workforce management awareness guide - Bitly

THE 2018

WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT AWARENESS GUIDE 16 Mistakes to Avoid When Hiring, Scheduling, and Managing Your Employees Join the workforce management revolution!

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INTRODUCTION Inside a business mogul’s mind…

“Clients do not come first,” mused entrepreneur and philanthropist, Sir Richard Branson. “Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your clients.” Sir Richard Branson, whose business empire includes over 400 companies, knows a thing or two about clients and employees. This quote, when read in the context of a hypersuccessful business mogul’s expertise, is undeniable and most will agree with him: treat employees well.

“To win in the marketplace,” said Doug Conant, CEO of Campbell’s Soup “you must first win in the workplace.” Putting employees first is smart business.

But if Sir Richard Branson came to your company, looked at your business, considered it from every angle objectively, would he believe you’re putting employees first?

Of course, putting employees first doesn’t mean rolling out benefits and pay your business can’t sustain. There are less pleasant tasks. There are early mornings or late nights that can’t be avoided. There are inevitable downsides to any employee’s work, but that’s no excuse for not addressing problems with easy fixes.

Putting employees first isn’t simply philanthropic or kindhearted. It makes business sense. Building consistent, lean and scalable systems that rely on data to hire, manage and communicate with employees isn’t just good for employees, it’s great for business. Cutting down on turnover and training while streamlining systems makes the lives of your employees better—and yours, too. SCHEDULE A DEMO TODAY

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As WorkAxle came into being, we took a different approach to building the product. We asked questions first and built last. We interviewed over 150 business owners across multiple industries, geographies and company sizes, exploring their problems, finding trends and recognizing the issues that plagued most companies—and their employees. These 16 mistakes were among the most talked about in the interviews and influenced the way we created WorkAxle, focusing using technology to improve hiring, scheduling, management and communication to overcome business obstacles. Learn from the lessons of other business owners, entrepreneurs and managers. Find out how to identify and solve these common mistakes: owners and managers view their schedule creation through one lens: who is available?

MISTAKE #1

Availability is important (why schedule someone who will be on vacation in Peru?), but it’s a one-dimensional view of a multidimensional person.

Solely scheduling employees by availability Your employees are dynamic. They have personalities, coworker friendships, strengths, weaknesses, skills, attitudes, passions and, when they come to work, they bring this dynamism with them.

You don’t buy a new car solely on its color or pick a hotel based only on their brand of mini shampoo. There are a multitude of factors to consider in any decision and, while you may care deeply about the color of your car or the tiny hair care products, you know to use a wide lens.

This is easy to recognize now—but do you think about these factors when scheduling your employees? Many business

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Scheduling solely by availability means missing out on pairing a senior employee with a brand-new employee who needs training. It means ignoring teams that work well together. Scheduling solely by availability means losing sight of labor costs and how to maximize ROI on every shift. Availability doesn’t tell you who handles busy periods the best or is certified to legally complete certain tasks.

everyone knows that, at specific points in the game, the right players need to be in position. You need the right number of players with the right roles and skills to win—and it’s really no different when scheduling your employees. One mistake business owners and managers continue to make is not building shifts. Think of it as building your team or roster during a given time period, a decision you make ahead of time.

Instead, employees should be scheduled in a holistic way that considers what they bring to your team more than just their physical presence. We call this intelligent scheduling. When your employees are scheduled in a way that is influenced by their personality, friendships, work style and skills, you empower them and get the most from their work. The need for intelligent scheduling is exactly why WorkAxle helps you build shifts based on employee roles, skills and availability. Using our tagging feature, you can search using terms like “quick worker”, “keyholder” or a specific skill, software, certification or requirement you need for any given shift.

If you need one manager and two crew members on Monday mornings from 6AM to noon, that’s the shift you’ll need to build. Taking “intelligent scheduling” into consideration, you’ll also think about building that shift around community events, customer behavior, weather and other factors.

