by Nicky Budd-Thanos, on April 30, 2019
We pulled out three key things managers need to keep in mind to ensure compliance with New York’s Fair Workweek Law.
Read on for what you need to know - and how Crew can help you make sure you’re on track.
1. Offering shifts to current employees
Staffing shifts can be one of the most stressful and time-consuming parts of a managers’ job. With Fair Workweek Law, there’s another layer of consideration in how that staffing takes place:
Before hiring new employees to fill shifts, managers must offer shifts to employees already employed at their locations in the following order:
- Employees at the location where shift coverage is needed
- Employees to other NYC-based locations
- New hires
With a communications app like Crew, team members are empowered to work directly with their teammates to both find coverage for shifts they can’t work as well as to request to pick up a shift.
Managers can then review and approve schedule changes, with the power to ensure that proper staffing is taking place and that it’s in line with compliance requirements.
2. Advance scheduling
Fair Workweek Law requires that schedules are posted 21 days in advance and electronically submitted to employees at least two weeks in advance, giving all employees ample notice of expectations. If there are any changes to the schedule, it must be updated, reposted and redistributed to employees within 24 hours.
With Crew, you’re able to instantly distribute the schedule to your team, along with any changes or updates. With Admin-only posting through Announcements, you can make updates that are pinned to the top of your team members’ Chats tab, giving that information extra special visibility.
Beyond that, get more insight into the reach of your message by being able to see who has and has not ready your message, along with the ability to remind those who haven’t yet read that they need to check in.
“With Crew, there’s no longer any doubt schedules are posted on time and messages are getting to the right people. Now I don’t hope, I know everyone receives my updates directly.” - Amir Syed, COO, Syed Restaurants, Burger King franchisee
3. Record-keeping Requirements
With Fair Workweek Laws comes the potential for an audit, meaning that you must keep records demonstrating your compliance for three years.
Syed Restaurants rolled out Crew across all of their 35 locations and 900 employees to ensure that they were compliant with New York’s Fair Workweek Act.
As COO Amir Syed said, “I can’t think of anything more essential to our business than Crew. If we didn’t have the platform in place, we would have definitely struggled with Fair Workweek audits. Thankfully, we’re ahead of the game because Crew gives us everything we need to demonstrate scheduling compliance.”
Read more about how Syed Restaurants implemented Crew to see fast compliance results here.
Establishing efficient communication and Critical to staying compliant with these new Fair Workweek regulations is establishing regular and streamlined communication and giving transparency from above-store to management to the front line so that everyone is on the same page. Learn how Crew can help you get there.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
