2020 Wage Increases Guide

On January 1st, minimum wage increases went into effect in several jurisdictions across the country. The ever-changing landscape of the hospitality industry can be confusing and overwhelming - that’s why we’ve created a guide to help you navigate your state’s changes.

MINIMUM WAGE CHANGES EFFECTIVE JANUARY 1, 2020

Arizona: $12 per hour

California

• Alameda: $15 per hour

• Belmont: $15 per hour

• Fremont: $15 per hour

• Los Angeles: $15 per hour

• Los Angeles County: $15 per hour

• Malibu: $15 per hour

• Menlo Park: $15 per hour

• Novato: $15 per hour

• Pasadena: $15 per hour

• Petaluma: $15 per hour

• Redwood: $15 per hour

• South San Francisco: $15 per hour

• San Leandro: $15 per hour

• Santa Monica: $15 per hour

• Santa Rosa: $15 per hour

Colorado: $12 per hour

DC:

• Washington: $15 per hour

Illinois:

• Cook County: $13 per hour

Maine: $12 per hour

Washington: $13.50 per hour

What Employers Can Do Now: 

Get Your Scheduling Down to a Science: Analyze your most crucial shifts and recognize the strongest members of your staff in order to strategically schedule your team (tools like Harri's TeamLive can help managers and operators with schedule alignment, labor costs, and budget).

Consider Adjusting Your Hours:  By tracking your stores’ sales patterns, you may gain valuable insights to determine the working hours that are most productive for your business. For example, if you frequently experience a spike in customers/sales around lunch Monday through Friday, but find there's a slump during evenings on the same days, you may want to consider closing earlier during the week and focusing your marketing efforts towards weekday lunch. (Pro Tip: Your POS weekly and monthly reports should be a great indicator of these trends.)

Take a Close Look at Menu Item Prices: This is a last-ditch but sometimes necessary effort to combat minimum wage increases. Analyze each menu item and break it down by cost (with the help of your culinary team), and consider comparing vendors. Know that you may lose some customers at the expense of your menu changes. If you decide to increase your menu prices, communicate to your guests that your business has done so in order to stay open, pay your employees fair wages, and continue to serve them!

How Onboarding Can Help Foster Retention

Retention is a major issue for those in the restaurant business – and for good reason.

Last year, the hospitality sector’s turnover rate topped 70%  for the fourth consecutive year. In fact, the 2018 turnover rate was the highest level its been since the Great Recession. Constantly replacing employees eats up valuable time in an organization, and it can ultimately affect quality of service. It’s expensive too --  each vacancy can cost operations anywhere from $3,000 to $18,000. 

Industry response has typically focused on engaging employees. Think open-door communication policies, team-building activities, and reward initiatives. Yet by just focusing on engaging existing employees, you’re missing out on a big opportunity to improve retention rates by making a stellar first impression. 

Human resource industry studies show that upwards of 20% of staff turnover happens within the first 45 days of employment. That puts the onboarding experience into central focus as a way to show new hires that your organization is a place they want to work for months and years to come.

Promote unique brand and culture from the start

Even before employees accept a position, you have a chance to promote your unique brand and work culture from how you approach job posting and the interview process. With Harri’s Career pages, you can customized a web site to showcase your company’s job postings, values, culture, and employee testimonials while potential new hires consider open positions. 

For example, if your brand’s mission includes green initiative and sustainability practices, your company page can include how employees are encouraged to volunteer and give back. If your brand prioritizes truly exceptional customer service, detail the way you will provide training to that end. 

By putting your values and methods front and center, you’ll attract like-minded candidates who are much more likely to stay in their roles for the long term.

Provide a positive onboarding experience

Human resource experts say that an ideal onboarding program happens over a period of 90 days. In reality, most companies devote one or two days and simply cover the bare minimum to meet legal and policy requirements. 

