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Grocery Stores Have Reintroduced Pandemic Pay For Essential Workers

April 15th, 2021 | Posted by ATS in Artificial Intelligence | ATS TimeWork OnDemand | Benefit Accruals | Biometric Time and Attendance Facial Recognition System | Cloud Computing | Employee Self Service | Fingerprint Time And Attendance Canada | Fingerprint Time And Attendance Toronto | HR | Labour Analytics | Overtime | Payroll | Retail | Time and Attendance Blog, Workforce Management Software | Time and Attendance Canada | Time and Attendance Toronto - (Comments Off on Grocery Stores Have Reintroduced Pandemic Pay For Essential Workers)

Two of Canada’s largest grocery stores have reintroduced lockdown/pandemic pay for its workers, a move, that is likely to be followed by other grocers.

A recent press release by David Brown Canadian Grocer, reads in part: “

“Longo’s—which operates only in Ontario where a stay-home order is in effect for four weeks—announced all permanent front-line staff working in Longo’s stores and distribution centres, and for Grocery Gateway, Central Kitchen and Market Café would be receiving a $2 increase. Assistant store managers, department managers, team leads and supervisors in operating roles will not receive the $2 wage increase, but will receive a special weekly bonus.

Read: Canadian grocers and their supply chains unlock business value with ATSTimeWorkOnDemand

Before and during COVID-19 ATS customers, including: food production, grocery, healthcare, manufacturing and retail — have used bonus payments, (commonly referred to as shift differential or premium pay) for both hourly and/or salaried employees.  ATSTimeWorkOnDemand shift differential allows a company to accurately apply them to things such as: shift starting and end times, time worked on certain hours or days, or shifts rendered in a particular role or location.

Our customers use ATSTimeWorkOnDemand for shift differentials/premium pay in the following scenarios:

  • Evening shifts
  • Overnight shifts
  • Weekend shifts
  • Bonus: pandemic or lockdown pay
  • Holiday shifts
  • Shifts outside an employee’s typical schedule
  • Ongoing coverage of an undesirable shift

By using ATSTimeWorkOnDemand, your organization will benefit from harmonized processes and increased role-based experiences across all devices resulting in:

Workforce Productivity and Manager Experience: streamlines payroll costs and is available anytime, anywhere, both online and on mobile devices. The application delivers an engaging experience that drives user adoption across the workforce, giving companies the ability to streamline time-entry and approval processes.

Analytics: delivers end-to-end insight into HR, payroll, and time-tracking processes. Get real-time reporting into actual labor costs and actionable insight with embedded analytics at the point of decision-making.

Real-Time Calculation: A robust, enterprise-grade calculation engine delivers real-time calculations and information on overtime, double time, vacation, shift differentials and more, prior to the payroll run.

Platform Extensibility and Data Integration: A modern technology infrastructure, seamlessly integrated with foundational applications employees use every day. Cloud-native, with open APIs, and extensible — mold to your business and easily adapt as it evolves. ATSTimeWorkOnDemand enables organizations to integrate time clock data with inbound/outbound integration to import clock-in/outs).

More Control: Managers can override rate during time entry and correct time off. For multiple jobs, approvals can be routed separately to each manager, eliminating approval delays.

To learn more, go to our website and download a demo. And, to reach an account executive by phone, call: 866.294.2467.

Read: Increased Functionality: ATS Enhances Its Time and Attendance Shift Differential Premium Pay Codes

Read: ATS Releases Contactless Biometric Face Recognition Time Clocks With Temperature Reading Capabilities

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Working Long Hours Every Day, But Is It Worth It?

November 24th, 2016 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Absence Management | Benefit Accruals | Forecasting | Overtime | Retail | Scheduling | Telecommuting Employees - (Comments Off on Working Long Hours Every Day, But Is It Worth It?)

Every boss appreciates a hard working employee, especially one who will volunteer to stay at work longer to complete that project and meet a deadline. And, in the world of retail and hospitality it’s almost become the norm that employees are expected to work long hours and some split shifts-especially during busy periods Christmas holidays included. But, if all your company’s projects have tight deadlines, does that mean you have to work overtime every week? As an employee in retail, does your schedule include a lot of spilt-shifts? Sooner or later, working these long hours will eventually take its toll.

We all understand that from time to time extra hours are required to get the job done. But, when does all this extra hours you are putting in start to affect your health and, more importantly starts alienating you from your loved ones?

Working Long Hours Every Day, But Is It Worth It?