MISTAKE #2 Not building shifts Whether you love football, hockey, baseball, basketball or haven’t the faintest idea of what goes on in a sports game,


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Scheduling by shifts ensures you always have the right people scheduled, not just who is available. It means never scrambling when you realize none of your closers are keyholders or scheduling staff who aren’t qualified to complete tasks because building by shift prevents those mistakes.

how and when to hire employees, how to build your shifts, where to make cuts and where to invest further. Ignoring data, from how many views your job posts receive to

We heard over and over the importance of avoiding easily preventable headaches. Scheduling by shifts is one way to bypass a migraine and an easy mistake to stop making.

MISTAKE #3 Not using data to make decisions As Big Data becomes more important for large companies to function in an informed way, the power and availability of data is filtering down to medium and small businesses as well.

turnover rates to profit margin on labor, leaves you open to bad hires, money-losing shifts, lack of employee skill optimization, overtime pay and not retaining your best employees.

As Peter Drucker once said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” Without data, you’re working without the knowledge of how to improve.

From our exploratory interviews, the businesses that were experimenting with data saw the value and those who weren’t yet were eager to find ways to be more informed with factual, statistical information that either confirmed their gut feelings, corrected their hunches or gave them new insight. It’s clear

Working hand in hand with technology and best practices, data shows trends and behavior that you can use to decide


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data is going to change how businesses run and succeed—or fail.

at longevity in their hiring must consider that 50% of the workforce in 2020 will be comprised of tech-native Millennials.

MISTAKE #4 Not embracing technology Technology has become unavoidable in running a business— and that’s a good thing! Now, more than ever, businesses of all sizes have access to tools and benefits that not so long ago were either nonexistent or out of reach for anyone but enterprise organizations. Furthermore, software has become exceedingly user-friendly, designed to be learned quickly and without training or a specialized IT expert on staff. Your marketing, payroll, point of sale, accounting and operations have all gone digital, giving you more access and utility, but not every business has modernized.

And even then, not all technology is created equally. Serverbased computer programs require frequent upgrades and force you to be present at the computer to get work done, begging the question: what if you’re on vacation or out of the area? Microsoft Excel can be ideal for some business functions, but for scheduling it’s merely a digital version of pencil and paper. Online job postings, while better than newspaper job ads by far, are expensive. Communication apps like Slack help, but silo communication from other critical

Businesses that rely on old-fashioned methods for scheduling, communicating with and hiring their employees are left open to human error, a lack of data and wasted time due to inefficient methods. Millennials and members of Generation Z have grown up with technology and they expect to use it often in their work; a business that hasn’t modernized is going to lack attraction for up and coming employees. Business looking


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employee functions. It’s not just about using technology, it’s about using the right tech the right way.

the ability to recoup the time or money spent or have a positive outcome—is the basis of the sunk cost fallacy.

An all-in-one scalable platform that is easy to use and solves problems is exactly what business owners should be looking for. Technology that is simple yet comprehensive can empower a business owner, allowing them to work anywhere with cloud-based software and a data-rich view of their business. Make sure that software integrates well into existing processes or future plans; this will save costs on building integrations and prevent frustration with disjointed systems.

It can be difficult to part with an established system or recognize you should’ve chosen a different solution, but business owners and managers cannot be controlled by regret or the fear of not “getting their money’s worth”. If something is broken, obsolete or not cutting it, it’s time to move forward. It can be helpful to calculate the true cost of not moving on; inefficient labor use, wasted marketing spend and expensive IT consultants add up. Technical debt or using a quick and easy platform that just as quickly begins to add extra work due to its poor fit as a solution, becomes more costly and obvious as technology spreads throughout organizations.

MISTAKE #5

Giving in to the sunk cost fallacy You made a business purchase a few years ago, perhaps a piece of equipment, software or a marketing plan. At the time it did most of what you needed it to do, but now? Now, it’s just a burden and barely works, but you keep thinking about the time and money you spent—even though you’ll never get either back. Not everyone is familiar with the idea of the sunk cost fallacy, but it’s a surprisingly simple concept every business should be aware of avoiding. Continuing to invest time, money or energy in something because of an emotional attachment—without


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One barrier that makes it harder to move away from a broken but familiar purchase is fear of the unknown. Learning a new system or piece of equipment, switching over data or training employees starts to feel overwhelming.

