Keeping your Bar and Nightclub Patrons Happy

24 Oct, 2013 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

1834327

As the owner/manager of a bar or nightclub, you have numerous business objectives—with the primary objective being “keep your customers happy.” You’re painfully aware that unless you keep your customers happy, you won’t have customers.

A critical component in keeping your patrons happy is excellent service. Visitors to your establishment want more than just cocktails and appetizers; they want fast, efficient service from a professional wait staff. Providing that level of service depends on two things: the right employees and accurate scheduling.

Let’s say that you’ve already found the optimal collection of wait staff, hostesses, bartenders, and kitchen staff. The challenge comes when you try to create schedules that meet their needs for part- or full-time hours, vacation time, preferred shifts, and much more. Adding to the challenge is when employees call in sick or have an emergency and can’t report to work. On a busy night at your bar, being short one cocktail waitress or bartender means service suffers—and that brings us back to the primary objective.

While traditional methods for weekly staff scheduling—paper and pencil or spread sheets—have been around for years, they are time intensive, manual processes that don’t lend themselves to change. And as you’ve probably learned over the years, change happens to nightclub schedules. Every time an employee asks for a last-minute change, you have to scramble to find out who else is available for that time slot of the people who can actually work that type of shift; you can’t expect your hostess to mix drinks. After scouring through your schedule, reviewing time-off requests, and finding phone numbers, you finally find a replacement to cover the shift. But while you’ve been searching and calling, your patrons have been sitting and waiting—and we’re right back to the primary objective.

Rather than continue to waste time and energy using traditional scheduling methods, perhaps you’re ready to try something new—like online scheduling software from What Time Do I Work.com. With our easy-to-use web scheduling software,  all your employees’ names, departments, skillsets, emails, phone numbers, preferred shifts, availability and requested time off is in one online location. With point-and-click simplicity, you can create an employee schedule in minutes. And because all time-off and shift requests are stored in the software, you’ll receiveautomatic alerts if there’s any conflicts—such as trying to schedule a bartender on her vacation day. Schedule changes are just as easy—simply move a time slot to a new name and you’re done.

Helping you meet your primary objective, What Time Do I Work online job scheduling software means:

  • Better scheduling communications – All schedules are stored in a secure cloud. All your workers have 24×7 access to weekly schedules. In addition, schedule changes appear in the cloud immediately, and they are delivered to your employees emails and/or cellphone. All workers know what’s happening at your nightclub, all the time.
  • No more phone calls – Because every schedule is delivered to your workers’ emails and  cellphones, you’ll no longer receive phone calls from them wondering when the weekly schedule will be posted. Even better, your employees can even find their own replacements and cover their shifts themselves.
  • Reduced no-shows – Workers receive automatic alerts about their upcoming shifts. Reminders are a great way to ensure everyone shows up for work on time.
  • Reduce overhead costs – While creating schedules, you’re not only alerted to conflicts (reducing the number of times you have to update the schedule), but you also know when certain employees are scheduled for overtime shifts.

To discover how much time and frustration you can save by using our web scheduling software, you can try it for free with no obligation for 30 days. No credit card is required to sign up.  To learn about all the benefits, please visit https://www.whattimedoiwork.com/features/

Follow us on LinkedIn

Raising the Stakes on your Casino schedule

17 Oct, 2013 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

1084415

Providing entertainment 24×7 for patrons who love to throw the dice, spin the wheel, and play the cards, your casino is always on. And that means your staff must be always on, too. The trick is scheduling the right number of personnel with the right skill sets in each department—every minute of every day. Considering you have to deal with numerous departmental and union rules, creating such a workforce schedule is a complex and often challenging task. In the end, the schedule needs to work not only for your employees, but also for your patrons.

When you sit down to create your staff schedule each week, you must account for a wide range of employee variables—part-time employees and full-time; weekday workers and weekenders; multi-talented staff members and one-dimensional; vacation time, sick time, and overtime.

Now let’s add to the confusion by thinking about scheduling from your casino’s point of view. During the course of a year, you have busy and slow hours, days and seasons. To keep operations moving at peak efficiency, while also tending to your customers’ needs, you need to base your weekly work schedules on historical trends. But even the best-laid plans (and schedules) are meaningless when the unexpected rush occurs. While you look forward to rushes for the extra revenues they create, you dread them for the scheduling headaches. No matter how you created your schedule, rushes mean real-time shifting of employees to meet customers’ needs—whether additional poker dealers or security guards, or fewer attendants at the roulette wheels.

