Are you the owner of a retail or restaurant business? Regardless of the products that you sell, keeping a tight grip on your labor budget is critical to produce a profit in today’s economic climate. Appropriate staff costs such as turnover, payroll costs, and training must be managed suitably. Your company can access profitability with the correct course of action and set of tools to aid with the complicated task of labor management.
A key to directing your staff correctly is scheduling part-time and full-time employees before there is a necessity for them to work which is a theoretical work schedule, then track when the employees clock in and out, which is the actual hours worked, against their scheduled work hours. This is a process called actual vs. theoretical, or AvT. To maximize the sales for a business, successful managers decrease the variance between the Theoretical schedule and the Actual hours worked.
One of two situations will result from careless labor scheduling in your business:
1.Over scheduling (too many employees are scheduled to work), which causes additional payroll expenses and diminishes profits. Employees will be sent home without the working hours promised on the schedule.
2.Under scheduling, which causes a decrease in sales and profits.
Both options are disagreeable, so in your business, keep in control of the AvT.
Needs of the business and employee satisfaction are consistently balanced by smart managers in an effort of keeping the expenses of payroll down, limiting turnover, and extending profits. Turnover is very costly to a business, and a study by the Employment Policy Foundation in 2004 discovered that a single full-time staff member’s average turnover cost is $13,355. A retail business would have to sell 3,000 pairs of khakis at $35 a pair.
Invoking a labor scheduling tool such as TimeForge, an online employee scheduling solution, is a good way to decrease turnover.
Peter Edwards is the owner of Zeb’s General Store in North Conway, New Hampshire. He realizes that the key to managing a successful retail business, especially one that is seasonal, is proper employee scheduling. TimeForge helps Peter manage part and full time scheduling at his store which reduced employee turnover and lowered labor costs. Peter likes to use TimeForge templates to build schedules quickly, and TimeForge sends automatic emails and text messages of the schedule to his employees daily, which notifies employees of their upcoming work schedule and keeps his staff happy.
Peter said this about TimeForge:
I own a retail company. We employ 15 full time employees, and between 5 and 15 part time employees depending upon our season. I signed up for the 90 day trial period and have been using the TimeForge program for about 45 days. I have found the program to be easy to use and it hits the mark with respect to our staff scheduling needs. The email notification aspect of the program is a great feature that I am sure our employees will like.
The most important aspect of TimeForge is the incredible customer support. Responses to the help menu item are emailed within 24 hours, and a live person actually answers the phone to respond to your questions. I look forward to using TimeForge and would be pleased to talk with any prospective user of the scheduling program.
Sign up for a free trial of TimeForge to experience what TimeForge can do for your hospitality, retail, or restaurant business or you can contact our sales department for more information about TimeForge.
Menu
