"What definitely stands out with ADP and MakeShift is the ease of use. Plus, the mobile aspect to managing, communicating and reporting makes our scheduling process very smooth, without surprises." - Chetan Patel, President of Mystery Room, LLC
Being part of a business where thrilled customers try to solve the mysteries of an escape room can be a rewarding endeavor. When it comes to managing employee time and staffing in this quick-paced dynamic environment, you want few, if any, surprises.
In just over three years, All In Adventures has grown from one location to 31 and is operating in 15 states with plans to expand. The fast-growing company is projected to more than double its number of locations in 2019. Competition is fierce and intensifying for this unique area of retail, with the industry growing from just a handful of escape room businesses a few years ago to more than 1,800 in 2017.
All in Adventures currently offers nine revolving escape room themes, with names such as Black Ops, Treasure Island and Escape from Alcatraz.
In the expanding escape room retail vertical, ensuring your employees are in sync with the unique client experience is critical for success, according to Chetan Patel, President of the Georgia-based Mystery Room, LLC., which also does business as All In Adventures.
To ensure that the business can provide daily games without any glitches, it is critical that each location is staffed with the appropriate talent to handle each game version and employees are on time and present when they are scheduled to work. "Without that process operating at maximum efficiency, All in Adventures would lose an important competitive edge," Patel explains.
MakeShift, Available on ADP Marketplace, Meets the Staffing Challenge
To help meet that critical challenge, in March 2017 the organization implemented ADP Workforce Now® as their payroll of record, along with MakeShift, an integrated solution for workforce scheduling as well as time and attendance. Today, the firm can count on the right people being at the right places when customers arrive to experience their escape room fantasy.
Patel explains that by using MakeShift, the business is able to leverage some of the unique skills that its employees have and roles that need filling at certain locations by tagging them appropriately. This allows All in Adventures to ensure that, as it's going through staffing on a bi-weekly basis, managers know who's actually going to be trained. For example, MakeShift can help determine whether a new or existing associate should be trained for a new room. It can also identify who is assigned to a role (front desk, greeter, etc.) at any given time.
"MakeShift also empowers us to look at the metrics on the back end to determine how much time, effort and money we spend on training. Is it enough, not enough or just right?" Patel says. "It's definitely a critical piece because it truly optimizes our staffing, training and managing of each retail location. This way, we have consistent staffing across every store."
Of course, people unexpectedly call in sick or just don't show up. MakeShift allows the company to quickly evaluate who's available, make changes to the shifts and communicate those changes to employees through the mobile app.
"That's very beneficial to us, especially being in retail, where situations are very dynamic and change often," Patel notes. Because All in Adventures locations are mall-based, their staffing app needs to be able to sync with the ebbs and flows of busy periods for the malls — with weekends being the main high-traffic days.
Going Mobile Draws Younger Talent
MakeShift's mobile platform plays an especially weighty role in catering to the organization's youth-skewed workforce, who expect to be able to check on their hours, sign up for open shifts and explore other time-related options on their phone. In fact, Patel has noted that the mobile app offers his organization a definite advantage in areas such as recruiting, onboarding and reducing turnover.
"In this mobile world, where people are constantly in different places at different times, you have to be able to get everybody on the same page," he continues. "Without a mobile app, that was not an easy task. As we deployed MakeShift, it allowed us to really develop a pretty simple process where the managers are responsible for developing two-week schedules."
With the app, employees are able to input their available hours to create a standard set of shifts that they will be working during the week. They can also use the app to quickly let a manager know if they can be available to work.
"They can tell their manager, 'Hey, I'm not doing anything so if you need me, I'm open,'" Patel says. "Retail is about constant change, so the better prepared you are going into it, the better you're going to be able to provide the customer the best experience.
"MakeShift lets us focus on our core business, which is providing a great, fun escape room experience on all fronts," Patel continues. "What definitely stands out with ADP and MakeShift is the ease of use. Plus, the mobile aspect to managing, communicating and reporting makes our scheduling process very smooth, without surprises."
Info
- ADP Client: All in Adventures, Duluth, GA
- Industry: Retail (Escape Room)
- ADP Marketplace Partner: MakeShift by Appcolony
- Business: MakeShift is a mobile employee engagement platform that integrates with the current version of ADP Workforce Now® to schedule and engage employees. As an integrated tool, MakeShift allows Workforce Now to remain a system of record without the need to key data into multiple silos manually.
Learn more about MakeShift: http://marketplace.adp.com/MakeShift
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