With a workforce management platform like Harri, you’ll be able to lean on technology to take over some of the onboarding workload from your managers and new hires. As this digitizes the process, automating some task and centralizing documents, this means that new employees will have a much more positive and thorough onboarding.

Instead of scrambling to collect paperwork and signatures, the platform can be used to upload custom, state and federal documents for employees to review and sign electronically. For example, in light of recent Fair Workweek legislation, Harri’s onboarding platform presents new employees with a Good Faith Estimate document to review and sign. Its integration with Checkr allows managers to efficiently initiate the background check process right from Harri’s hiring platform. Harris also uses E-Verify, a web-based system that allows enrolled employers to confirm the eligibility of their employees to work in the United States.

Onboard with well-executed training 

Inadequate or inconsistent training could make new hires lose confidence in your organization and may plant the seed that they will move on more quickly. With Harri, new hires make the most of intuitive, digital learning on the Harri platform. 

For example, in partnership with the New York City Hospitality Alliance, Harri developed a new digital anti-harassment and discrimination training platform for restaurants and nightlife establishments. It provides hospitality-relevant training modules for employees and is based on a curriculum developed that fully complies with the Stop Sexual Harassment in NYC Act.   

Include channels for feedback

Technology like Harri can take over some of the tedium of the onboarding process so that managers can have time to relate to new hires as people. With Harri Live, managers can stay engaged with new hires with just a few clicks and SMS messages. They can manage expectations, questions, and concerns to mediate and check in on new employees’ satisfaction with their job in that precarious first 90 days.

Make to plan to address three key waves where new hires start questioning whether they will stay at their jobs: First, make sure they are clear on and have the resources for what they will be doing, their schedule, and their tasks. Next, address whether they have any concerns about their schedule, compensation, or team. Finally, make sure new employees have an idea of how they can advance to other positions and more pay if they stay with the organization.

A positive onboarding experience is your first chance to retain employees. Make sure your procedure is as pain-free and consistent as possible. Visit Harri to learn more about how the platform can improve onboarding and ultimately, retention.

Minor Scheduling: How to Make Sure You’re Compliant

There’s a whole host of benefits to hiring minors, not least the boost giving real workplace experience to young people brings to society as a whole.

But it also comes with challenges, especially for large-scale hospitality businesses operating in multiple jurisdictions. Minors are protected by both state and federal laws. For employers, keeping track of the relevant local and national laws which differ for different ages and change frequently can be a nightmarish prospect.

To deal with this, Harri has developed a host of new features to help you get the benefits of hiring minors while ensuring you are compliant with state and federal laws – all integrated into the TeamLive platform.

Let’s take a look at the challenges and benefits of hiring minors, and how Harri’s new features give you peace of mind by ensuring your business complies with the law.

Potential Challenges Around Hiring Minors

First of all, let’s define exactly what we mean by a minor. For our purposes, minors are employees between the ages of 14-17 years old, who are still students in high school and working part-time.

As a general rule, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) sets 14 years of age as the minimum age for employment (under most conditions) and limits the number of hours worked by minors under the age of 16, but specific rules and penalties vary by city and state. 

Minors are protected by strict labor laws (and rightly so). But this means you have to be super careful as an employer. You must be on top of the rules for each age group and make sure your managers don’t schedule minors to work hours that violate the rules.

This becomes more challenging when you have to factor in different school timetables and other times when minors would be unavailable to work.

However, there are substantial benefits to hiring younger workers too.

Benefits of Hiring Minors

Although minors have always played a role in the hospitality industry, employers generally tend to favor age and experience over youthful exuberance. Regardless, It’s worth keeping an open mind as there are numerous benefits to hiring the younger generation. 

Expand the Talent Pool 

By opening up your recruitment to a younger demographic, you increase your talent pool by a significant amount. There are around 10 million minors in the US and among them is the next generation of hospitality superstars. By tapping into this rich seam, you have the opportunity to grow and nurture the top talent of the future. 

