Now you might be wondering, isn’t there a way to build a successful startup without all the hurdles? The answer to that question lies in how much passion, commitment, and hard work you are willing to invest in your new business. Startups don’t flop until the owner decides it is time to throw in the towel. The moment the drive to succeed is lost, breaking even and scaling is next to impossible.

If you genuinely want to build a successful startup, there are important factors to consider, many checklists to cross, and several ‘ts’ to cross. You need to understand what habits to adopt as an entrepreneur and what steps to take towards achieving the business of your dreams. Knowing and practicing these steps and principles may be the determiner of your startup’s success or failure.

It is time to ignore all the statistics floating all over the internet about how 50 to 75 percent of all startups fail and focus on how you can put your company among the 30 – 50 percent of startups that succeed. In all, you need to be practical and realistic about the targets you set for growth and try not to rush the process.

Points to consider before launching the business for a successful startup

Stay Positive and Progressive

You need to anticipate success and believe that you are capable of handling big prospects. You should never start a business fearing that you would fail. As an entrepreneur, you need to develop the right mindset and prepare yourself accordingly.

Entrepreneurship is not for everybody. If you have decided to launch your business, dress accordingly, note down your desire, the potential results, and take action towards setting things in motion. With passion, commitment, and willingness to take a risk, you will have a solid groundwork for success.

Make sure you are passionate about the idea

If you have decided to start a business, having a solid idea can be the most challenging or the easiest. One universal secret of successful companies is the founders’ passion – people who discovered the solution to a general problem and were prepared to invest their time and effort into the solution because of their passion. Without that drive, it would be difficult to push through the difficult and trying times, and they would have likely given up.

An easy way is to ask yourself if you really love the idea or you are pushing through it because you think it offers easy profits. Is the idea something that gets you ecstatic or excited? If the thought of making the business your primary source of living thrills you, that’s a great omen. Otherwise, abandon the idea and consider something else.

Hey, this is not to say you can turn all your interests into your business. No. It could be the idea of starting and scaling a business, too. For example, if you want to start a clothing line, you don’t need to be hyped up about the clothes – the main passion could be growing a successful and lucrative business.

The bottom line is that you can never go wrong doing what you love. That is necessarily the passion you need to continue.

Make sure the market is feasible

Yes, you have discovered a solution, and you are passionate about making it work, yet you need to stand back and assess the market. What are your chances? Assuming you manage to scale the business on the something substantial, what is the limit? And essentially, is that limit good enough for you?

Sometimes we all need a reason to keep fighting. Validation is essential for any successful business venture. You aim to solve a problem, but you need to be sure that there is indeed a need for the service or product you are offering. Without that, you are better off moving on to another idea. Conduct stress tests and interview people around you, and get others on the team.

You must have sufficient clarity on the extent of opportunity that lies ahead. Failure to do so is preparing your idea for failure. This is not to dampen your energy, but you have to deliberate hard on any business idea before putting in all your chips. Business building is different from having a day job. The process is something you have to be willing to fight for – for yourself and people working with you.

Evaluate your commitment from the start

Many entrepreneurs fail to realize the importance of commitment when starting out. Your business needs your full attention, and if you are not ready to give that, especially in the early stages of your business, it is better not to start at all. As stated earlier, entrepreneurship is not for everybody. You are either in or out.

A proven way to kill the morale of your partners and employees is becoming the CEO that is barely around. Once your team loses their motivation and engagement, the business is set on the path of failure.

Deliberate on funding

Giving your business your full attention is important, but all that is pointless if you don’t have a funding plan. Development is crucial, but make sure you allocate up to 50 percent of funds to marketing and promotions, business building, and focus groups.

If you have restricted financial resources, you need to know you can take things one at a time. Many startups don’t hire every department in the first couple of years. In fact, you may find yourself and a few employees multitasking in different roles until you are financially ready to recruit.

Prepare to evolve

Since many changes will occur to your company in the early stages, you need to learn how to develop and adjust according to the times. You don’t have to stick to a single idea. Besides, just because you started out with an idea doesn’t mean you cannot diversify your business to accommodate other ideas. You need to be versatile.

A great example is Amazon. The current largest online retailer in the world started out as an online bookseller. Their success story is mostly built on their willingness to diversify as their cash flow blossomed.

Discover ways to expand your business assets and prepare to implement changes as you grow.

Tips to note after starting the business

Make building processes your first priority

In the early stages of your company, creating company policies and guidelines – recruitment, individual roles – will form the defining strategy for lasting success.

You must document every process properly. This is beneficial in several ways – it will help mark out your daily responsibilities and streamline training and development. It is typical for policies and processes to change as you grow. However, having a clear outline of work organization has incredible benefits and serves as the evidence of how far your company has grown and developed over the years.

Customer relations is crucial

After you have kick-started your business, the success or failure of your company lies in how well you treat your customers. You need to gain the loyalty of your customers by making them happy – through quality customer experience. You need to find out what your customer desires are, as opposed to making assumptions.

To attain new heights as an entrepreneur, you need to connect with your clients. It is impossible to build trust if you do not have an interpersonal relationship. Acquiring customers will perhaps be your biggest hurdle after starting your business.

Don’t just sit in the office waiting for them. Go out there and meet them physically. Irrespective of how wealthy or influential you become, be meek and stay open to your customer. This will help you discover valuable information that will improve your service delivery.

Occasionally, follow up by reaching out to them. Create surveys and loyalty programs. By listening to them and rewarding them, you are showing them that you don’t care about their money only, you also care about their satisfaction.

