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If you’re like most Canadian restaurant owners and managers, you likely oversee nearly every detail of your restaurant’s daily operations and administrative functions. Balancing hiring, training, and scheduling employees against handling payroll and overseeing inventory and budgets… yep, there’s a lot on your “plate!” So anything that streamlines your workload and eliminates redundant tasks or communication is sure to make a big difference, especially when it comes to scheduling and paying employees.
Today, we’re diving into employee scheduling and time tracking challenges commonly faced within the Canadian foodservice and hospitality industries… and how Payworks can help operators get more time back in their day with tools that make scheduling and paying employees a piece of cake!
Four common challenges Canadian restaurant owners and operators face when scheduling and paying their employees:
- Managing employees with variable availability.
- Starting from scratch every time you or a member of your team create a schedule.
- Juggling multiple schedules and navigating the resulting information overload.
- Integrating employee time data with payroll.
Four ways to streamline employee scheduling and time tracking:
1. Take the shift shuffle out of the group chat
Picture this: you FINALLY have a second to catch your breath and check your phone after jumping in to support your team during a busy dinner service, only to find a flood of message notifications across multiple apps. Your prep cook is sick and can’t make their shift tomorrow… and the only available replacement is the brand-new line cook. The line cook will cover, but only if the prep cook takes their weekend shift. Plus, two of your servers are swapping start times for their shifts next week. One server will start at 5:00pm instead of 4:00pm on every day except Tuesday because they’re already working a split… but who was that?! You're left trying to track all these changes to a schedule you already spent three hours creating.
Wishing there was a better way to stay on top of everything? Spoiler alert: there is!
Through Payworks’ Time Management solution, schedule administrators have the ability to automate and offload the time-consuming communication and coordination required when it comes to managing shift coverage changes. Changes to shift availability can be initiated by the schedule administrator or by the employee assigned to the scheduled shift:
- Employer-initiated requests to cover open shifts: When a schedule administrator has an open shift to fill, they can simplify the process via Self Service by posting it for employees to request to work. Admins can manage all requests on one screen, and can choose to review or auto-approve requests based on configurable employee eligibility attributes.
- Employee-initiated requests for shift coverage: Employees that can no longer work their scheduled shift have the autonomy to find their own coverage by making it available for colleagues to request (while still leaving the approval in the hands of the schedule administrator). Like employer-initiated requests, admins can choose to review or auto-approve if the requesting employee meets the eligibility requirements.
How will you and your team know when these shift shuffles take place? Notifications are available to both admins and employees when shifts become available and requests are submitted, and schedules are updated in real time as requests are approved. Shift coverage coordinated without a single text? Yes please!
2. If [your schedule] ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
For many owners and managers, creating the employee schedule can feel like you’re starting from zero each scheduling period. You have to gather employees’ availability, figure out adequate shift coverage that takes into account the daily/hourly fluctuations in customer traffic, and then build the schedule from scratch.
For those using Payworks’ Time Management solution, gone are the days of reinventing the wheel every time you create a new schedule. Our Scheduler makes it easy to create templates based on your ideal timetable to use as a framework for building future iterations. Our dynamic schedule views give you the flexibility to build your schedules (and templates) by the day, single- or multi-week, month, or a custom timeframe.
Save your recurring schedule patterns as templates, and when you’re ready to build your next schedule, you can choose one from your list of templates and apply it to a future date range. Plus, you can merge the template with an already-drafted scheduling period or replace your drafted schedules with only the shifts from the selected template.
Need to make a few adjustments? No problem! You can always tweak the schedule as needed once the template has been applied to your selected dates. Easy peasy!
3. See what you want and hide what you don’t
It’s common for restaurants to operate with multiple schedules for different areas of the business (looking at you, front- and back-of-house teams!). Managing multiple schedules can create confusion and trying to get a clear view of what’s happening when and with whom can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. Thankfully, our Scheduler gives you the cross-schedule visibility you need, making it easy to see which employees are already booked on one schedule when you’re building another for the same time period (and can move things around accordingly if needed).
With so much information available to you, it can be easy to get overwhelmed! That’s why we’ve built powerful filtering functionality into our Scheduler. This way, you’re in control of how much (or how little) information you view at any given time. Whether you’re searching for shifts by specific employee, position, or availability, our filters help you focus on what’s important, so you can make scheduling decisions quickly and efficiently.
Looking for a high-level snapshot of what’s going on in a given scheduling period? Our handy schedule Shift Summary enables you to view the breakdown of total hours and shifts by position within the selected schedule for an individual employee, for the entire schedule in view, and for a particular day. With so much information at your fingertips – and control over how you view and use that information – building and managing your schedules is a breeze!
4. Time + pay = besties
Getting employees on the schedule is only half of the battle… you still need to make sure they’re paid accurately and on time for the hours they work! Don’t worry – Payworks can help here, too. In fact, paying Canadians is our “bread and butter.”
With employee time data automatically flowing through to our Payroll solution, you never have to worry about spending time (and risking errors) transferring punches from one system (or spreadsheet!) to another. Bonus: stat holiday, overtime, break rules, and premium calculations are all done for you. Say goodbye to hours spent correcting timecards, and hello to smooth, automated payroll processing!
Innovative products, world-class service
As someone in the foodservice industry, you know better than anyone that great food is only one part of an exceptional experience. At Payworks, we share that same philosophy, which is why we back all of our products with unmatched customer support. With a dedicated Client Service Representative who knows you by name, you can rest assured that you’ll be well taken care of. Whether you’re setting up new shift rules, troubleshooting an issue, or learning how to leverage a new feature, our team is always a call or a click away to help guide you through the process.
"We have been using Payworks’ payroll processing services for over a decade. Payworks helped us transition our payroll procedure from a manual process to a POS compatible electronic process – it saves my team hours each time payroll is processed! What we appreciate most is the support we received from the Payworks team to customize a process that works for us.”
- Old Spaghetti Factory Canada Ltd.
Vancouver, BC
Building schedules and managing your employees’ time and pay doesn’t have to be a headache. With Payworks’ dynamic duo, Payroll + Time Management, you can automate key processes, reduce administrative burdens, and feel confident that you’re always working with accurate and up-to-date data.
Ready to simplify scheduling, time tracking, and payroll? Book a demo today and get more time back in your day to focus on what truly matters: running your restaurant! We can’t wait to meet you: https://www.payworks.ca/landing-pages/campaigns/book-a-demo.