Minors Bring a Different Perspective to a Job Environment

We all know that companies can get stagnated and sometimes what’s needed is a fresh perspective. Minors may come in with new ideas or alternative ways of looking at tasks that can inspire existing employees and managers. Granted, not all of these ideas are going to work, but even if one fresh initiative comes in, it’s surely worth the gamble.

Minors Make Excellent Trainees

Generally speaking, people new to the workforce will be more adaptable and eager to learn new tasks, making them excellent trainees. Hiring someone new to the workplace means they are a blank slate. They won’t have picked up bad habits, they won’t be jaded and cynical (hopefully!) and they should be open to your way of doing things. 

You can instruct them on your procedures and inspire them to model your principles and work style. So as long as you offer good training and lead by example, there is an opportunity to help these young workers form good habits early on. Managers can become mentors and feel empowered in their positions fostering better retention and company culture. 

Offer the Best Value

Minors expect far lower wages than older, more experienced staff. They typically work part-time as well, meaning they will not require the same benefits as other staff. You will usually be paying the minimum wage to minors and they’ll be happy for the pocket money and experience. You could be hiring the best talent for a fraction of the cost.

Make the Most of Hiring Minors With Harri

Now that we’ve seen the pros and cons of hiring minors, it’s time to take a look at how Harri helps you mitigate the potential negatives and make the most of the positives. There’s a host of features specifically designed to help you navigate the laws regarding hiring under-18s so you can reap the benefits of their youthful exuberance and great value labor. Here’s an overview of how Harri can help.

Get Peace of Mind With Harri’s Wage and Hour Compliance Engine

All you have to do is input the rules for your location and Harri helps you create schedules that comply with the local laws. If your schedule has the potential to violate labor laws, you will be warned so that you can adjust it accordingly.

You can now set your state’s minor work laws and break laws to ensure you stay on the right side of the rules, every time. The system ensures you remain compliant without the hassle of looking up all the rules, taking away the worry and giving your managers peace of mind.

Link to School Calendars

You can also now link individual’s school calendars with Harri’s TeamLive platform so that the information is integrated into the scheduling system. By linking to the appropriate school calendar, you can see at a glance accurate and up-to-date information telling you when each minor is available to work.

What Happens When They Turn 18?

The minor rules will automatically cease to apply when the individual turns 18, so you don’t need to worry about switching the rules manually.

Track the Effectiveness of Your New Hires With Employee Performance Reports

Harri allows you to dive deep into each employee’s performance with its built-in analytics. Track attendance, sales performance, and other KPIs to determine who your best performers are. This way you can accurately tell if your minor hiring strategy has been a success and make any necessary adjustments to the process to improve results.

10 Steps to Humanizing the Candidate Journey

According to LinkedIn, the candidates’ primary challenge in job hunting is not knowing what working at your company is really like. 

Technology-based job hunting makes finding a job, training, and communication simpler than ever. But if you’re not careful, it can also dehumanize and depersonalize the talent search experience -- which is the most critical aspect of the hospitality business.

Employer branding is a key component of making your restaurant or hotel come alive for job seekers, making sure that what you have to offer employees is clearly conveyed at every step of the journey. But then, you must take it down to an individual level -- when Max or Melissa is job hunting, do they feel like they are being welcomed, valued, and engaged by your organization.

1. What do employees see when they spot your online job ad? Your language should be warm and inviting and inclusive. These tips can be helpful in crafting your ads. Most prospective employees trust the opinions of current employees more than corporate messaging, so be sure that your reviews, website, and other communications include real opinions from people who have worked with you. If you have “dark spots” on your reputation as an employer, be honest during interviews about how you’re working to correct them.

2. Check (and humanize) your communication style. Writing a great job description can help you attract the right kind of talent. You have an opportunity to convey the personality of your work environment and not just job title and requirements. For example, this ad for a dishwasher is so appealing that a candidate will feel valued even before they hit the “Apply” button. 