Flexibility is important

Accept criticisms with grace and make necessary changes. While it is essential to believe in your original idea, you should never be too proud to accept your customer’s options and make modifications. Evaluate your target audience and find out what they want. Sort through their opinions and feedback and decide which would be the most helpful and beneficial for the customers and the company.

Never get too relaxed

Sometimes things progress so well that you may be tempted to get comfortable. You should never be satisfied with where you are. Instead, aim higher and find ways to expand your reach. Consider setting a goal of increasing your customer base by five percent weekly and monitor these goals through active supervision.

Remember, the number one enemy of progress is comfort.

Stay active in every department

Your attention as a founder will always be required during recruiting, funding, partnerships, policy-making and strategizing. The most successful companies have a leader playing an active role in the day to day operations of the company. Do not sit back and allow the managers to do all the work. Set a standard by managing your employees and creating time for them. Your employees are your company’s biggest asset because their satisfaction affects service delivery. With more happy customers, you are setting your company on the path to growth.

Patience is necessary

Success is not magical, and that breakthrough may not come for some years. Before you succeed and achieve profitability, you need to invest in your company and prepare strategies for continuous efficiency. Most companies attain this status in three years, yet some would struggle for relevance before getting the breakthrough.

Steve Jobs started Apple back in 1976 but didn’t get any significant recognition until 1984 when Apple developed Macintosh computer. Even at that point, they struggled with success until the late 90s when iMac and other consumer products were introduced.

Your patience and resilience are virtues your company needs to scale.

Final Note

As an entrepreneur, founder, and leaders, you need to understand the difference between a brilliant idea and a great company. One will not work without the other. Therefore, put all your chips in and do not throw in the towel when things get hard.

The post What Startup Mistakes to Dodge appeared first on Time Clock Wizard.

Eight best practices for managing remote teams that can better improve your remote workforce management

1. Establish Relationships

It may seem that you hire remote workers merely to fill in gaps for workers. Virtual teams, whether freelance or hired, like to feel important to the whole team. They are not just nameless faces in the see of the Internet. It’s vital to make a connection with each of your workers to guarantee loyalty, productivity, and collaboration. It’s simple to engage employees on a more personal level:

• Send out weekly newsletters with updates
• Provide one-on-one time for any important meetings
• Start work days with a greeting 
• Ask about workers lives at home, and don’t mix them up (e.g., “How’d your mom’s surgery go?”)
• Check in on progress and ask if there are any questions or issues

By bringing your virtual team members into a collaborating atmosphere, you’ll give them a sense of pride in their work and their virtual team members.

2. Keep Global Time Zones in Mind

Keep in mind that your workers may be from all across the globe. If this is the case, you’ll find that your workers in Colorado will not keep the same hours as those in Singapore. This can cause issues if you, as a supervisor, want to keep a set schedule. And this is one of the biggest challenges to managing a virtual project team. It’s better to keep your schedule open for any unexpected problems that may arise.

Consider keeping one day aside with hours that fit your most remote employee. That way, if any questions or problems might come up, that employee can reach you. If you cannot make those hours work, hire a contact liaison whose hours better match the most remote time zone. For instance, someone in London will be more likely to have overlapping hours with the Singapore workers.

 3. Focus on Goals

Employee monitoring can be difficult when you have employees working remotely. Are you concerned whether your worker is getting distracted by other things (social media comes to mind) when they should be working? Who hasn’t walked through the office and noticed one or two workers checking out a cat video on Facebook? You’ve likely heard two co-workers chatting about last night’s American Horror Story episode or upcoming holiday plans. It is not uncommon to find workers distracted from their tasks on a daily basis.

The first thing you must consider is whether the tasks you assigned to your virtual team members were completed in a respectable amount of time. You’ll find that remote workers complete 13% more work on average than their office counterparts. Higher productivity may be because of more downtime and flexibility in their work. Without someone breathing over their shoulder, remote teams are more likely to complete the projects given to them in a better time frame.

Still worried about how much work is getting done? Then consider:

• Setting up a tracking system to keep tabs on telecommuters. Some programs take screenshots randomly to show which screens are open.
• Asking for detailed daily reports. This can include a minute-by-minute description.
• Completing weekly or monthly reviews to see if the worker is getting as much done as s/he should be.
• Keeping timesheets. There are many excellent programs to keep track of your employees, such as Time Clock Wizard. These programs can show you who is working too little or too much. Remember, overworked employees can burn out more quickly.

4. Set Expectations

Moving right along from the last tip, you must set expectations for your workers. If virtual teams are unaware that you expect them to complete 15 spreadsheets each week, you may find that you only get a return of five. This would be a much lower number than expected, but it is not necessarily your virtual team’s fault. Did you tell them you expect 15 spreadsheets a week? You could find that they feel stagnant or unchallenged not knowing what is expected of them. When you’re all on the same page, goals can better be attained.

5. Provide Reliable Tools

• Training videos
• Access to files and folders
• Access to work program
• Communication outlets
• Access to informational tips
• Help desks

These are just a few of the essential tools used to continue your virtual management. Reliable, working tools and access to corporate information is vital for workers. If they cannot access the work page to download the project schematics, how can you expect them to complete the job on time? If there is no help desk, what happens when the system is down, or they have a question? How can the workers complete their tasks when they have no access to the files?

6. Have a Communication Strategy

It is not the first time you’ve heard this in this article, but you must have a communication strategy in place. Donald in payroll can walk into your office to ask you what the office memo meant, but Shirley across the country cannot. Can she call you? Yes, but will she always get through? Do you have a communication liaison to handle any issues that arise for remote teams? Will you use an e-mail and help desk notification system, which can take hours to communicate back and forth, or will you implement a chat dialogue?

