Streamlining with Deputy helps The Escapery solve the puzzle of scheduling nightmares.

The Escapery is a locally-owned escape room based in Marietta, Georgia. Escape rooms provide a unique blend of video game-like puzzles to solve within a time limit and human interaction, both with the rest of your team and the Game Master guiding you through the game.

Marc and April Simmons opened their small business in February of 2016. “We’ve always wanted to open our own business and Marc loves escape rooms, so some of our friends encouraged us to create our own,” says April.

As The Escapery began to take off, their manual scheduling process was becoming problematic, especially as the number of employees grew and business needs expanded. With some shifts needing to be fully-worked and others simply on call, trying to accommodate a larger number of schedules was becoming a constant struggle.

Further, employees manually submitting their hours became tricky, as some would forget to track a day here or there, or others would just claim to work precisely the shift assigned, rather than a more realistic view of their hours.

Marc explained his frustration, “Getting the data from multiple sources, all in inconsistent formats, to figure out each payroll cycle, was just becoming a headache.”

“Deputy’s “Areas” function definitively provided a framework for the different types of shifts, making it far easier for our employees to understand, and keep track of, what kind of shift they were supposed to work,” explains Marc. “In fact, with the tools Deputy provides, we were able to empower our employees to claim shifts and mark their unavailability, without needing to go to a manager. That level of self-service has made scheduling much faster and easier.”

Plus, with all of their employees using the same app to track their time, as well as an easy way to clock in or out, gathering everyone’s hours for payroll is easier than before using Deputy. There were even benefits they did not expect, such as the ability to quickly see at a glance which employees are scheduled on a given day, who is currently clocked in, and who is late/absent. “Deputy makes it very easy to communicate with our employees, as we always can tell who is present,” says Marc.

“With our employee pool steadily growing, the process of making sure we have coverage is not the nightmare it used to be. We are able to easily integrate anyone into our system and immediately make it easy to keep track of when they work, assign training shifts, and allow self-service of shift swaps,” says Marc.

Marc further explains how Deputy has helped his team save on time, “On the whole, integrating Deputy has kept Escapery leadership from having to spend hours each week working on scheduling and importing numbers into payroll. At this point, that process is so streamlined that unless there is a special case, preparing the schedule takes maybe an hour per week. If that!”

Deputy has helped The Escapery team empower their employees by allowing them to set a schedule that works for them, “Deputy definitely benefits everyone here!”