In an article Minda Zetlin for Inc.com titled ‘10 Reasons to Stop Working So Hard’ she eloquently describes some of the drawbacks of working crazy hours. In no particular order, we selected five reasons out her list that clearly makes a case for why should not be working long hours every time:

“Most of the work is less important than you think-A few years ago, hospice worker Bronnie Ware famously published the top five regrets she heard from her dying patients. Those who’d had careers all regretted the number of hours they spent at work. But many of her patients also spoke of dreams they wished they’d fulfilled.

Your mood is a buzzkill-The kind of irritability and impatience that goes with being overworked and behind schedule will cast a black cloud over the people around you both at work and at home. If you’re an employee, it will damage your career. If you’re a small business owner, it will harm your business.

Sleep matters-“The way to a more productive, more inspired, more joyful life is getting enough sleep,” Arianna Huffington said in a 2011 TED talk. She would know. She fainted from exhaustion and broke her cheekbone and is now something of a sleep evangelist. “I was recently having dinner with a guy who bragged that he’d gotten only four hours’ sleep the night before,” she continued. She considered retorting: “If you had gotten five, this dinner would have been a lot more interesting.”

Your judgment is impaired-The research is conclusive: sleep deprivation impairs decision-making. As a leader, poor judgment is something you can’t afford. Crossing some tasks off your to-do list, handing them to someone else, or finishing some things late is well worth it if it means you bring your full concentration and intelligence to the tough decisions your job requires

You suck when it counts-I can tell you from experience that going into a meeting tired and distracted means you will suck in that meeting. You’ll be bad at generating new ideas, finding creative solutions to problems, and worst of all you’ll suck at listening attentively to the people around you. That disrespects them and wastes their time as well as yours.”

Bottom line: Spending long hours at work might help you meet deadlines, but those long hours, especially when they are done over a long period of time, can affect both your physical and, yes mental state. When you spend a significant part of your day working, there is not enough time to rest and recharge.

 

 

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Retailers Are Embracing ATS TimeWork OnDemand To Improve Operational Excellence

November 15th, 2016 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Cloud Computing | Cloud Time and Attendance | Employee Self Service | Labour Analytics | Payroll | Retail | Time and Attendance Blog, Workforce Management Software - (Comments Off on Retailers Are Embracing ATS TimeWork OnDemand To Improve Operational Excellence)

The retail industry has had to adapt to numerous changes in the past several decades. And, with shrinking market-share, retailers now have to grapple with tight margins, technological innovation, constant changes in consumer habits and unprecedented growth in global markets.  These changes, along with cost containment and  increasingly fierce competition, have fueled the need for continuous improvement, flexible operations, and availability of information on demand.

ATS TimeWork OnDemand empowers retail organizations to modernize their approach to employee time and attendance. ATS TimeWork offers a robust, up-to-the-minute responsive cloud infrastructure, a sophisticated development platform and a rich portfolio of workforce analytics, and 21st century mobile services. With ATS TimeWork OnDemand, retail operations from; Food Manufacturing, Fashion and Apparel, Pharmacy, Department Stores and Home Goods, Grocery, Hospitality, Food and Beverage to drive sales and optimize business operations through analytics insights that fuel personalized merchandising for their customers.

Retailers Are Embracing ATS TimeWork OnDemand To Improve Operational Excellence

Here are three examples of how retailers are using ATS TimeWork OnDemand to improve productivity, streamline payroll costs and, at the same time, stay ahead of the competition:

Deployment Platform-With TimeWork OnDemand, organizations can choose from integrated always-on, dedicated and local deployment model that complements, and includes Internet of Things (IoT), and mobile-ready services.

Analytics and Data Science-By using proven cognitive analytic solutions from ATS TimeWork OnDemand to tap into cutting-edge employee data to spur decision making capabilities with an advanced time and attendance retail application that’s readily accessible, and provides powerful and insightful intelligence like never before.

Flexible and easy Access to the Cloud-ATS TimeWork OnDemand is a modern API-based, open-source, and collaborative web application—that quickly scales to meet seasonal or event demands through an easy-to-use customer portal or auto-scaling capabilities. The advantages of retail operations using ATS TimeWork OnDemand includes; upgrades with minimal downtime and interruption, and the ability to access supercomputing—on demand on a massive scale that transforms business intelligence and up-to-the-minute business decision making.

Want to learn how ATS TimeWork OnDemand can help your business realize the value of cloud time and attendance solution? Go to our website or call us at 866.294.2467.