So at the end of the day, you need a solution that enables you to create an effective schedule that accommodates full-time, part-time, weekday and weekend workers; identifies skill sets and training; tracks time-off requests; tracks hours worked and overtime hours; is easily updated; and enables you to run reports and see trends.

Sound like a lot to handle? Not when you use an online employee scheduling solution designed to handle all of the scheduling challenges casino operators face today. With What Time Do I Work.com’s  easy-to-use web scheduling software, you can store all your employees’ names, departments, unions, skillsets, emails, phone numbers, preferred shifts, and requested time off in one online location, accessible from anywhere 24×7. So rather than fumble with a stack of paper requests for time off or vacations, or try to remember who is trained in what department, or determine how many workers you need in each area on a particular date, What Time Do I Work.com will tell you everything you need to know—quickly and easily.

Using the What Time Do I Work online job scheduling software, you can look forward to a wide range of benefits.

Better scheduling communications – All employee schedule calendars are stored in a secure cloud. All your workers have 24×7 access to their work schedules. In addition, schedule changes appear in the cloud immediately, and they are delivered to your employees email or smart phone. All workers know what’s happening, all the time.

No more phone calls – Because every schedule is delivered to workers’ email or smart phone, your employees can see open shifts and volunteer to fill them. Even better, you will no longer receive phone calls from workers, wondering when the weekly schedule will be posted.

Reduced no-shows – Workers receive automatic alerts about their upcoming shifts. Reminders are a great way to ensure workers show up for work on time.

Better shift coverage – You can schedule adequate workers in busier departments and avoid scheduling too many workers in slower departments, based on scheduling reports. In fact, you can save your schedules and re-use them in the future. Best of all you can put ownership of shift coverage back in the employees’ hands, when they have last minute requests for time off.

Improve customer experience – With the optimal number of workers scheduled in every department, your customers will get the service they want and deserve.

Reduce overhead costs – While creating schedules, you are not only alerted to conflicts (reducing the number of times you have to update the schedules), but you also know when certain employees are scheduled for overtime shifts. The program will automatically calculate labor costs for every shifts.

To discover how much time and money you can save by using our web scheduling software, you can try it for free with no obligation for 30 days. No credit card is required to sign up.  To learn more, please visit https://www.whattimedoiwork.com/free-trial/

Follow us on LinkedIn

Keeping Track Of a Changing Staff

03 Oct, 2013 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

5087320

The idea of hiring a new server, Sous Chef or busboy—and having that person remain with your restaurant for years—is an appealing one.  The reality of life in the restaurant industry, however, is quite different. Employee turnover is high, due to workers going back to school, starting a family, finding an office job, suffering from the physical toll, or facing the breakup of a behind-the-bar romance. Whatever the reason, you have to deal with an ever-changing employee roster, and that makes creating weekly work schedules challenging.

Just when you think you’ve got it made—where you know all your workers and their contact information, preferred availability, and time off requests—the inevitable occurs, and you lose a certain percentage of your staff. Forget about the security of knowing who works when and for how much. Stop dreaming about a workable vacation schedule for the next 6 months. Start facing the fact that you have to update all your rosters and call sheets and schedules.

Unless, of course, you throw away your traditional paper-and-pencil schedules and move up to online scheduling software. By storing all information in a secure cloud, it’s quick and easy to add, delete, and update employee information. You also benefit from 24×7 access to everything you need to create schedules—names, preferred shifts, time off requests, hours/week, etc. Better yet, you can run reports on anything you want. You can track each employee’s:

  • Hours worked per week/month
  • Rate of pay
  • Vacation time
  • Sick time
  • Emergency time off
  • Overtime
  • Contact Information

If such a solution sounds like the right fit for your restaurant, you can get it today from WhatTimeDoIWork.com. You can use our advanced yet easy-to-use software to create a clear and accurate picture of each employee’s work history. This type of information will be very valuable when it’s time for giving raises or promotions, or providing extra hours or time off.

To discover for yourself just how much time and energy you can save by using our secure web scheduling software, you can test drive it for free. There’s no obligation, and no credit card is required to sign up.  For complete information on our web scheduling software, please visit https://www.whattimedoiwork.com/features/.