Keep in mind that every communication strategy will have pros and cons. Any issues not immediately resolved may back up work for one or more workers. This can cause significant problems in productivity.

7. Provide Incentives

Remember that remote teams are the same as your office workers. Treat virtual members with the same respect and patience as any worker in your company. Also, remember that you can save about $1,250 per employee each year for remote workers. This is because of office and training costs that are often lower per employee. With all this in mind, you should provide incentives to keep remote workers as happy as your office workers.

Many contract positions like hiring out because they do not feel that they are actually “hiring” employees. This can cut down on taxes, benefits costs, and employer responsibilities. This can be a negative, however. A study showed that 40% of employees overlooked by management were actively disengaged in their work. This even included those who received negative feedback from supervisors. However, if you offer incentives to virtual workers, you create a positive work culture, you stand out from other employers, and your remote workers will remain engaged.

Consider offering:

• Paid time off
• Vacation time
• Health insurance
• Company swag
• Gift cards
• Promotions
• Birthday cards
• Subscription boxes

Even something as small as offering praise and feedback helps your remote teams to know they are appreciated. Something like a subscription box can give your virtual team members something to look forward to each month. Consider offering them a list of subscriptions to choose from, or provide a general one that might be appreciated by your workers as a whole. You can even consider gifting an experience through a company, such as Tinggly, where the gifts are unique for remote teams around the globe.

Don’t let remote workers feel left out either. Silicon Valley, the epicenter of startups and remote teams, have companies that provide free lunches, happy hours, and beer cart Fridays for their office workers but leave their “contract workers” out in the cold. Delivering a frosty beer 1,200 miles away may be a little out of the question, but a monthly Starbucks gift card to the top five most productive workers certainly isn’t.

8. Be Transparent

If you want to know how to manage your team, be open and honest with your workers to create a trusting work environment. Allowing your virtual employees to understand your goals and missions keeps you all on the same page and can help yours in overcoming virtual team challenges. If you want to promote transparency as part of your company’s mission, you must abide by the same rules. If you aren’t open, why should your employees be honest and transparent with you? Lead by example.

Try to make all aspects of your business open to the public as well. For instance, providing salaries, even if anonymous, allows workers to feel they are all treated fairly. This will show whether there is a gender pay gap and whether each virtual worker is given the same pay as another who has been with the company just as long. Finally, if you choose to use a tracking system, let your workers know. Employee tracking can often cause worker anxiety. They may feel as if they’re being watched at all times and judged. By being transparent with employee tracking, you are not spying on them, and they do not feel paranoid.

Remember, it is critical that you keep your virtual team on the same page as the rest of your workers. Having a company culture will promote company loyalty and low turnover. Finally, offering incentives and keeping an eye on how much your remote teams are working will prevent burn out and poor work turnover.

The post How to Make Your Remote Teams Succeed with These Management Tips appeared first on Time Clock Wizard.

The Most Important thing

Before we dive in and take a look at how to make a schedule for employees, let’s clarify what an effective time management strategy is all about. A common mistake is a focus on the activity rather than the outcome of a certain task. Many managers try to focus on optimizing time in the greatest detail as opposed to focusing on having a clear set of goals and priorities. While most certainly optimizing time and action is important it must be done in a way that propels higher productivity rather than higher stress levels for employees.

What happens without an effective time management strategy

There are some common symptoms of the bad time management plan to look out for when managing employees. These include:

Lack of clarity regarding priorities within the organization

• This results in confusion or prioritizing less important tasks which decrease overall productivity.

Employees exhibiting a reactive state rather than a proactive one

• An employee lacks knowledge of the expectations of them without defining goals clearly. This results in the need to be told what to do, more or less, and blocks further productivity which could be achieved if the opposite was the case.

Overwhelming feeling

• Too many tasks presented in an unorganized way will put off any employee and possibly create stress.

Lack of an ability to say NO when needed

• When there is a lack of clearly set priorities, an employee will not know when they are supposed to decline to do a certain task.

Signs of stress or burnout

An effective time management strategy should resolve these issues. When applied successfully, those symptoms should transform into:

• A feeling of satisfaction upon achieving certain goals.
• Having a strong sense of purpose in employees. When they know the reason behind their tasks and their importance, motivation should rise accordingly. Providing them with a strong sense of responsibility means higher morale which will boost productivity as well.
• Awareness and having an action plan. Defining priorities clearly, setting goals and having a detailed action plan empower employees rather than overwhelm them.

How to make a schedule for employees

While it may look simple initially, setting a schedule for employees is a hard task. One has to determine their own needs and carefully plan the resources for each role, plan for future events ahead of time, define any required qualifications for each shift and determine the allocation of shift types. Planning a schedule for employees is connected to the hiring process of a company and thus maintaining an effective time management strategy also means planning ahead of time prior to hiring a future employee.

To maintain a good schedule for employees you should be aware of any non-personnel resources as well. For example, if you are providing transportation for your employees via a third party, that information should be taken into account when creating a schedule and a plan B must be a part of the equation. Creating a schedule is not just about allocating shifts to employees but also about analyzing resources and using them in the most effective way.

There are a few types of shifts or schedule models which depend on the nature of your business. If you have remote employees, maintaining high productivity can be achieved without allocating specific shifts but rather by allowing employees to create their own shift as long as they meet certain goals. If you are following the standard model for shifts, it still might prove beneficial to allow employees to take part in the process of allocating their own shifts as that will not only increase their understanding of the difficulty of this task but also eliminate future road bumps due to lack of communication regarding availability.

Define scheduling rules

1.  The first things you need to do is define scheduling rules. Having a policy about prioritizing swapping shifts, working overtime and qualifications required for a shift will solve potential favoritism misunderstandings. These rules might include:

• Company policies and regulations
• Seniority
• Overtime Status
• Qualification and Certification

Having defined those early on will prevent confusion when a request for a shift swap arises or another similar issue.

