Managing a martial arts studio extends beyond the regular workday. You need to be informed about advances in Karate, Tae Kwon Do, Judo, Kung Fu, Aikido, Kenpo Karate, Tang Soo Do, cardio kickboxing, boxing, and self defense. You need to attract students, retain students, hire and train instructors, schedule classes and private sessions, and handle all the financial aspects of owning a business, and in a recession you can’t afford to waste a dime.
When you’re consumed with the other areas of your business, important areas like employee scheduling can be put aside. Employee scheduling and attendance monitoring is an essential for your business, but how efficiently does your system run? The difference between a last-minute schedule and an efficient schedule can be thousands of dollars. You know it’s important. Staffing may be the largest expense you have. You simply must rein in over-time and over-scheduling. It can make the difference between a studio that thrives and one that merely survives.
But martial arts studio employee scheduling can be a hassle. Every employee has a different skill level and skill set, and different availability. You also have to manage accrued PTO, time-off requests, or class swap requests. To schedule efficiently, you need to consider all of these factors and simultaneously ensure that classes are offered during appealing times for your students.
After finally building the schedule, you need to notify all of your employees, handle endless questions about the next week’s schedule, and deal with any late class-swap, illness, or time off-requests. You make a ton of calls, and then notify your entire staff about the updated schedule.
In addition to the time you spent building and communicating the schedule, you spend hours poring over spreadsheets because you need to handle the next session’s or next month’s labor costs, or this week’s overtime, and also keep an eye on the time clock to ensure your employees aren’t riding the clock or buddy-punching.
Labor management in a martial arts business is complicated, time-consuming, and tedious, but you know that it’s also vital. Over-staffing costs you money. Under-staffing costs you students.
If the process of scheduling takes you hours, you’re not alone. You should be ecstatic to know that those hours can be easily freed up so that you can figure out how to slide through the recession unscathed (or just to have a weekend off every so often). TimeForge can cut your employee scheduling and attendance monitoring time from hours to minutes (literally).
With TimeForge, you can manage schedules at one or many locations, schedule employees with strong skill sets in the high volume classes, and monitor and forecast your labor costs. The increased efficiency and employee satisfaction combines with your new time for more important tasks to increase your martial arts studio profits by 3-5%.
With the ability to easily integrate with payroll systems, to automatically notify employees of new schedules and changes by email or text message (and the drop in late or absent employees), and the increased attention you’ll be able to give to the other facets of your business, the time saved in the first week of using TimeForge pays for the investment.
TimeForge doesn’t just save time, it gives you the tools to easily fine-tune your labor management and save you money. In fact, TimeForge can increase your martial arts studio profits by 3-5%.
During challenging financial times, experienced boutique owners understand that competing with chain stores requires advertising know-how, faultless buying knowledge, excellent customer service, and flawless labor management.
Most boutique managers agree that the biggest time-drain and hassle is labor management.
You probably spend hours every week building complicated labor schedules, coordinating multiple part-time employees, their skill sets and availabilities, labor laws, meal breaks, accrued PTO, trying to staff for your store’s busiest times (without over-staffing in the quiet times), then repeating the whole process when an employee requests time off or a shift swap.
You probably follow the schedule building by notifying your staff about the schedule and updates about meetings, trainings, shift changes. Then, you need to monitor employee attendance to prevent time clock abuse like early clock ins and buddy punching. Then, you need to keep up with daily sales and activities within the store, and accurately forecast future labor needs and costs. However, in the daily scramble, some things on the list just get put off. When added up, these unfinished tasks can prove to be costly, especially when they lead to an increased turnover rate.
Impeccable retail labor management is important, but it definitely isn’t easy. If you over-staff you lose money. If you under-staff you lose customers.
TimeForge enables boutique owners and managers to reduce the time spent on paperwork from hours to minutes, so you can spend your time more productively in the front of the store.
TimeForge’s ability to schedule employees with higher skill levels during high volume shifts and the ability to automatically monitor and forecast labor costs can increase boutique profits by 3-5%.
Consider TimeForge’s ability to notify your staff about upcoming schedules and schedule changes automatically through email or text message, the ability to integrate with your existing POS and payroll system, and the ability to refocus your energy on the everyday challenges instead of paperwork. The time saved in the first week alone pays for the investment.
TimeForge is an essential (and easy-to-use) labor management software for studios, but if you are still not convinced, read what TimeForge users are saying here.
Read more about TimeForge Scheduling, TimeForge Attendance, TimeForge Human Resources, and TimeForge Daily Log.