 

 

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Using An Effective Scheduling Solution Will Improve Employee Engagement

April 26th, 2016 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Employee Scheduling | Forecasting | Hospitality Industry | Labour cost | Overtime | Retail | Scheduling | Workforce Analytics | Workforce Scheduling Software - (Comments Off on Using An Effective Scheduling Solution Will Improve Employee Engagement)

The latest brouhaha over employees being scheduled for on-call shifts hit a crescendo, a few days ago, revealing a practice that is frowned upon my many workers, many of whom, have cited the effects these on-call shifts are having on workers ability to plan activities outside of work. It’s possible that some of these companies are using a variety of spreadsheets and other manual methods to schedule employees.

If your organization is using an outdated scheduling system, chances are, you could be wasting valuable time and money. ATS Workforce Scheduling system is powerful and robust software that provides broad-based capabilities to help companies better manage their business and their labour force. The ATS Workforce Employee Scheduling targets small, mid-size and large-scale operations in retail, healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing and services.

Using An Effective Scheduling Solution Will Improve Employee Engagement

ATS Workforce Scheduler Includes:

Budgeting and Forecasting
ATS budgeting and forecasting module features an independent, definable structure that supports the creation, editing and reporting of business volume and workforce forecasts. With a wide variety of options for defining productivity tasks, standards, drivers and parameters, ATS Budgeting and Forecasting tool provides unprecedented detail and accuracy of workforce requirements.

Eradication of Scheduling Conflicts
ATS Workforce Scheduler allows managers to see details of how a team of workers is scheduled through the day, coupled by the use of an advanced heuristic algorithm that enables companies to meet forecast needs by developing an optimized schedule of employee work assignments. ATS Workforce Scheduler has the distinction of being able to build individual employee shift and job preferences into weekly work schedules. ATS Workforce Scheduler provides real-time employee availability, thus, allowing managers to immediately correct any necessary conflicts, due to overlapping shifts, and overtime. With this unique feature, the software will reduce workforce turnover and increase employee satisfaction.

Ability to Schedule Employees in Real-Time
ATS Workforce Scheduler provides updates in real-time. For example, once a manager has completed their staff schedulers they can send it to their employees through mass updates. Employees, in turn, can view their schedules online from any device that’s connected to the Internet.

Easy to Use Tools
Get the peace of mind you deserve by making sure you have the right people scheduled at the right time and place. With ATS Workforce Scheduler, you can schedule employees by department, shift, or multiple sites. ATS Workforce Scheduler automatically calculates the number of hours each employee is scheduled to work and compares it to the number of hours they wish to work each week.

Reporting Capabilities
ATS Workforce Scheduler creates intuitive analytics that are based on your business and workforce requirements, relevant work and shift rules, and individual employee information.

In conclusion, with a growing number of regional, state and provincial governments clamping down on on-calls shifts, manual spreadsheets will not help your organization. What you need is a robust solution that will reduce time spent on scheduling, save costs, increase productivity and employee engagement.

To see a demonstration of ATS Workforce Scheduling Solution, go to our website. You can also join the conversation on: LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ or Pinterest.

 

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ATS Workforce Management Software Helps Retailers Maintain A Competitive Edge

September 17th, 2015 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Cloud Time and Attendance | Employee Time Attendance | Overtime | Payroll | Retail | Time and Attendance Blog, Workforce Management Software - (Comments Off on ATS Workforce Management Software Helps Retailers Maintain A Competitive Edge)

Today’s retailers are faced with stiffer competition, price-sensitive consumers and an economy that’s filled with uncertainty. And using old fashioned time clocks or spreadsheets is a sure way of slowing productivity and seeing your competitor, who is using modern technology pass you by as they increase their sales and lower payroll costs.

ATS Workforce Management for Retail provides a set of integrated and best-in-class solution that delivers all the attendance information you need to accurately; schedule employees, create forecasts to meet business demand and gain access to up-to-the minute analytic reporting. ATS Workforce Management for Retail is designed to support your core operations and helps you take advantage of modern-day cloud computing business technology.

ATS Workforce Management Software Helps Retailers Maintain A Competitive Edge

With ATS Workforce Management for Retail you will have:

A Scalable Solution Designed to Meet the Needs of your Business
With ATS Workforce Management, you will have access to; employee self-service, job costing, instant time and attendance analytic tools, payroll, enterprise resource planning (ERP), employee recruitment and HR data integration for in-store supply chain management.

Access to Data at Anytime, Anywhere
ATS Workforce Management forecasting tool enhances predictive capabilities by providing you with real-time data to understand and overcome difficulty in anticipating fluctuations and customer demand. And with the right data at your fingertips, you will gain a competitive advantage and turn siloed information sources into synchronized ones with ATS Workforce Management business intelligence tools and innovative integration capabilities. ATS Industry-specific workforce analytics is robust and includes personalized dashboards, and workflows and alerts that can all be accessed from a smart-phone or any workstation with a Internet connection 24/7, 365 days a year.