Think about all the factors of a good schedule

• Method. Are you using a manager to allocate shifts or employees do it themselves?
• Training. Do the employees connected to the specific shift need any further training and meet all the necessary qualifications?
• All of the above-mentioned scheduling rules.
• Availability. Knowing your staff well is important and knowing when they are available is even more important. While this is rather obvious, sometimes employees feel reluctant to provide information about their personal life to the point where it is hard to predict if they would be available at a certain date or not and it is not always easy to ask absolutely everyone and receive an answer quickly.
• Expenses. Managing resources effectively is very important and sometimes when overtime is taken into account the actual costs might exceed your forecast.
• Productivity. Having a way to track performance levels for different employees on different shifts is crucial and will play a role in maintaining an effective time management strategy.

Prepare for potential pitfalls

Then you also need to make sure you prepare for potential pitfalls:

•  Change in demand. Depending on your business this will vary but calculating the potential change in demand is important. Managing a decline in labour needs is more tricky to deal with and having flexible staff members who have initially agreed to slightly different conditions can resolve this issue.
• Change in availability. Often employees will need to swap a shift and this is best dealt with by a shift-swapping software which allows employees to switch shifts with each other and also makes communicating any information regarding shifts much easier.
• No-shows. Sometimes an employee will unexpectedly miss a shift. In those occasions finding a substitute might be hard. Having a small part of the team ready to take such shifts can solve this issue as well. Those are the first steps to take when creating a schedule for employees. Addressing most potential issues at the beginning of the process prevents them from happening.

Create shifts

Now you have to create the shifts themselves.

One can use a piece of paper or excel or word documents. However, even if you do that there is a chance to miss some of the factors from the first few steps. Probably the best way to go about it would be to use a scheduling app such as Time Clock Wizard as such software usually has integrated all these factors in itself and is the fastest way.

Execution – the best way to ensure an effective time management strategy

You know what an effective time management strategy should achieve, you have a good schedule, now what? Well, sometimes having good time management techniques can be tricky. A good example of this is communication. Clear communication will solve many issues for your company and back-and-forth feedback will increase productivity in general. To ensure employees are as productive as they can be, a company could have a time management training policy which would also gather information from employees by asking questions such as:

• How well do you manage your time regarding most important tasks?

• Is there anything that gets in your way while working?

• What were the most time-consuming activities?

• Which were the least time-consuming ones?

• Do you prefer working in small chunks of time with more breaks or for longer periods of time with longer breaks?

Collecting this information from employees will ensure that any potential pitfalls will be prevented in the beginning and will allow for a better understanding of the employee’s preferences. These questions should be presented as a way to allow for the improvement of the workplace and it must be made clear that the employee‘s position is not in danger in any shape or form whatsoever. Conversations such as these will unveil potential problems and help to see the perception of new employees regarding priorities and other task-related factors.

This, in turn, will help to improve the time management plan. Also, undertaking training to clarify priorities, goals, deadlines and set clear expectations from an employee will solve many of the above-mentioned symptoms of a bad time management plan. However, overly focusing on communication might start to have a more detrimental effect, especially in big meetings. While company culture is important, a healthy balance should be maintained and many managers make the mistake of having too frequent unnecessary meetings.

Some other time management techniques

Use different units of time

• The common way to approach time is by measuring it in hours. However, for most creative workers, one hour is enough to barely start. Simply shifting the perception of time in regards to the actual amount of time that they need to get a good amount of work done would be more beneficial. Just thinking in this way will help you see through some of the pitfalls of your time management plan. Maybe you are allocating 6 hours in the morning for work in the IT department followed by a meeting and leaving out just 2 hours at the end of the day which might not bring out the most out of a creative person. Placing the meeting in the middle after 4 hours of work though might not result in a drop in productivity.

Be wary of the planning fallacy

• It is a proven human bias to set less than the necessary amount of time needed for the completion of a task. You might end up doing this for your employees or they might do that to themselves and feel disappointment in the end. To avoid this simply measure initially, without any expectations, the realistic amount of time a certain task takes and then set any deadlines. More accurate knowledge equals more productivity.

Make sure you are not getting in the way of your employees

• Sometimes simply letting them work, even if they aren’t doing as well as expected might be better than trying to help them. New employees need time to adopt a new setting and get the hang out of things. Instead, ensure that you are very open to communication and more than willing to help them whenever they ask you to. It’s easier to tell someone that they should be more self-reliable than to make them ask for help more frequently.

Using Time Planning Tools and a Time Tracking App

A good way to ensure that everyone is as productive as they can be is to use a time tracking app. Especially for remote workers, this is a must as a sense of responsibility needs to be present to retain good morale. Knowing how your employees spend their time with high accuracy will increase trust and also allow them to make the necessary adjustments themselves.

Time tracking isn’t just a way to simply make sure your employees are doing the actual work but also as a channel for feedback allowing them to see their week points. A good time tracking app should cover multiple platforms (Windows, Android, etc.) and allow adjustments after the fact in case one forgets to turn off the clock.

Having an effective time management strategy also means using quality time planning tools. Some of these might include:

Priority Tools

• Using a tool that takes one glance to get back on track ensures all employees understand the key priorities of their task. (Focus Booster, for example, is an app the applies the Pomodoro principle to keep your focused on what matters.)

Due Date Tools

• Being able to see deadlines will prevent failing to meet some goals and keep employees mindful of their tasks.