Be sure to thank every applicant, even those who may not be qualified. Every person is a prospective customer of your brand. Rudeness or ghosting will create a negative halo around your business. Treat people as you would want to be treated. 

1. Be respectful of candidates’ schedules and time. Automated interview scheduling enables applicants to select times that are convenient for them and makes communicating with those applicants easy and personalized. Acknowledging that someone has a current job or other obligations that limit their interview time is a way to show a candidate that you can be flexible and understanding; a valuable part of humanizing the hiring experience.

1. Show “a day in the life.” Explaining a job and its duties will give an applicant some sense of your expectations and culture. But enabling top candidates to shadow current workers or speak to other employees adds a layer of transparency. If a candidate brings up a concern based on peer feedback or an online review, address it directly and let them know what you’re doing to solve the issue. 

2. Honesty builds trust. That applies to the entire candidate journey, beyond the application and interview. “Show the real you” advises this human resources website. Storytelling engages employees. When you talk about why you work for your brand or detail your own career path, you form a bond with candidates and employees. Avoid TMI and personal topics that might make candidates uncomfortable. Video interviewing can be a great way to connect with an applicant face-to-face while saving travel time and expense.

3. Onboarding and training. Once you’ve found your ideal candidates,  manage expectations for onboarding and training and work to make your programs fun, convenient, and interactive. Assign mentors and make sure you’re thoroughly prepared to welcome and engage every new hire -- from the second they walk through your doors. Online training is a great way to supplement your in-person experiences, but again, see #2. Keeping language clear and conversational can make even the most tedious compliance training more entertaining. 

4. Create schedules that work. Employees’ lives are more complicated than ever before. Acknowledging that they have lives, commitments, family, and passions outside of the workplace establishes you as an employer who cares. Use a flexible scheduling system that enables people to easily plan and swap shifts. Involving employees in solving scheduling issues builds trust and cooperation within your team.

5. Get to know (and appreciate) your team members. Just as diners or hotel guests are flattered and happy when a server remembers what type of martini or accommodations that person likes, your team members will appreciate your knowing something about them -- whether that’s what time of day they prefer to work or what their long-term career goals are. Celebrate special occasions and business successes and engage your team in deciding how and when to do it. Mandatory celebrations at inconvenient times and places can suck the fun out of happy occasions. What REALLY matters to employees and helps them feel valued? Sometimes a simple thank you (especially in front of co-workers) can go a long way. Remember too that not all employees value the same things. Take time for one-on-one meetings with every employee and take “pulse checks” using technology.

These are some of the qualities of successful organizations that are committed to employee satisfaction and retention. 

• Effective onboarding

• Inclusion: feeling like part of a team; not singled-out because of specific traits or work style

• Opportunities for career development and upskilling to learn new and valuable things (based on employee interest)

• Succession planning. Someone will not enjoy a promotion for long if they are expected to still perform their old duties. If someone is moving to a new role, make sure you’ve planned in advance how their responsibilities will be covered.

Of course, timely and fair wages are the basics for any employer these days. Here again, technology can help.  The right operating system can streamline payroll. 

1. Be sensitive about rejection and separation. Breaking up is hard to do. When the best employees move on, resist the urge to be bitter. Never limit the growth of your key employees. If you need to terminate an employee, be honest with your remaining team about why you had to make a difficult decision. Every business has economic downturns and sometimes you may need to let people go to improve cash flow. Make sure you communicate in a way that doesn’t evoke panic. If you create the right team environment and build loyalty, your employees will add creative growth ideas and will want to be part of the group that leads the business through tough times. When employees leave, make sure they leave with their dignity intact. Negative experiences quickly find their way to social media and other forms of negativity and gossip.

2. Measure and monitor your humanity. Use the data you get from employee surveys, exit interviews, and online reviews to spot problem areas and then create action plans. Make sure your senior managers value the employee experience too and as you hire leaders, ensure their values are consistent with your brand’s.

The Harvard Business Review advises:

 “Design your employee experience as thoughtfully as you design your customer experience.”

