How do you Communicate with your team?

[Lovewell]

Hi All!! I am curious as to how people have found it is easiest to communicate with their team! 
I’d love to know how many employees you have type of business, and what type of communication you do! 
Is it just posting the schedule? Is it weekly check ins? What platform do you use for communication? 
I am curious to know if you’re willing to share!! 
Thank you so much!! 

I’m also intrigued how the square team members communicate! Do you use a third party app? Is Square going to come out with a platform that would allow businesses to communicate with their teams?? 

[Abigails_stl]

We are a brick and mortar retail gift and fashion store with 2 locations. To communicate with my managers we have a weekly management meeting and they have store emails that I email out updates and they check at the beginning of each shift. For our staff we are old school and we have a binder at the register that they are supposed to read and initial at the beginning of each shift. We update it weekly with sales goals and notes about anything like procedures or promotions. They also leave dated and signed notes in the binder for any daily stuff that comes up. For scheduling we use the square scheduling and payroll feature. I used to do payroll and scheduling by hand and write the shifts on a calendar and text a pic of the calendar to everyone. Square payroll is WAY easier and definitely worth the money IMO. I agree that adding a notes and/or chat feature to the Square Team app would be awesome! 

Hope this helps!

[TCSlaguna]

We are a retail store with eight employees. 

We used to have a major issue with store updates not being disseminated to all employees. Then a Super Seller recommended printing new policies up and having a sign-in sheet for the employees to acknowledge receipt of the policy. It has worked out great. 

We also have a whiteboard in the back room with important updates that employees all initial when they have read it. 

I too would love to see a chat feature in the Square Teams app. 

[msambo]

I was looking into Homebase for scheduling since it has a messaging feature. But I don't want to have to pay for both Homebase and Square Team Plus. For now, we have to stick with texting with staff until I get the feature I need from Square.

[Anthem]

Talk about a tough one - feels like attempting to hit a continuously moving target. We've done so many things over the years some better than others but still looking for that magic bullet.

For the coffee shop we have 15-20 staff members, almost all college kids. We've landed on Slack for communicating as it is flexible, quick and available when they want to look at it. We have boards for various topics:

• RANDOM for intra-day updates and whatever needs to be shared with the team. Required read, emoji of some sort shows read.
• OUT OF STOCK 
• MANAGER WILL DEAL - anything from special orders to questions and training
• NEEDS FIXED - equipment that isn't acting right, broke, furniture issues, etc. 
• SHIFT REQUEST - Folks looking to get rid of a shift do it here before jumping to TEAMS to make the shift. 

We used to use When I Work but the price went higher every year and TEAMS got better and better until it made sense to switch over from WIW to teams (we don't use Square payroll, still use QBO to make it easier on bookkeeping). All staff uses TEAMS app for clock-in/out and schedule changes. 

Really hard to have regular meetings but we close an hour early one sunday a month to get together as a team update on the happenings, get/give feedback and do some team-building fun things. 

For the dry cleaners, we have 7 staff members. Pretty old-school with white boards for messaging and bi-weekly team meetings to share updates or ideas on the future. There is no scheduling as they all work everyday until the work is done. Just started using Square Teams for time-clock. This team uses an iPad mounted on the wall to clock-in/out. Not all have a smartphone to work with so we're keeping one point of entry for everyone. It's not perfect, but it seems to be working. 

[JUYBoutique20]

Right now, we use text messaging.  It's the quickest and most simple way for me.  I have a group text made just for that.