Unhappy employees? Well, that’s a different story. They don’t invest themselves in their work, they’re not committed to happy customers and, ultimately, they leave. In a social media influenced world, one unhappy employee can create many unhappy customers who then create negative reviews, sometimes sinking a business. Time spent on advertising these now open positions, hiring and training new staff could have been better spent ensuring your employees were happy in the first place.

On the software end of your business, you can prevent a future sunk cost by keeping several things in mind. Find software that is easy to learn and requires minimal training. Find software that is cloud-based because it means you’ll always have the newest version, can access it from anywhere and never worry about upgrading. Ensure the software is scalable and can follow you in any direction your business grows. Be sure to ask about the company’s customer support and training experience. You want a partner that is willing to invest in you and your success and help you implement quickly.

MISTAKE #6 Ignoring employee feedback Employees can make—or break—any business. Keeping them engaged and happy means employees treat customers well and you will spend less time hiring and training new employees. Happy employees tend to stay where they are, grow with the business and create a better overall work environment.


Employees want a workplace where they feel valued, where their time and personal life are treated with respect and they get a sense of team belonging. It’s worth surveying employees, both happy current ones and those who exit your

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business, to find out what they love and what could use improvement. Ask them, without repercussions, what would make their work environment better. Show your commitment to listening.

It’s not difficult to see how every single part of your business is, in some way, connected. However, many businesses “silo” their operations, segregating departments and functions as if they’re unrelated and don’t

As you hear from your employees, work to identify trends in your best employees. What makes them different? What was their hiring and training process like? What do you notice motivates them? When they do leave, why do they leave? How do you deliver feedback to them? Listening to your employees is critical as they have a day-today view of the business you may lack or view in a different way.

affect each other. They tighten up labor costs without telling employees about changes in overtime rules. They introduce new processes without considering how it might affect the customers’ experiences. Their systems and software don’t integrate so valuable data and communication doesn’t have adequate visibility for decision-making.

MISTAKE #7 Placing company functions in a silo Your marketing affects sales. Your sales affects the number of employees you need. The need for employees affects how you hire new ones. New employees affect your payroll and accounting teams. And the cycle continues!


Any decision, no matter how seemingly small, needs to be made while considering the entire operation. Great internal

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communication and cohesive systems make this easier, but it may take a hard look at the business as whole to find out what areas are the most siloed. “The most important thing we are doing here is collapsing the silos,” says Eash Sundaram, EVP of innovation and CIO of JetBlue, quoted in Martha Heller’s Be the Business: CIOs in the new eras of IT. “When we think about a program, we don’t think about IT and finance and commercial operations. We think about how the program improves our customer or employee experience.” If a huge corporation like JetBlue is capable of breaking down silos across time zones and thousands of employees, imagine what a small or medium-sized business can achieve.

Do you know what you’d do if a sudden snow storm hit or your closing manager couldn’t come in? What if a huge promotional sale is passed down by the corporate franchise team and catches you—and your schedule—off guard? What happens if a nasty bug hits the entire team? A water pipe breaks?

MISTAKE #8

Not having a scheduling plan

You may not want to think of worst case scenarios before they happen, but your schedule will have to respond to these changes as quickly as they come up. If you don’t have a defined plan for what to do when the unexpected happens, it’s time to start making plans before you’re forced to make them on the fly without adequately considering your employees.


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If a shift is understaffed because the manager hadn’t considered the holiday season, employees may clock in early to help their teammates or call in more expensive employees you hadn’t planned on working as much. If you’d scheduled

Consider different scenarios and brainstorm solutions with your team so you’re not making a game-time decision you may later regret. Think of possible scenarios: illness, injury, sudden spikes in business, no-shows, equipment failure and weather. Knowing what to do ahead of time makes it easier to make decisions and, if you’re not present, empowers your team to do the right thing. How will you communicate changes or updates to your team? Identify how you’ll notify people and provide updates as quickly as possible, especially if it means a change in schedules. When the unimaginable happens—which it always seems to— you and your team will be ready!

well and used data to decide how you’d build employee shifts, your schedule would’ve been lean but efficient.