Optimized Workforce Planning
ATS Employee Scheduling give employee access to their schedules and the ability to request time-off. ATS Workforce Management for Retail encompasses best-in-class —time and attendance, automated onboarding, and workforce planning tool—that helps to control costs during seasonal demand and reduce turnover and decrease payroll costs.

ATS Workforce Management for Retail gives you all the tools to make on-the-spot decisions including; analytics, mobility, visualization, and collaboration—to make sense of it all, get critical information to the department or personnel, and discuss it in real time.

To learn more, download a demonstration or contact us at (866) 294.2467. You can also register for one of our monthly webinars on our website.

ATS Workforce Management Software Helps Retailers Maintain A Competitive Edge

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Maximizing Productivity with ATS TimeWork OnDemand

January 27th, 2015 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Employee Scheduling | Leave Management | Overtime | Payroll | Retail - (Comments Off on Maximizing Productivity with ATS TimeWork OnDemand)

In today’s highly competitive, global economy there is so much that depends on how your business adapts. Getting more from your operations—and spending less—can make the difference between profits, or a loss. As an ATS customer you have access to a powerful cloud-based application for your enterprise with a unique cloud interface to help you better forecast, schedule, track, deploy and measure your workforce. And, with fast and secure global employee record transaction, within the same system— that means a more productive workforce.

The Power of ATS TimeWork On-Demand is specialized by Industry and includes:

Retail & Hospitality
Harness real-time analytics and insights, based on up-to-the-minute data capture. With ATS Time and Attendance you get the visibility you need to optimize everything across your supply chain.

Manufacturing
Streamline your entire production cycle, through the use of ATS comprehensive workforce management solutions. Deliver quality products on time using job costing capabilities that encompasses the entire manufacturing production line.

Public Sector
ATS combines deep public sector expertise with best-in-class government workforce management software solutions to help transform the business of government. From our own industry-leading TimeWork leave management, geofencing tracking for offsite workers, to KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) solutions— ATS has the skills and experience to help government offices improve efficiency, while modernizing their public sector time and attendance systems. Our implementation approach includes a detailed requirements analysis, configuration, class-room and online training sessions.

Healthcare
ATS Time and Attendance for healthcare supports employee scheduling, best practices, and better resource utilization. The industry-specific solution, delivers a robust set of best-in-class workforce management functionality that enables you to increase productivity, accelerate business performance, and lower your cost of ownership.

Financial Services
Within the financial service sector, ATS Time and Attendance helps; banks, wealth managers and advisory services providers to; take full advantage of the cost containment within ATS TimeWork while mitigating risk and staying compliant work-rule policies including holiday and overtime rules. ATS TimeWork On-Demand helps you control labour costs and increase workforce productivity.

ATS TimeWork Time and Attendance help you better engage customers, monitor labour output, support the implementation of internal controls, control unnecessary payroll costs, streamline operations, and improve financial integrity.

To learn more, register for a live webinar or download product brochures and learn how ATS TimeWork On-Demand can help improve business performance.

Maximizing Productivity with ATS TimeWork OnDemand

 

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Do You Know What You Are Buying?

December 3rd, 2012 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Employee Time and Attendance | Employee Time Tracking Software | Hosted Time and Attendance System | Payroll | Retail | Time and Attendance | Time and Attendance Blog, Workforce Management Software | Time and Attendance Canada | Time and Attendance On-Demand - (0 Comments)

Purchasing a workforce management solution is an important decision that should not be taken lightly. Part of making sure this solution meet your expectations is doing your due diligence. The easy part is that flashy employee time and attendance software come a dime a dozen. You need to get past the smoke and mirrors and settle on a time management solution with the core fundamentals that meet your company’s needs.

Here are three powerful components you can expect from an ATS Workforce Management Software:

Enabling your business- Our time management software is equipped to handle challenges faced by many industries including; manufacturing, healthcare, oil and gas, distribution and retail. ATS TimeWork offers a set of core enterprise-wide workflow management software features that help you transform your business into a real-time, on demand organization, responsive to the needs of your customers.

Reduce cost and streamline operations– Our solution is both affordable and is designed to dramatically lower typical deployment system costs. Because TimeWork is easily configurable lowers your costs from the very beginning. The end result is cost-effectiveness combined with maximum functionality for your overall operation. The ATS Time and Attendance software will adapt to your information flow quickly and without additional software development expenses. Our solution, once deployed can easily be transferred to other sites while safeguarding the consistency of all your data and processes.