Progress Tools

• In the same fashion as with deadline tools, progress tools provide an interesting perspective for those working in close flexible teams and can increase productivity as swapping tasks between different employees to have them work on fresh assignments can sometimes increase performance levels.

Online Cloud

• Obviously, many businesses still run without having everything of importance located in one place and available to everyone at the same time. Simply using something like OneDrive can do the job.

Note-taking Tools

• Some time tracking tools provide you with the ability to take notes as well. Nevertheless, sometimes it is beneficial to use a separate note-taking platform to enable more fluid back-and-forth feedback. Evernote is a great note-taking application.

Online Calendar

• If you are already using a shift making software you probably won’t need a separate calendar. But if you are not, having one to ensure you are on top of everyone’s plans would be beneficial.

There are also other tools that can set reminders for you. Tools that can post social media content for you and compare productivity among employees. However, their usefulness will vary depending on your niche. In the foreseeable future, Artificial intelligence will also play a big role as it analytical perspective might further illuminate weak points in employees and provide insight that the human eye could have missed. Businesses that implement it in the early stages might benefit a slight boost compared to the competition in terms of overall productivity.

An effective time management strategy will make the difference between a business meeting with roaring success and one meeting with a bankruptcy lawyer. Without being extreme, this is the importance of an effective time management strategy. In the short term, there might not be a great difference between you and the competition. But in the long term, lacking efficiency almost always proves detrimental.

There are plenty of time planning tools and you can easily pick the right time tracking app for yourself. Defining a strong time management plan is easier than before as well as maintaining a good schedule for employees. Communication and feedback from employees remain key to productivity as always. Preventing some of the pitfalls that hide behind a lack of focus on priorities and deadlines, any company can elevate performance levels easily.

The post Why Your Business Needs an Effective Time Management Strategy appeared first on Time Clock Wizard.

With the right online shift planning software, employees will be empowered to help managers.

Human resources is divided into different sections depending on the business chain of command. Each task within the human resources department flows through both management and payroll. Keeping an efficient flow between these departments has been a challenge.

Time Clock Wizard allows for the tasks of human resources, management and payroll from a centralized dashboard. Both staff and employees use their software anywhere in the world. This makes employee shift planning exponentially simpler that spreadsheet methods.

Employee shift planning is studying the workflow of your business to determine the best type of schedules you should make for employees. The traditional Monday through Friday 9 to 5 schedule may not be a good for for your office logistics.

How do I Create Schedule Online with Time Clock Wizard?

In order to create a schedule online, you first need to sign up for a free trial with Time Clock Wizard. There are video tutorials that walk you through each step.

Once you learn the software, scheduling and making shift changes will take up a minor portion of your day.

Because your data is in one centralized location, the staff doing payroll will thank you too. They will be spending less time chasing down employees to decipher poor handwriting and misplaced timesheets.

There are two articles linked below that are here to assist you further:

How to Schedule Employees Using Time Clock Wizard

How to Schedule Staff Efficiently

How to Schedule Employees  and Create Work Schedule with a Shift Planner

Time Clock Wizard is an incredibly robust online time clock that does shift planning. One of the best features of this software is automated attendance.

From a centralized place, you can see who is clocked in and out verses who is scheduled. This feature allows managers to see if there is a lack of people clocking in on time to go physically investigate the issue. This save management footsteps and time!

If you need help with building strategy, thin our article Efficient Plan Schedule Management Process Planning is there to help you.

Time Clock Wizard is considered to be workload management software and one of the best online time clocks for shift planning.

How do I make a Staff Schedule Template?

Once your employees are entered into the system, the interface helps guide you through scheduling your staff. In previous business years, a manager would need to print out a spreadsheet with employee names and personally fill in each square. Now, the process is more user friendly.

To conclude, there are many different ways to schedule employees with Time Clock Wizard. This software allows for your employees to be empowered to use the software. This frees up time for management.

Time Clock Wizard is an online time clock and payroll calculator with work staffing scheduling features. Try Time Clock Wizard for free by clicking on this link: Free Trial for TCW.

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The post How to Create Schedule Online with Time Clock Wizard appeared first on Time Clock Wizard.

In the 1970s, businesses started using computers for large calculations like payroll. IBM software recorded to punch cards or tape wheels. The ability to recall data was cumbersome. It is no wonder smaller companies just used paper time sheets to calculate payroll.

In order to have efficient plan schedule management, you need workload management software like Time Clock Wizard. Read more about the importance of standard operating procedures.

What is Workload Management Software?

Making informed decisions about the level of workforce needed every day is made easier with online management tools.

Because your workforce schedule is concentrated on a convenient dashboard, it makes it easy to get a quick overview of your operations at any time.

When customers started using Time Clock Wizard, there were surprises. One of the unexpected benefits is that it is easy to re-assign employees to different areas of the job site as needed.

This reduction in wasted downtime labor hours and the ability to do batch scheduling were  key factors for meeting projected labor force goals.

What is Batch Job Scheduling?

Batch scheduling is typically a hands-off process in which events trigger the schedule management. You may know of “If this, then that“process arrangements.

Time Clock Wizard is a hands on and convenient way to do mass scheduling. This gives management and human resources the best ability to easily schedule staff, make changes and notify employees. The benefit is easing conflicting deadlines.

Unlike typical batch systems, Time Clock Wizard allows for employees to check on their own schedule, request time off and request to exchange days with another employee.

How to manage conflicting Deadlines

Business have moving parts. Sometimes projects get delayed or work ahead of schedule. When this happens, sometimes labor is required to be in two places at once.

Time Clock Wizard has some features that can help out with conflicting deadlines.

The ability to leave notes for employees is helpful. For example, when your employee logs back in from their break, a note could appear to them to: Switch to project B for the afternoon only.