Empower Your Staff To Schedule Their Own Coverage

26 Sep, 2013 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

3177862

As a manager at a medical facility, it’s your job to create weekly work schedules for a wide range of staff members—doctors, nurses, LNA, medical assistants, pharmacists, and so many more. You take your job very seriously, always attempting to meet the staff’s requests for time off, vacations, and preferred shifts. This is a daunting task all by itself, but with so many staff members to coordinate, and so many requests that’s not the entire challenge.

Things get more interesting when a staff member can’t come to work because of illness, a family emergency, dead battery in the car, or any number of reasons. You have to scramble to find a replacement for that employee—and do it fast!

Now let’s consider what happens when it’s not just one staff member in one department calling in sick, but one or more staff members in every department across your medical facility, and during cold and flu season, this is not an unusual occurrence. The result is a scheduling nightmare, and worse, not enough staff on duty to care for patients.

A proven way to resolve all these problems is using secure online scheduling software that empowers staff members to find their own replacements instead of you. By storing all employee names, departments, phone numbers, and email addresses in the cloud—which offers 24×7 access by an internet-enabled device—every staff member has the power to find a replacement when necessary. And don’t worry—you don’t have to wait for this advanced solution, you can get it today from WhatTimeDoIWork.com!

Here’s how it works.

  • You start by entering your staff members’ names & departments, and then your employees can enter their contact information & preferred shifts, all in a single cloud-based location that you can access 24×7.
  • Then, you create weekly schedules with easy-to-use web-based software.
  • Once you complete a schedule, you post it to the secure cloud and it‘s sent to all the staff members’ phones or emails in a single click.
  • When illness or emergency occurs, a staff member can pull up the current schedule, see at a glance who is available for work, and find his/her own replacement. It’s just that easy.

With an online schedule solution, the hours you save updating schedules and looking for replacements can be put to much better use doing what your organization does best—care for patients!

To discover for yourself just how much time and money you can save by using our secure web scheduling software, you can test drive it for free. There’s no obligation, and no credit card is required to sign up.  For complete information on our web scheduling software, please visit https://www.whattimedoiwork.com/features/.

Ensuring the Right Number of Workers on Every Shift

19 Sep, 2013 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

2046625

All businesses have both slow and busy seasons/days/hours, however retail companies are hit hardest by dramatic swings in customer traffic. It can be a struggle to create a schedule that includes the optimal coverage for every shift. You don’t want to schedule too many people during the slower times—that would be too costly to your bottom line. But you need to make sure enough personnel are on the floor during the busier times—ensuring your customers enjoy a pleasant shopping experience.

Guessing and estimating might work some days. Then again, “guestimating” might also miss the target entirely, leaving you grossly overstaffed on a slow day, or perilously understaffed on days that the barrage of customers walk through your doors  needing assistance.

To get a clearer idea about when you need more or less staff, you can review sales reports. These documents enable you to see your busiest and slowest days/hours throughout the year. But that’s only one piece of the scheduling puzzle.  You must also consider the availability of your staff, their preferred hours each week, and time-off requests. In addition, you need to ensure your employees are aware of the schedule (ahead of time), deal with scheduling conflicts, and eliminate overtime hours whenever possible. Juggling all these variables can significantly impact other important aspects of your business that require your attention.

A proven way to resolve all these problems is at your fingertips with online employee scheduling software. By storing all employee contact information, availability, and previous schedules in the cloud, you can quickly and easily create conflict-free schedules. Fortunately that solution is available today from WhatTimeDoIWork.com!

Here’s how it works.

  • You start by entering all your employees’ names and departments, all in a single cloud-based location that you can access 24×7.
  • Then, you create weekly schedules with easy-to-use web-based software.
  • Once you’ve used the system for a while, you can run reports against the existing schedules to gather in-depth information about any day you choose. You can discover:
    • Who worked what shifts
    • How many workers were on the floor during any shift
    • Overtime hours
    • Busy days of the week/month
    • Slow days of the week/month

Best of all, you can use the built-in reporting and analytics capabilities to predict the volume of business from one week/month/quarter to the next. Also with accurate forecasts in hand, you can make optimal schedules by having the right employees scheduled for the right shifts in the right place.

To discover for yourself just how much time and money you can save by using our web scheduling software, you can test drive it for free. There’s no obligation, and no credit card is required to sign up.  For complete information on our web scheduling software, please visit https://www.whattimedoiwork.com/features/