Increase productivity and grow your business- TimeWork interactive dashboard brings all the information that you need for your business right at your fingertips. Our workforce management solution allows you to consolidate the latest information within your organization – and make faster, better informed decisions on all levels. Our time and attendance software integrates all of your company’s management processes and enables users to access this information within a standardized system. This gives all employees access to all the information whenever they need it. Integrating resources is efficient and helps companies quickly react to new market trends.

ATS TimeWork is a best-of-breed time management software that offers the flexibility and functionality you need to manage a competitive business. Our solutions are designed for mid and large corporations with a focus on streamlining payroll costs. 

To learn more go to our website or to speak to one of our software representatives call us at 1.866.294.2467.

 

 

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Adopting Business Automation in the Era of Austerity Measures

May 3rd, 2012 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Absence Management | Business Software Automation | Employee Time Attendance | Hospitality Industry | Payroll | Retail | Scheduling | Workforce Management Software - (0 Comments)

To say that the recent economic crisis of 2008 touched every country in the world is a gross understatement. While some countries fared somewhat better than others, there is overwhelming evidence that many countries are still feeling the effects of the financial crisis. For example, in North America the manufacturing sector and several other industries, have been decimated and leaving millions of people out of work. This economic downturn has forced many companies to take a serious look at the many advantages afforded by business automation software.  Manually tracking employee hours through time sheets is not only a waste of resources but unintended errors can cut into a company’s profit margin.

An ATS time and attendance solution is tailored to meet the challenges companies face in the areas of: forecasting, employee scheduling, labour analytics and attendance management. Whether your industry is hospitality, manufacturing, retail or healthcare, our workforce management software is designed to meet those needs and improve business productivity.

Here are three ways our software solution can help your company:

Information in Real-Time: Companies need the latest data so they can determine how to reduce costs while maintaining productivity. ATS time and attendance provides instant visibility and enhanced reporting to help you make informed decisions about your labour force.

Functionality and Scalability: ATS time and attendance software helps organizations automate clocking and streamlines employee time tracking, while communicating with operational departments throughout the payroll process. Our modular solution is scalable and allows companies to activate additional functions as their business and number of employees grows.

Integrated Solution: ATS fully integrated time and attendance solution combines performance into one powerful system—improving efficiency and effectiveness as well as generating critical business intelligence. Our workforce management software allows for integration to a variety of systems including: Talent Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Payroll, Accounting and Financial Management and Customer Relationship Management.

To join our weekly webinar on the advantages of workforce management software for businesses go to our website. To speak to one of our account executives, call us at: 866.294.2467

 

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‘Tis the Season to Monitor Productivity and Labour Costs

November 21st, 2011 | Posted by Apex Time Solutions in Retail | Scheduling | Time and Attendance Solution - (0 Comments)

With the holiday season rapidly approaching, retailers are both hopeful and excited. Most retail operations increase their staffing levels in anticipation of business volume. The ATS time and attendance solution helps retail operations keep track of employee attendance, absenteeism and monitors productivity for optimal profitability.

This robust time and attendance solution supports an unlimited number of schedules, as well as, fixed, open and flexible shifts. Employee tracking options include: Online Time Sheets, Web-Time Clocks, Biometric Terminals, Barcode Time Clocks, Magnetic Swipe Clocks, Smart Phones and Tablet PCs which monitor employee time and compile a range of labour analytics reports. Retail operations utilizing the ATS time and attendance solution will easily avoid payroll errors and the inflationary costs associated with mistakes made through manual processes.

Solution Benefits:

Employee Scheduling

ATS integrated time and attendance scheduling application ensures your levels are aligned to business volume. The software helps supervisors schedule the right people in the right place at the right time. The application allows supervisors to schedule by: seniority, skills, certifications, preferences and availability. 

 Budgeting

The budgeting module provides supervisors with the tools to review projected vs. actual labour expenses in each department. A variety of intuitive reports help supervisors adjust staffing to align with budgeted hours.

 Forecasting

The ATS forecasting module helps retailers track the history of business volume and produce accurate forecasts of future business cycles while simultaneously providing detailed calculations of workforce management requirements. Departments can track data by defining forecast drivers to achieve a set of requirements specifically to that department. The ATS forecasting module provides businesses with technology to develop work schedules that meet business demands.

The ATS integrated time and attendance scheduling application can be set up in less than a week depending on the complexity of the business requirements. The solution is web-based and does not require a company to buy licenses and install software. Instead, companies pay an “as-needed” subscription fee and then access the software from a computer using any web browser.

To learn more, go to our website or REGISTER on to join our weekly time and attendance user group.

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