It is good to have a mix of tasks available for employees that include routine items, tasks that are tied to deadlines and no more than 3 priority items at a time.

How to manage workload of Employees

An important thing to remember is that the manager in charge of employees sets the standards. Creating and maintaining standards makes it easier for employees to do their jobs efficiently.

Time Clock Wizard helps out with maintaining standards by having an intuitive interface that all employees interact with.

An employees time is just as important as a manager’s time. Make sure that employees have blocks of uninterrupted work time to get tasks done. Also, make sure to have a set of problems that warrant input from other team members before calling a meeting.

Outsource repetitive tasks that can be completed efficiently somewhere else at a better price. It is important to ask employees if they are running into repetitive tasks that is getting in the way of more productive time.

Time Clock Wizard increases ROI for Workload Management Software

When you are able to make and post batch schedules for your employees using Time Clock Wizard, employees will be able to check their schedule online. This frees up the bottleneck caused by employees coming into physically check their schedule.

This is a terrific six sigma project to see how much better customers react to the increased service. You can try Time Clock Wizard for free: Try TCW now!

The post Employee Workload Management Software as a Service appeared first on Time Clock Wizard.

It is important to make sure that employees are scheduled appropriately.

Employers are looking for ways to better serve their employees. Or at least, keep out of trouble with any governmental labor board.

Here are some of the most common employee complaints about schedules:

• Employers not paying attention to high-traffic times.
• Changing the schedule without notice.
• Dropping employee shifts too close to actual work time.
• Being scheduled for more than one location at the same time.
• Employers making staying over a scheduled shift time mandatory without prior consent.
• Dismissing complaints about schedule as trivial without an investigation.
• Shifts that rotate awkwardly so employee really cannot get proper sleep.
• Needing to come into the workplace to view schedule.

It is very important to keep employees happy with their schedule. The more way employees can help you manage the schedule, the better.

Employees have 24/7 access

The terrific feature set of Time Clock Wizard make it easy for employees to check their schedule at their convenience.

When you take into consideration the time and travel costs for employees to come into the office to check their schedule, it may not directly affect your bottom line.

However, it does affect your employee’s attitude and impression of the workplace.

Viewing Pre-Scheduled Employees

Melissa Ruy, a terrific representative of Time Clock Wizard, has created the video below to help you get a quick view of your scheduled employees.

If you are looking to learn how to create the employee schedule in Time Clock Wizard, see the tutorial about our Employee Scheduler.

Hi everyone. It’s Melissa with Time Clock Support and I’m going to go over how to view your scheduled employees for the current day.

Using Schedule Tab

So I’m on our schedule page and I got here by clicking the Schedule Tab.

I’m going to go ahead and click “Show All Employees” to see who is scheduled. I can locate today and see which employee’s are scheduled for today.

Using Day View

You can also click the Day View.

You’ll see here, it’s May 26^th 2016 and these are the employees that are scheduled today.

View Pre-Scheduled employees with Ease

If you guys have any questions please feel free to contact us on our support Tab and we’ll be happy to help you. Have a great day.

Time Clock Wizard is available to try out for free. This is online software application that your employees can use to reach their information from any location with internet access.

One of the cool features of Time Clock Wizard is that you can write a note to your employees within Time Clock Wizard. This is a extremely helpful feature that allows managers to direct employees better from one location.

For example, Human Resources have paperwork for employees to sign at irregular time frames. A quick reminder to the employee to take care of their paperwork can save the energy of both managers and human resource staff.

The post How to View Who is Pre-Scheduled for Today appeared first on Time Clock Wizard.

If you are new to the employee dashboard or you are just needing a refresher, the video and transcript are available below.

Also, we know that managers get busy from time to time and just need a quick reminder of what to do next. This video series is also for you. The previous video featured scheduling employees.

Transcript:

Hi everyone. This is Melisa with Time Clock support and today we going to go over your dashboard.

So this is your dashboard. You have a nice little blue widget here that gives you your company name.

This little pencil over here helps you to put a little welcome message over here or reminder for all your employees to see. You can make the text red or bold or whatever you feel like doing.

Going over Pending Requests

Then you have your Pending Requests. This just kind of like a central station for managers to know what needs to be done.

For example, we have one pending request, time sheet request that needs to be approved by management so that it can actually apply.

So this is when employees want to change the time or request a time that maybe they forgot to clock in and in order for it to apply you need to approve it as a manager.

So I just approved by checking the little green check mark or you could do decline by clicking the red X.

So let me go back to my Dashboard and I have zero pending requests.

Clock In Error Reminders

You have four Possible Clock in Errors. This is just to let you know that this person. They work 75 hours, 145 hours, 25 hours. The system will automatically let you know anything over 13 hours in one 24 hour period.

Requests for Days off or Absences

This one will let you know if you have any Absences Request.

So if your employee is requesting vacation time or any type of time off, you can approve it or decline it. I approved that one.

So that one is finished and usually managers will go through this list once a day or once a week to make sure everything is up to par.

All Employee Time Sheet Overview

This timesheet to verify gives you an overview of everyone’s timesheet.

You can see it over in one place. If you require Clock in Image you can see here and you can verify all of them at the same time, just letting the system know that these Clock ins are okay.

When it comes to generating payrolls you are good to go.

Those are done.

Employee Clock in Stats

Alright. Then we go over to Who’s in Stats. These basically will let you know on your schedule how many employees were scheduled for today, how many are clocked in right now and how many clocked in as a total for today.

So you’ll know you have five scheduled employees today. Only one is clocked in now and only two have clocked in for today. You are missing three employees.