MISTAKE #9

Not controlling labor costs Labor costs are one the highest expenditures for nearly any business, typically ranging between 30 and 50% of their total annual budget, depending on industry and location. If you don’t hire and schedule employees well, you can rack up substantial unexpected costs every payroll cycle.


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If employees can freely swap shifts, they can rack up overtime hours and lead to friction between other employees and management. If they’re not scheduled in line with their availability or abilities, shift swapping will happen more often. Ideally, a system that limits and monitors shift swaps will curb this issue.

how it will affect your customers? Do you consider what your customers will tell their friends and family?

Controlling labor costs can begin as soon as employees are hired in a way that helps them understand their role in the financial health of the business and preventing uncomfortable conversations later on. Communicating overtime and early clock in policies is an important step, but it’s a week-by-week practice of using intelligent scheduling practices to ensure that schedules are built based on historical data, trends and predetermined plans with employees’ interests in mind.

MISTAKE #10

It’s a well-known fact word-of-mouth is directly related to customer experiences. “If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word-of-mouth is very powerful,” Jeff Bezos, the Founder and CEO of Amazon, once said.

Not being granular about your customers Right about now you’re thinking back to that Sir Richard Branson quote about putting employees first, we know. But thinking of your employees first doesn’t mean you never think about your customers. Happy employees lead to happy customers and the reverse is true as well.

Considering your customers helps ensure they’ll be back, so your promotions, scheduling and employees should reflect your desire for repeat customers. Properly scheduling busy periods to minimize wait times, offering products or services

When you implement a new procedure, hire an employee or make a change in your business, how often do you think of


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they want and going above and beyond creates not just customers but brand promoters.

MISTAKE #11

That’s why every decision, big and small, should consider your customers and their reaction. Asking “what will the customers think?” before making a decision helps ensure your business is run in a way that delights your customers. If you find yourself on the receiving end of customer complaints, be sure to listen, find a solution and communicate the situation to your team to prevent future problems. While not every customer will have a valid or actionable complaint, simply listening and encouraging your employees to do the same can prevent a social media meltdown or a damaged reputation.

Spending too much time on simple tasks As a business owner, entrepreneur or manager, you surely have tasks you just can’t avoid doing. They may be well below your pay grade or title like taking out trash, filling in for an employee or doing grunt work to save some extra money you can put toward the business.

Take some surprising customer service advice from Mahatma Ghandi: “A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.” Next time you make a business decision or deal with a difficult customer, think about this quote!


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It’s admirable and often necessary, but there’s also something important to be said for finding ways to work smarter and spend less time on simple tasks that can be delegated, automated or done quickly.

Find solutions that put you in the right spot in your business. WorkAxle, for example, can help trim easily simplified tasks like scheduling, hiring and employee communication down to just a few minutes each month. Look for software and tools that are easily taught and can be handed off if other pressing matters hold your attention, making you a delegation pro.

You may have a manager handling your product orders. Your payroll might be outsourced to an accountant who does it quickly and efficiently. Why? Because you’re more effective elsewhere.

There’s no shame in doing what you’re best at and finding ways to work smart.

MISTAKE #12

“If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate,” said John C. Maxwell.

Not staying organized Who was the candidate for the manager opening you interviewed last week—and where did her application disappear to? Where are the time off requests for next week’s schedule? Did you respond to that customer who asked a question on Facebook this morning?

Don’t underestimate the value of automating or delegating tasks you either aren’t skilled at or don’t enjoy doing. You’ll be happier, less stressed and have time to focus on doing what you’re best at: running your business. It also creates an opportunity to empower an employee to learn something new or gain new responsibility. When it comes to time-wasting activities, scheduling employees is near the top of the list and is consistently rated as a least-favorite activity by those who run businesses. Did you know the average business owner spends 20 hours EVERY month on building schedules alone?


If you don’t know who is who in the zoo, it’s impossible to run a business well. It’s easy to have 500 things swirling around your head when you’re trying to keep your business running smoothly. Organization doesn’t come naturally to everyone and there’s certainly a threshold for even the most organized people

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when they begin to lose track of things, miss critical details and enter a tailspin.

You don’t have to be the owner of a highly-seasonal ice cream shop to know that seasons and weather affect business. Sometimes shoppers flock to stores on a sunny day—and for other businesses good weather means a glacially slow day.

