TimeForge
A Holistic Approach to Labor Management

For the first time since the 1980s, the retail sector is working to recover from labor shortages and address minimum wage, employee culture, and employee expectations. Thought leaders today realize that addressing the labor crisis requires proactive management in areas like applicant tracking and onboarding, employee retention, and culture building. However, with so much on their plates—from hiring new staff to building out schedules—employee management has become an uphill task.

This is where TimeForge, a leading online labor management platform, takes center stage and provides software and support to help businesses effectively and efficiently manage their workforce. The platform includes sales forecasting, operational excellence, shift scheduling, timekeeping, and workforce management products that scale to meet customer needs. TimeForge provides different technological options for corporate and mid-market retailers, and small stores, leveraging its machine learning-powered technology for reliable labor planning and accuracy.

TimeForge was established in 2007 to address a pain point experienced by many restaurants: employees had to visit the workplace just to check their schedules. Using TimeForge, restaurant staff can now use its self-service portal at any time to track their upcoming shifts. Currently, it offers 13 modules with its products widely used by stores, restaurants, grocers, and other hospitality businesses.

TimeForge has a well-tested approach that begins with an initial discussion where it learns what a client wants to achieve and the progress they have made toward it. For every client, it offers the best of both worlds: a holistic labor solution for the entire employee lifecycle, from hiring to payroll, and the ability to mix and match one of its best-of-breed solutions with an existing implementation. Typically, clients start with point solutions and expand to larger deployments over time.

Users can leverage TimeForge to design and publish job postings and track applicants throughout their recruitment journey. Once a candidate is chosen, it instantly transfers their information into a new employee profile without additional data entry. Through this digital onboarding, TimeForge provides a seamless experience for new hires. Simultaneously, its deep integrations with leading job boards help clients get the most exposure on their job opening posts. After onboarding, TimeForge equips managers with robust tools to create intense training programs that ensure workers are content in their positions and have access to the resources required for the job.

“The TimeForge platform assists businesses to move away from the chaotic processes they implemented in a panic and streamline their staffing processes while ensuring that their employer branding is on track,” says Audrey Hogan, COO.

Traditionally, enterprise retailers are heavily metric-and datadriven. TimeForge assists clients in optimizing their KPIs and drives simple, data-driven decision-making using machine learning (ML). Its ML also enables accurate hourly sales forecasting throughout the day in 15-minute increments, unlike other vendors that estimate consumer demands on a daily basis.

TimeForge translates its precise and focused sales forecasts into the budget- and ideal labor coverage metrics, aiding managers in accurately determining the optimal labor schedule to ensure customers are always taken care of. Essentially, it allows retailers to know when and what they must provide to satisfy their customers, acting as a ‘crystal ball’ that continuously tracks the most crucial facets of their current and future sales to make accurate predictions.

Another key offering is its communication tools that help managers and staff to always be on the same page and efficiently share critical information. For example, managers can track important details in TimeForge’s online logbook, which unlike traditional notebooks can never be lost, stolen, or damaged. TimeForge also offers comprehensive compliance options, including state-specific labor law enforcement, predictive scheduling penalty calculations, and meal penalty prevention and reporting. One of the first platforms to provide automated proactive compliance management, TimeForge’s software automates and enforces staffing regulations to prevent non-compliance.

The TimeForge platform assists businesses to move away from the chaotic processes that they implemented in a panic and streamline their staffing processes while ensuring that their employer branding is on track

In essence, TimeForge’s platform is an end-to-end solution with profound value across organizational departments, including HR, sales, and finance, combining AI and ML techniques with expert compliance know-how to help users gain a clear grasp of their sales performance and regulatory compliance.

Recently, TimeForge assisted an employee-owned food store, C&K Market, a mid-market grocery group with about 40 shops that sells products under several banners across the west coast. In this instance, TimeForge mitigated the adverse effects of C&K’s failing timekeeping system by leveraging its end-to-end competencies to help them get up and running within 72 hours.

Driven by its powerful labor management technology, TimeForge remains a prominent retail technology player that helps companies effectively hire, retain, budget, and manage their workforce.