You can click any of these and just kind of see what’s going on. Like in who’s in, you can see a list of who’s in. Nobody is in right now for me but you can click on that and I’ll just give you some information.

Your Tasks to Manage

The My Task which is basically that will let you know what tasks are assigned to you and that need to be completed. Also what task you assigned to other people that have not been completed.

Live Stream of Time Clock Action

The Live Stream is just an overview of what is going on in the back end of your time clock.

So it’ll let you know when something has been approved or declined, when someone is clocked in, when somebody is clocked out, when somebody is on a break, all sort of different types of things.

When someone creates a task or finishes a task you can just go through the live stream and sort of check it out.

Payroll and Hours Graphs

You have two graphs down here and one is basically letting you know for that particular day, the 15^th, what you can expect the Payroll for that day based on the hours worked and the payroll wage you entered on the employee’s profile.

You can change the graph to another type of graph. Whatever you’ll be comfortable with.

Time Card Overview

Then you have My Time Card. My time card is when you clock in and out. It lets you know that information here.

It lets you know this a time Clock In Out type Clock in.

It’s a break and it’ll let you know it’s a break.

It lets you know the IP address for the clock in and the clock out.

You get you totals down here. How many times Clock in hours you worked, how many breaks you work and absence for that pay period.

Whenever you generate a payroll, it automatically clears this out and starts a new fresh Time Card.

Upper Employee Dashboard Features

You have your Quick Add for your employees.

You have your Messages. So you can always click here when the bell is rings as it is right here. It says two which means you have two messages.

You can always send a message by clicking here.

This is another overview of your pending requests which is just a little reminder and this is your tasks as well.

This little question mark is so that you can have a quick tutorial of the icons and the widgets if you ever need a little reminder of any kind. You can access that on any page.

Here is your Clock-In button.  Once you click Clock-In, it’ll change to Start break and Clock-Out. So you are able to start your break now or Clock-Out depending on, you know, what you do in your business.

So that’s your Dashboard.

So if you have any questions you can always click the live chart down at the bottom and feel free to ask us any questions. We hope you guys are enjoying the Time Clock and thanks so much. Have a wonderful day.

Employee Dashboard Conclusion

The Employee Dashboard from Time Clock Wizard is one of the best features of this software as a service. The efficiency of taking care of the employees in this manner frees up time for managers to work on other projects.

Time Clock Wizard is an incredible return in investment just with time saved alone! The Pre-scheduler is another great feature to try out. If you have not had a chance to try Time Clock Wizard for free, click this link.

The post How do you use the Employee Dashboard for Time Clock Wizard? appeared first on Time Clock Wizard.

Let’s take a glance at some of the key benefits that come along with such a system and why it is imperative for a business to have it in place as soon as possible.

Some schools are using Time Clock Wizard’s online app to teach kids about clocking in and out for work or projects. One of the amazing benefits to Time Clock Wizard is to make sure that kids are where they are supposed to be for school outings or conferences.

If a student or employee does not check in, then an alert can go out about the missing person.

No Errors

The main benefit of this system would come in the form of the elimination of errors. Most businesses do attempt to keep track of attendance numbers by way of spreadsheet or template. However, most are not able to eliminate those pesky errors that keep on coming.

Errors from humans are a part of life and when the tracking is being done manually, there are going to be loopholes and/or kinks. This system ensures there are no errors along the way as everything is automated.

It simply cannot get easier and better than that for those who want perfection.

Tangible Analytics

Every business is looking to gain access to numbers that are going to improve their bottom line. Yet, there are some numbers that end up becoming elusive because they are either difficult to accumulate or tedious.

When a proper system is put in place which takes care of the accumulation of numbers, it is better for the business. Because the reports are going to be created on their own, the management team is able to simply read these tangible numbers and act on them.

For #ThrowbackThursday, here is the original video made about this subject: 

Attendance Tracking – Less Work Keeping Track

The goal for any business is to have almost everything as systematic and automated as possible. A system of this nature ensures all of the tracking that is being done is accurate and easier to access. It is important to have the best time keeping software features.

When things are being done manually, it can lead to countless man hours being spent on such tasks. That can dry up financial resources in a hurry. Rather than wasting money and/or time on such tasks, why not let a system take care of it?

This is the beauty of tracking with an automated system.

These are just some of the essential benefits that come along with attendance tracking. Businesses that use such systems to keep track of their attendance numbers are always able to progress faster.

When employees are not being kept track of, it can lead to inefficiencies appearing in the business. This can lead to significant losses that could have easily been avoided.

Shift Planning and Attendance Tracking with Time Clock Wizard

With this management option in place, businesses are able to remain on top of any inefficiencies that develop and correct them effectively and immediately. Have a quality tracking system in place.

TimeClockWizard.com can ensure better monetary results and greater production success.

You are able to try Time Clock Wizard for free right now.

The post Using Time Clock Wizard for Attendance Tracking appeared first on Time Clock Wizard.

Customers will quite often request products or services to companies that they respect. The goal of any business is to be the best value for each customer. One of the ways to do this is to appropriately manage budgets to avoid cost over-runs.

In the last article, we covered how to schedule staff using Time Clock Wizard. In this article, we will cover project planning. Knowing what to do for scheduling will help your business become more organized.

What is Project Scheduling?

Project scheduling is a part of total project management. This is a detailed list of a particular project’s activities, deliverables and milestones.

It is a good idea to have a start and end date for each project; with that in mind remember that bottlenecks happen, so be flexible with date allocations.

What is a Plan Schedule Management Process?

In order to bring innovative ideas into reality, there is a process that you should follow. There are many ways to get to your end goals depending on the size, technical difficulty, resources available and willing employees for each project.