Your businesses shouldn’t suffer when organization can be so easily fixed.

The holiday shopping season, “snowbirds” in warm climates Find an organization strategy that works for you. Taking notes, creating to-do lists, keeping a calendar, setting reminders, having accountability partners and centralizing information can hold things together when you’re being pulled in so many directions. If you start to feel the wheels coming off, refer back to Mistake 11 and begin delegating to lighten your load. Your employees will value your consistency and calm, guaranteed.

MISTAKE #13 Ignoring seasons or weather

and tax return “season” can all have an effect on a business. Business owners and managers should spend time understanding how time, weather and seasons influence their employees, customers and business. Look at sales trends, interview employees, ask loyal customers and find out how seasons, holiday and weather truly affects your business.


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Some businesses still rely on bulletin boards, handwritten When it comes to how this affects your employees, it’s important to be properly staffed, have shifts created to address busy or slow periods and easy communication should the weather break and you need an extra hand. Having employees standing around bored during slow seasons or working to the point of frustration is detrimental to the team and the business.

MISTAKE #14 Lacking good internal communications Remember the last time an employee didn’t communicate a change or important news? You probably felt frustrated, annoyed and had to be reactive instead of proactive. In reality, your employees feel the same when your business lacks good communication practices. It is crucial to make sure your employees know about updates, news, new practices and shift changes in a clear and consistent way for the sake of their safety, your customers and ease of operations.

notes, sporadic text messages and social media groups but these can be easily missed, not reach people and there’s no way to show employees were alerted to a new safety procedure or rule, leaving you potentially open to liability. Another detail to consider? People view sharing their personal data differently. Some employees may not want to share personal information with co-workers or link their social media to work. Respecting both employee privacy and keeping


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employees off of social media during work hours are topics worth considering.

When you hire a candidate for your team, they immediately become an employee you manage. In the hiring process, you gathered information about them: their past work, their

Announcements and updates need to be delivered in a way that you can guarantee everyone sees them. When implementing a new communication strategy, it’s important to get ideas and buy-in from the entire team. They may see communication gaps or opportunities that you missed and their inclusion in the process can result in better compliance once the changes are implemented. “The art of communication is the language of leadership” – John Hughes

MISTAKE #15 Not bridging the gap between the hiring and management processes

schedule, their hobbies and a few notes about their skills and strengths from checking their references. However, the hiring and management processes almost immediately diverge into separate functions. There’s no link between how they found the job opening, their past experience, their skills or preferred management style and how you’ll manage or lead them from Day 1. SCHEDULE A DEMO TODAY

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Let’s face it: there is liability associated with running a business. Employees may not adhere to safety measures that result in an injury, problem employees may claim they’d never received warnings about behavior or a customer may hit patch of ice in the parking lot and twist an ankle.

What if you could recognize trends? Perhaps you become aware that a certain university or previous employer has a training program and employees who have been valuable and stayed with the company originated in the program. Maybe you’ll see that college employees quit in high numbers around finals week—and you’ll know in the future to schedule and hire differently.

Sure, insurance does come to the rescue in many situations and often lawsuits never come to a courthouse. However, business owners shouldn’t need to worry about frivolous suits or charges. Having systems in place that allow you to build a paper trail or evidence showing that you are responsible, compliant and do everything in your power to prevent risk to employees and customers can save major headaches and legal fees.

For seasonal companies, it’s impossible to retain their best employees year-round. However, it is important to establish contact before the season ends so that you have a roster of your best employees year after year who you can call on as the season heats up. If you’ve connected your management and hiring process, you’ll have the data you need to identify your best talent and rehire them for future seasons. Not every employee is the right fit. With an integrated hiring and management process, you can also discipline and transition employees who don’t add value to your business. Within WorkAxle, we keep employee data, from application to exit, within the system to ensure you’re compliant.

