Half the battle of controlling restaurant labor costs, is ensuring staff’s worked hours are tracked accurately.
Implementing restaurant time tracking software is the first step in the right direction. But ensuring staff clock in and out is the real battle – especially if they’re used to old fashioned methods of pen and paper.
Instilling fear about not paying employees for their time worked, regardless if they clocked in or not, doesn’t work. Employees’ will call your bluff – you must pay your staff for their time worked (it’s the law), and they know it too.
Whether it's 21, 66, 18 or 245 days, routines take time to form. But the habit of clocking in and out could be made easier when there’s support from your day-to-day managers and employee incentives.So we’ve made a list!
Here are 3 ways to encourage your staff to clock in and out:
The true enforcers of employees’ clocking in are the managers at the ground level. It goes the top down. If your managers are nonchalant about staff behaviors with clocking in and out, it’s likely the staff will be too.
One of the best way to enroll your managers to enforce employee clocking in and out, is show them the value of the system. Invest in a system that works for you as an owner, and for managers as day-to-day users.
With Push Operations’ time attendance, tracking employee hours goes beyond payroll.
With an integrated time attendance and scheduling solution, managers are able to view their actual labor cost in real time. We use employee hours to provide meaningful reports for managers to make informed decisions – especially when it comes to labor costs.
And if you’re already having managers compile labor reports for you, this is a bonus when this task is automated. If the incentive of employees clocking in and out for managers is less data entry and administrative work, it’s likely that they’ll influence their staff to routinely clock in and out.
At Push Operations, we love making work fun. One of our restaurant camera time attendance users had a contest for the BEST daily photo. The Push time attendance system took photos of staff when they clocked in and out; and when approving hours, managers voted for their favorite photos. The prize for this brewery? A case of beer!
The initiative was fun and their enrolment rate of clocking in and out shot up by 150%. Everyone was having fun and remembering to clock in/out. After all, beer solves all problems.
Some people don’t like getting their photo taken so we’ve made our camera feature for our tablet clock in module optional – but it can still be a fun way to engage staff in clocking in.
We have clients who also enroll employees in workplace initiatives like friendly competitions for the least amount of missed clock ins and outs. For example: which ever position, say bartender vs server, has the least missed clocked ins and outs within 30 days, wins a free lunch! It’s a fun and inexpensive initiative to engage employees in clocking in and out, and fostering a fun work environment.
Everyone loves transparency - especially when it comes to a paycheck. But with the hustle and bustle of the restaurant environment, missed clock entries can be missed in payroll.
It’s understandable but it’s not fun when an employee is owed pay after the pay period has ended.
Again, getting employees into the habit of continuously clocking in and hard can be difficult but when you allow you staff to view their hours as soon as they’re approved, they’re empowered with ability to audit their own hours.
Allowing employees to access their approved hours, in real time, is more than holding their managers accountable for more mistakes. They’re able to review their exact paid hours to budget their finances before pay day.
With the incentive of having the ability to compare their schedule hours to their clocked hours, staff are more likely to enrol in properly clocking in and out.
“In the labor numbers, we were reporting about a $300 to $400 difference than what we were getting through Push!”
-Tara Hardie, ZZA Hospitality Group, 16 locations
