New Wage Laws – are you in compliance? If not the stakes are high.

24 Feb, 2014 | Tags: , , , , , ,

This year we are seeing a lot of news about wage laws and currently politicians in Congress and the House of Representatives are discussing increasing the minimum wages and other updates to our national wage laws. Do you know the current laws? If you aren’t in compliance, the repercussions can be severe. A Philadelphia sports bar has recently agreed to pay 6.8 million dollars in back wages and damages for violating these wage laws.

Current wage laws for servers require a minimum wage of $2.13 per hour, IF the server’s tips bring their gross pay up to $7.25 (the federal minimum wage). If the server’s tips are too small and do not raise up their hourly pay, the restaurant is legally required to increase the server’s hourly wages to meet the federal minimum wage.  While overtime pay is a regular occurrence in most industries, many restaurants don’t know that legally, if an employee works more than 40 hours in a week, they must be paid time and a half. The Labor department is also coming down hard on tip policies, as federal laws bar employees and manages from taking any portion of a waiter’s tips. Click here to read about labor laws.

What Time Do I Work.com scheduling software is more than an employee scheduling template. The program has many features and benefits that aids and manages creating conflict free schedules in less time and to easily and efficiently communicate about scheduling in real time. One of the most used features of the program is labor calculations. When entering employee information the system stores the employee’s hourly pay and will calculate your labor costs per day or week, as well as automatic alerts to overtime hours. In the first month one client saved more than $2000 in labor costs for the first month.

Try the employee scheduling software from What Time Do I Work.com free for 30 days.

Plagued by over- and/or under- staffing issues?

20 Feb, 2014 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Learn how to solve this problem in under 350 words.

If your answer to this question is yes, then this article is for you. Over- and under- staffing can both significantly affect your bottom line, whether you realize it or not. If you are over-staffed, you are carrying a high labor cost for that shift, not to mention that you have staff standing around looking for something to do.

On the flip side, under-staffing may harm your customers’ experience, by inadvertently lowering the level of customer service your hardworking employees are available to provide. So, how can you solve this problem?

The answer has two parts: first you will need to pull together a report showing your sales by hour/day/week/month so you are able to determine the pattern of business you experience on a regular basis; some POS systems can pull together these reports for you. Once you have this information, you should use previous schedules to determine what shifts had an accurate staffing level. What Time Do I Work.com has built-in features that will help you make these decisions. Once you have the right number of staff on for each shift, you will see a more balanced labor cost and better customer experience.

There are 3 steps to creating an employee schedule to provide you with the best staffing levels:

  1. Know the productivity of your staff members – how many customers can each employee handle with a high level of customer service?
  2. Review your sales history to determine upcoming needs
  3. Create weekly schedules incorporating upcoming information (reservations, holidays, events, etc.)

Here is a short list of What Time Do I Work.com online scheduling software features that will help you with your staffing needs:

  • Automatic conflict alerts as you create the schedule
  • Automatic overtime alerts as you create the schedule
  • Calculate your labor costs as you create the schedule
  • Time-Off request populate automatically in the schedule
  • Post and communicate new and/or update schedules with the click of a button.

Try What Time Do I Work.com free for 30 days and see the difference it makes in your business.

Why should you pick WhatTimeDoIWork.com Online Employee Scheduling Software? Part 3: Benefits for Staff

14 Feb, 2014 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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In this third piece to our series, we will review the benefits offered to your employees by following our newest client Tom, whose company just began using What Time Do I Work.com staff scheduling. His story matches the story of countless employees whose companies are now using our software.

In the past, there had been many issues around who was approved for time off requests after multiple employees had requested the same day off.  Employees would complain that one co-worker always was given the day off, and oftentimes there were arguments about who submitted their request first. To make matters worse the old system of leaving a note on the manager’s door was problematic at best. All too often employees complained because the scheduler never got the Post-It notes that were left on the door. It seems that between this and simply forgetting requests, the scheduler constantly had to update the shift schedule. This left Tom, and his fellow employees, feeling like they never really knew when exactly they were expected to be working.

Right away Tom saw the added benefits of What Time Do I Work.com online scheduling software, simply with the availability of the schedule. Usually, Tom would call in each Monday and hope to reach an employee who could run to the schedule, and read him his upcoming shifts. Now, Tom simply logs into the program from home and checks his schedule. He can also see who else is working, and if a last minute change comes up, he can swap shifts.

Late one Monday night, Tom couldn’t remember what time his shift started the next day. Luckily, because his schedules are now posted online, Tom was able to review his schedule and to his pleasure realized that he didn’t have to be at work until late morning (allowing him a few more precious moments of sleep).

There were many other benefits that Tom noticed right away:  fewer revisions to the schedule each week, and with the ability to enter and log requests for time off in the system, a record of who took days off. He also loved how he could set up alerts for upcoming shifts, so that he always knew what time he had to be at work. Recently, Tom felt that he had not been getting many prime shifts and that he had asked the scheduler for, however there were no records of past schedules to look at. Within a month of using What Time Do I Work.com, the scheduler and Tom were able to look over the history of the schedules to ensure that in the future, everyone was getting not only an even number of shifts, but also an equal number of prime shifts.

To learn how What Time Do I Work.com can help your business, Click Here and try our no obligation 30 day free trial (we won’t even ask for a credit card!)