day, get them to experience a trial run with you. Building trust early on will amplify buy-in and confidence in your hourly time tracking strategy, making implementation and use simple and error-free.

4. Tracking employee hours with a mobile app

A huge advantage of an automated, cloud-based time-and-attendance system is the capability a mobile employee time tracking app or timesheet app provides to track employee hours. Mobile time tracking makes clocking in and out and sharing schedules easier for all employees, no matter their location.employee mobile app, time clock app

With a time tracker app you can watch who is coming in that day, what time they’re scheduled to start, which location they’ll be working at and their hours on the clock straight from your phone.

There’s no need to camp behind a desktop computer in an office anymore. Your managers get a powerful mobile tool that boosts their ability to track employee hours any time, anywhere. 

A mobile tracker app also empowers managers to follow employees in real time from anywhere and assure that all shifts are covered, update scheduling for any shift and continue tracking when an employee clocks in. Workforce.com’s mobile time clock app helps manage employees’ time and administer digital timesheets, payroll, budgeting and labor compliance reporting. 

Communications become immediately simpler and faster, allowing them to call in someone for an unexpected absence, approve leave requests, and receive automatic notifications on the go. 

5. GPS clock-in

While a time tracking app could be enough for your employees or those who travel between different job sites, you may need pinpoint accuracy to track employee locations. Some time tracker apps include location tracking, providing you with the ability to track enabled devices. 

GPS tracking capabilities help everyone stay in the loop regarding an employee’s clock in and clock out when they arrive at their remote work location. 

Workforce.com’s GPS clock-in takes your time tracking capabilities global. Timesheets automatically sync GPS locations of all clock-ins and outs. Some industries have varying pay rates depending on the job, location and employee’s position. Clock-in data intuitively assigns pay rates depending on the location, saving time and administrative work computing pay.

The time clock app with GPS also includes geofences. Geofencing creates a radius for a location and then it starts flagging shifts in the timesheet approval system, making it easy to track employee hours and identify shifts where someone has clocked in offsite. 

The GPS clock-in app lets everyone clock in from their mobile device and gives managers an edge to track employee hours with the platform’s photo-verified clock-in system.GPS clock in

Tracking employee hours is crucial to your organization’s operations and profitability. It provides key labor cost data, accurate payroll information and a boost in productivity. Regardless of what process you select to track employee hours, use the function that fits your company. But an automated system is scalable to your company’s size and shifting needs and offers the flexibility to stay local or go global. 

Payroll is tired of translating messy, handwritten timecards submitted by employees and managers, and a time clock is an impractical choice for your highly mobile workforce. An automated solution to track employee hours keeps you in compliance and builds your business success. 

Workforce.com’s time clock app automates how your staff clocks in and out. Ask for a free demo today.

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As new COVID-19 variants double down on transmissibility, OSHA steps up preventative measures

COVID-19, vaccine, flu
“Wear a mask and stay 6 feel apart.” It might sound like Groundhog Day to keep repeating this mantra. It’s also the most basic and most important steps we can take to remain safe, healthy and COVID-free.
Last week OSHA published new guidance for employers about mitigating and preventing the spread of COVID-19 in the workplace. While I recommend you read it, understand it and adopt its teachings in your workplace as best practices to keep your employees safe and healthy, I want to draw your attention to this language.

Not distinguishing between workers who are vaccinated and those who are not: Workers who are vaccinated must continue to follow protective measures, such as wearing a face covering and remaining physically distant, because at this time, there is not evidence that COVID-19 vaccines prevent transmission of the virus from person-to-person. The CDC explains that experts need to understand more about the protection that COVID-19 vaccines provide before deciding to change recommendations on steps everyone should take to slow the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19.

COVID-19 is strengthening. New variants of the virus are making it more transmissible and potentially more virulent. Now is not the time to loosen COVID safety rules, especially around the most basic of steps we must take to remain safe and healthy—masks and physical distancing. This holds true even if your employees are vaccinated, as science does not yet know if the vaccine prevents the transmission from person-to-person.
The vaccine does offer us a light at the end of the very long and dark COVID tunnel, but we cannot allow it to give us a false sense of security. COVID-19 is fighting back; we must continue to fight back, too.