Technology will never replace a smile or a handshake, but it can streamline all aspects of the hiring, onboarding, training, and feedback process -- giving you the insights you need to create a better experience.

Here’s What You Need to Know About Oregon’s Fair Workweek Rules

Fair workweek or predictive scheduling laws have been coming into force nationwide. The movement aims to protect shift workers from unfair scheduling practices. 

With complex rules and hefty fines for violations, it’s a struggle for restaurant and fast-food operators to keep up. Especially those operating in multiple cities, as the laws differ from state to state. 

In Oregon, the law applies to hospitality and food service providers with 500 or more employees. 

Oregon was the first state to enact fair workweek legislation. According to the law, Oregon’s Bureau of Labor can issue fines from $500 to $1,000 for violations as well as civil penalties of $2,000 for any employer found to be coercing employees into asking to be added to the standby list for on-call shifts.

The authorities showed they weren’t afraid to wield this power when they fined Portland restaurant Park Kitchen $580,000 for practising tip-pooling against 41 former employees. 

For operators affected by the rules, it’s important to stay on top of the paperwork. But restaurant schedules are difficult enough to plan at the best of times. Having to take complicated new rules into account is a nightmare for restaurant managers.

At Harri, we have developed tools to help. Harri’s smart scheduling tools have specific features built-in to help managers proactively deal with the rules, mitigating risks throughout the business and enabling all departments to work together to make fairer schedules and avoid penalties.

The result is an improvement in efficiency and morale, managers with one less thing to worry about, and a boost to your bottom line. 

How does this work? First, let’s take a look at the specific laws for operators in Oregon. Then we’ll go through the key features of the Harri system and how they help to protect your business.

Regulations and Penalties for Oregon

Good Faith Estimate

Good Faith Estimates give employees advance knowledge of when and where they are expected to work. Employers must do their best to anticipate their requirements for the employee ahead of time. If any changes need to be made later, the estimate must be revised.

The law for Oregon says that, at the time of hire, employees must be given an estimate of the median hours they are expected to work for the month. It must explain the details of the voluntary standby list.

Voluntary Standby List

Employers may maintain voluntary standby lists of employees who are willing to work additional hours due to unanticipated customer needs or unexpected absences. The employees must request or agree in writing to be on the list and must be given all the relevant information. Employees on the list are not entitled to compensation for work schedule changes. 

The inclusion of voluntary standby lists offers employers more flexibility, preventing them having to over-staff just in case demand is greater than expected. 

Right to Rest

Right to Rest laws are designed to discourage the scheduling of “clopenings”, when an employee is assigned to consecutive closing and opening shifts and therefore doesn’t have enough time to get home and rest between shifts. Employees are due compensation for working these shifts, so it’s in the employer’s interests to avoid scheduling them.

The Oregon rules state that unless the employee gives explicit consent, employers cannot schedule them to work two shifts over two days when the first shift ends the day and when there are less than 10 hours between shifts.

If an employee works during these rest periods, the employer must compensate them for each hour, or portion of an hour, worked at 1.5x the employee’s regular rate of pay.

Advanced Notice on Scheduling

Advance Notice rules aim at preventing shift workers from being unable to plan ahead as a result of getting schedules late. The Oregon rules say that employees must be given the schedules at least seven days in advance of the first workday of that schedule (increasing to 14 days in July 2020). And that work schedules must be posted in a conspicuous and accessible location.

Changes to Work Schedules

Along the same lines, there are rules in place to prevent last-minute changes to schedules so workers aren’t left out of pocket. If the employer requests changes to the written work schedule, they must provide timely notice of the change. Employees may decline any work shifts not included in the written work schedule.

If the employer changes a written schedule without advance notice of at least seven days (14 days from July 1, 2020) prior to the beginning of the workweek in which the change occurs, the employer is required to pay the employee an additional hour of pay in addition to regular wages earned under the following conditions:

If the employer:

• adds more than 30 minutes to the work shift.