Here are different types of project management systems:

• PM Methodologies
• Agile
• Waterfall
• Scrum
• Rapid Applications Development
• New Product Introduction
• Get Things Done
• 5s Methodology
• Packaged Enable Re-Engineering
• Bullet Method
• PRINCE2
• Kanban
• Kondo Method
• Six Sigma
• DMAIC
• Outcome Mapping

A lot of managers have not taken the time to research these various kinds of systems. There are some systems that just use paper and pencil while other methods are software-driven. Find out how to create a schedule online with Time Clock Wizard.

If you want a simple system, then Kanban is the winner. If you have a lot of projects to do at once, then the Scrum method might work better for your team. When your goal is improving customer satisfaction, then six sigma is your best project plan.

What is a Project Schedule Good for?

The project schedule helps managers organize resource allocation (including having enough employees to do the tasks), budget (avoiding overages and overtime), duration of tasks, specific events (pre-launch) and all dependencies.

Another key factor for creating a project schedule is to communicate the chain of command for every given project. This ability to delegate tasks to middle management will free up time for upper management to pursue strategic partnerships.

Project Planning and Scheduling with Time Clock Wizard

One of the really nice features of Time Clock Wizard is that you can easily move employee schedules as needed for your projects. The scheduler within Time Clock Wizard allows you to email your employees about schedule changes.

Employees will be able to easily look online at their schedule the night before a shift. This will free up time for both employees and managers. Employees will also be able to switch shifts with each other so there is no confusion who is supposed to work.

Another feature is the forecasting section. This will allow you to see if your proposed schedule is under- or over-staffed. It is good to know when to avoid overtime charges.

Shift Planning for Projects

When a plan is put to a schedule, the task become manageable in sections. It is important to point out that planning for extra shifts in the beginning of the project will give wiggle-room toward the end of the project.

No matter the method of task planning and schedule management you choose, Time Clock Wizard makes shift planning changes easier than traditional workload management. In fact, workload management software is becoming as much of a staple to business as staplers.

Right now, you can try out Time Clock Wizard for free.

The post What is an Efficient Plan Schedule Management Process? appeared first on Time Clock Wizard.

In the last article, there was a basic overview on how to schedule employees.

This article is going to focus on the ways new business owners do scheduling with computer software.

The three shift planning software for creating schedules:

• Microsoft Excel
• Microsoft Word
• Time Clock Wizard

Depending on your budget, time and willingness to learn, making schedule and shift planning will sharpen your skills as a employee manager.

What are common Employee Schedules?

Even human resources industries pay well for talent managers to go out into the field to find employees just to manage inputting schedules efficiently. The real logistic challenge start with how are you going to create and record the type of schedule you want.

Types of Employee Schedules:

• 8 hour shifts are typically 5 days to full time. The most common.
• 10 hour shifts are good for 4 days. The extra closed day of the office saves on utilities.
• 12 hour shifts for 3 days give 36 hours (for when you need just less than full time.)
• 16 hour shifts for 2 days is 32 hours per week. This is good for nursing or weekend shifts.
• 24 hour days are typically reserved for on-call jobs. One per week is recommended for high-stress jobs.

How do you Make a Schedule on Excel?

This video in Excells Fun channel is about the functions you need to build the base of an employee schedule. This channel is a terrific resource for employees to learn Excel.

Do not forget to use Freeze Panel to be able to flip through records quickly in an organized fashion. The End of Month function really useful for organizing schedules per month. Also, you might even want to know the first day of next month for organizing schedule by month.

The functions in excel are not intuitive nor user friendly. People who choose this option for making employee schedules really are brand loyal to Excel or do not realize that there are better alternatives.

How do you Make a Schedule on Word?

There are people who find that Excel is really difficult to use. They prefer using Word to get the job done. In this video, by MizAshly, she shows how to make a daily schedule with Word.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5pTFJ7dRLo

In order to do this for employees, each employee would have their own schedule.

Basically, you would make a stock schedule, fill in the blanks for each employee, and print it out. This method is very time consuming and many managers find this method extremely frustrating.

Some managers prefer this method so that employees can write their own work schedule at the end of each week. as many labor professionals have pointed out: this method is easy for employees to abuse and exploit.

It is better to have a system that calculates the actual hours worked in real time anywhere where there is internet access. That is what Time Clock Wizard is terrific for. Read more about why a good recording system matters and the benefit of standard operating procedures.

How do you Make a Schedule with Time Clock Wizard?

Decide on the style of schedule you want. Time Clock Wizard has an intuitive interface for making staff schedules. This video (narrated by Melissa Ruy) is an overview of some of the features of Time Clock Wizard’s scheduler.

Time Clock Wizard is t he best value for managers who want to schedule employees in an efficient manner. This is much easier to learn that Excel spreadsheets and are more usable than Word documents.

The truth is that technology has excelled to assist management and human resources manage the core aspects of employee management in one place.

Now, after learning more about what the scheduler can do for your business style, you can try the service free.

How to Schedule Staff with Different Software Options for Shift Planning

In this article, the basic pros and cons of these software were mentioned:

• Microsoft Excel (or similar spreadsheet software)
• Microsoft Word (or similar document software)
• Time Clock Wizard (online software as a service)
• Our Free Printable Employee Schedule Templates

After deciding on the type of software and schedule you are going to use, the next step is the “plan schedule management process“. You can use the forecasting tool within Time Clock Wizard to help with this or look back at the last 90 days scheduled to notice patterns.

The goal is to learn how to schedule staff in an efficient as well as economical manner. Again, here is a link to a free trial of Time Clock Wizard – a robust online shift planner and more.

The post How to Schedule Staff for different Industries appeared first on Time Clock Wizard.