MISTAKE #16 Not limiting liability


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There’s no way to validate whether or not an employee saw a

CONCLUSION Where WorkAxle comes in… Over the hours we spent with the business owners who helped us craft the most useful product possible, we heard distinct needs that no single software or tool was helping to solve. The business owners used pieced together systems, handwritten notes, software they hated and frustrated their employees. Each manager or entrepreneur had conducted extensive research on finding solutions to no avail. Some solutions offered everything they needed, but for an impossible price. Others offered only bits of what they needed and weren’t user friendly.

bulletin board update about new franchise procedures that could later result in their dismissal. Poor communication might’ve prevented an employee from applying salt to the parking lot to melt that patch of ice.

It was obvious then.

Creating a communication system of records and clear evidence of disciplinary issues helps limit your liability. Working with the 150 business owners while creating Work Axle, they also recognized the need for businesses to create processes that provide evidence and proactively prevent issues that lead to lawsuits or regulatory problems, a major reason WorkAxle is focused on providing tools that allow for clear communication and setting expectations.


We had to build a product that solved three of the biggest hurdles businesses of every size, location and industry face: hiring, scheduling and communication. Tackling hiring issues meant making applying for jobs easy and meeting potential employees where they spend most of their time: online. By empowering businesses to create easy-to-use online job postings, we also gave them the access to data to

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see how much interest there was in the opening and how many people viewed and applied to the position via Google and Facebook Analytics.

We also listened to business owners recount how frustrating it is to remember employee schedules. However, we also recognized that employee scheduling was vital to keeping good employees happy; they felt respected when their schedule and personal life was respected, too. Simply, WorkAxle won’t show you unavailable employees who are on vacation or not a fit for the shift.

This also meant creating a system that worked for seasonal businesses. By being able to reach employees easily through the app, it allowed seasonal businesses to rehire their best team members while retaining their contact info and work history.

As we dove deeper into scheduling, we were shocked to find how many hours were spent on the task and just how much business owners hated every minute of it. We knew that if we could make the scheduling process straightforward and easy that this time would be spent better elsewhere by a much happier business owner.

Since employees are hired through the app, it creates an easy transition into managing and scheduling the employee. Using the hiring data and insight, businesses can now manage their employees in a way that helps keep both parties happy. Once an employee is hired, we knew there had to be a better way than relying solely on their availability to build a schedule; it simply didn’t take the whole employee into account. It missed opportunities to build powerful, complete teams.

But even with the ability to hire and schedule easily, the product wasn’t complete. There was something missing. We listened as business owners agreed on their frustration over bulletin boards, missed text messages and forgotten voicemails. They would scramble to cover a shift, frantically calling and texting. Employees wanted to keep their personal contact info private from coworkers. Discipline issues would go unacknowledged in written form. Communication, then, was the next issue to tackle.

The shift building system shows ahead of time what roles are needed for a given date and time period. Using the tagging feature, you can even search by employee keywords to be sure every skills, certification or detail is covered on the shift since employees who share a title may bring different benefits or abilities.


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By hiring, managing and communicating with one tool, you have an easy way to access and contact every employee. There are no wrong phone numbers, missed texts or unseen notes. WorkAxle empowers you to communicate praise, changes and clarification in one easy place.

the data you require to run a business. WorkAxle is wellsupported, offers training and can grow with your business, curating a working environment that puts your employees first. Rather than tell you more, we’d rather continue doing the one thing that has made WorkAxle a success: listening to business owners. We’d love to learn about your business and explore WorkAxle together. We’ll reach out to you shortly via email to learn about what you want to achieve and see how we can help you hire, schedule and communicate better than ever before.

With better communication, employees soon felt more included and informed. Questions could be asked easily and feedback given freely. Businesses didn’t worry about employees claiming they “hadn’t seen” a new policy; it was there in the app with a ‘read’ receipt. It wasn’t just hiring, scheduling and communication our helpful business owners struggled with. There was also the issue of software itself. Sure, the features were important and the benefits were impressive, but these business owners had tried software that promised to schedule better, communicate freely and help them hire. And they found it to be too expensive, lacking support, quickly outdated and difficult to learn or teach employees. You’ll notice quickly that WorkAxle is not like other software. It’s everything you need to put your employees first and delight your customers with the best experience without being difficult to use or costly. It’s the all-in-one solution that you can access anywhere, quickly and easily, that gives you


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