Do you manage labor for a golf course? We understand how tough it can be to juggle so many moving pieces. Keep reading to find out how you can simplify your life.
A superintendent’s job can be tough
In a tough economy, a superintendent has even more paperwork than usual, with less time to complete everyday tasks (much less focus on implementing new policies). It’s a complex and competitive field. You need to oversee the turf management, water reduction, pest control, and an irritating influx of Canada Geese. Then, you concern yourself with maintenance, management of finances, relations with customers, hiring and training employees, marketing your course, and balancing maximum cost reduction without reducing quality.
You simply don’t have any time to spare! Though you need several extra hours every week for building and modifying the employee schedule and monitoring attendance, spending unnecessary time in the office is the last thing you want! However, an efficient schedule may be the first thing you need.
Why you need a more efficient schedule
Scheduling employees for a golf course can be a headache. After juggling several employees with a wide range of skill sets, varying availabilities, part-time schedules, accrued PTO, and your course’s busy times, just to hash out a moderately coherent employee schedule, you have to find staff with suitable skill levels to accommodate shift swaps or cover for time-off requests, reorganize the schedule to find the best use of staff (without compromising coverage), and test out variations of the schedule without wasting any more time. After finally developing an efficient schedule, you’ll need to monitor attendance to prevent time clock abuses.
When the schedule is completed, you need to notify all the employees, deal with questions about the next week’s schedule (or worse, try to fill a missed shift), and sometimes you’ll need to redo the entire process because of an unexpected shift swap, sick day, or time off request.
It can be such a pain, but it’s excruciatingly vital to your course’s success. If you under-schedule, you’ll lose golfers to poor service experiences. If you over-schedule, you’ll lose profits to overspending on staff.
Tools can help you manage labor for your golf course
With recent advances in technology, there are tools that can help streamline this time drain. TimeForge can cut your employee scheduling time from hours to just minutes. Really!
In many ways, other than saving you time spent managing, TimeForge can save you money. Using TimeForge’s AutoSchedulerTM, you can have an entire employee schedule at the click of your computer mouse. The AutoSchedulerTM generates auto-optimized schedules for maximum profit and efficiency. With TimeForge’s other features, you can determine the shifts that your cart barn is overstaffed and easily adjust schedules, instantly cutting labor costs. You can quickly and easily schedule your most experienced employees during your busiest periods to reduce complaints and backlogs without over-staffing. You can keep an eye on attendance (on-site or remotely) in order to curb buddy punching and reduce overtime. Moreover, you can monitor labor costs in real-time, and forecast your future costs and staff requirements. It all adds up: TimeForge can increase course profits by 3-5%.
TimeForge is an essential (and easy-to-use) labor management software for golf courses. If you’re still not convinced, read what TimeForge users are saying here.
Read more about TimeForge Scheduling, TimeForge Attendance, and TimeForge Daily Log.