• changes the date or start and end time with no loss of hours.

• schedules the employee for an additional work shift or on-call shift.

Employees may request in writing to work additional shifts or on-call work shifts any time after the notice is given.

Right to Input into Work Schedule

Employees may suggest changes to the work schedule and may request not to be scheduled for work shifts during certain times or at certain locations. Employers are not allowed to retaliate against employees for making such requests, however, they are not necessarily required to accept them either.

How Can Harri’s Intelligent Scheduling Help Your Business?

The rules surrounding Fair Workweek laws, in Oregon and across the nation, are lengthy and complex. The last thing busy restaurant managers need is even more stress with when dealing with the balancing act that is scheduling. 

That’s why we’ve created a workaround. A solution that will not only relieve your managers of the stress of being responsible for legal action and fines, but will also provide more flexible and fairer schedules to your shift workers.

Harri automatically applies the local laws in real-time as your managers are creating schedules, encouraging them to provide schedules on-time and minimize violations.

Here’s a rundown of the main features in more detail.

Good Faith Estimate Support

Harri’s smart scheduling tools provide support specifically for dealing with the requirement for a Good Faith Estimate during onboarding. 

The system pulls the relevant data on an employee together into a Good Faith Estimate document that managers can review and provide to the new hire. The document gives the new hires a clear schedule in accordance with the local laws, for Oregon or wherever else in the country they are.

The whole onboarding process is paperless. The document is sent to the new hire for review and e-signature. This avoids lengthy email chains and printing and scanning documents, freeing up managers to concentrate on other areas of the business. 

Direct Shift Swaps Between Employees

Allowing employees to easily swap shifts between themselves is a good method of filling last-minute gaps in the schedule. As voluntary swaps between employees don’t incur any penalties for the employer.

Harri’s Hot Fill system is designed to make it as easy and efficient as possible for employees to exchange shifts. The peer-to-peer system allows managers to oversee and manage shift swaps without any direct involvement.

Hot Fill - “Uber for your employees”

Here is the process:

1. If an employee is unable to make it to work, they release the shift.

2. Other employees have previously indicated that they are available should a shift be released on that day. Note, they are not on-call.

3. The system sends an alert to these employees via SMS and push notification. 

4. The first employee to respond is assigned the shift.

5. The manager on duty is automatically alerted to the employee’s estimated arrival time and distance from work.

Calculation of Right to Rest Compensation Payment

Harri helps managers reduce the number of “clopenings” by alerting them when they add one to the schedule. This helps them avoid the associated penalties, as much as possible.

Manager Alert for Penalties Related to Schedule Changes 

Giving managers as much data as possible is one of the most effective ways to help them keep scheduling costs to a minimum. With Harri, managers can define the compensation rules for changes after the advance notice period. 

The amount of premium pay due for shift changes is indicated on the schedule itself in real-time and is also included in the total wage cost calculations. This keeps managers aware of the cost impact of schedule changes so that they can proactively make the right decisions. 

Predictive Scheduling Premium Reports

Predictive scheduling isn’t only about making schedules, but also about analyzing the data to see what can be improved in the future. Harri compiles detailed predictive scheduling reports that managers can easily access and scrutinize. The premium payments resulting from schedule changes are laid bare so that decisions can be made on company-wide scheduling policy to avoid future fines.

Protect Your Business and Empower Your Managers Today

Predictive scheduling rules are yet another worry that could be keeping restaurant operators up at night in an already tough industry. But with the help of some carefully crafted software, you can turn this policy shift into a positive for your business.

Get your managers united behind the system and show them that with the help of these smart tools, they can save time and stress while delivering more flexible, smarter and fairer schedules to their teams.

Challenge your managers to use these cutting-edge solutions to get the most from their teams for a happier, more efficient workplace, and a boost to the bottom line. To find out more about how Harri can help you cope with Oregon’s fair workweek legislation, get started with the smart scheduling tools.