The hospitality sector is notorious for long hours, low pay and high staff turnover. However, as one of the UK’s largest and most labour-intensive sectors, it provides welcome opportunities for people looking for full-time or part-time work.
A restaurant is only ever as great as the people it employs — staff can totally make or break the customer experience. But juggling a mix of part-time and full-time workers, temporary and seasonal staff and daily fluctuations in staffing requirements is a tough task. Last minute bookings, annual leave requests, sickness absences and swift swaps also present ongoing challenges for restaurant managers.
This epic task is one that restaurant owner John Stamp knows only too well. His family restaurant Makars Gourmet Mash Bar, operates from three locations in Edinburgh’s city centre, attracting tourists and locals alike.
Stamp said: “Schedules and staff change frequently during the week. We employ a lot of students who require a certain degree of flexibility in return for loyalty. Regularly, staff didn’t turn up as they were unaware that they had a shift or would turn up when not scheduled. The main issue was that there was no central point of reference except a rota pinned up in the office.”
Clear visibility on which members of staff worked which shift is also a challenge for some restaurant owners, making the ability to manage labour costs difficult. It can also be a cause of great frustration for employees too — if working hours aren’t tracked effectively, it can lead to a shortfall in their pay packets.
Staff rostering is different for every restaurant, but there are many ways to ease scheduling headaches:
- Improve visibility
Managing a single rota for all employees (from chefs to cleaners) can be overwhelming and make budgeting issues more difficult to spot. To make life easier, break down rotas based on role. With separate rotas, costs can be broken down by role or location to help identify any under or over-staffing issues (and find a solution for them) while remaining in control of staffing budgets.
- Planning shifts around peak periods
All restaurants will experience peaks and troughs throughout the day, so it makes sense to track these patterns and refine shifts based on the busiest periods. For example, four waitstaff might be needed for the usual Friday night busy spell between 6-9pm, but that doesn’t mean all four staff need to work the same shift to cover it. Instead, stagger shift lengths so that the busy spell is adequately covered without increasing staffing costs or giving employees very short shifts . For example, four staff could work a selection of shifts: 3-11pm, 3-9pm, 5-9pm and 5-11pm respectively, covering the busy period while providing sufficient coverage either side. Assign these shifts based on staff availability and preferences, as well as contracted hours.
- Split shifts
Split shifts are a powerful tool for rota planners, as they let you align coverage and demand closely. But not many staff are fans of the split shift as it can be massively inconvenient to have to head home and back again, or hang around waiting for their next shift to begin.
However, for those staff who live locally, split shifts might not be such an issue — and may even be preferred. Keep a record of which staff don’t mind split shifts, and if these employees can’t cover them all, assign them to your remaining staff fairly. Document how you assign these shifts so that staff understand the processes behind your decisions.
- Preventing ‘no shows’
Giving staff plenty of time to review their shifts is in everyone’s best interests. It gives managers time to deal with any last-minute leave requests and shift swaps, or resolve any mix-ups. Giving employees plenty of notice of when they’re due to work also helps them plan better and reduces the chances of missed shifts.
- Build a contingency plan
If a member of staff doesn’t show up for a shift, service levels will suffer. Having a contingency plan to find a replacement at short notice is a must. Building a list of staff prepared to work at short notice is a good place to start. An alternative, for those teams with rota planning software, is to set up alerts to let staff know that new shifts have just been made available to claim.
- Singing from the same hymn sheet
Confusion over rotas can often occur when different managers have varying ways of planning the schedule. Employees need to know who to submit their absence requests to, how they can find out if their request has been accepted, and if the rota changes, how they’ll find out about it.
For John Stamp at Makars, the answer to his challenges came in the form of online rota planning software which enables him to plan and manage rotas electronically, and notify staff which shifts they’ve been allocated. The software provides a central store for staff hours worked giving him the confidence that his employees are being paid correctly — saving hours of reconciliation work each month.
Darren Bradley, owner of Nonna’s Wood Fired Pizzas, a family-owned business with two sites in Londonderry, also recognised that he needed a way to track staffing levels and costs across both of his restaurants. He also went down the electronic route to keep track of staffing costs, leave and employee availability.
He said: “Staff can easily book time off and our delivery drivers can mark their availability, so we’re always able to deliver the perfect level of service to our customers. Now we can easily see if we’re over or understaffed, and our employee scheduling is done in minutes.”
Getting the staff scheduling right is a challenge for any business, but with a high churn of staff, seven days a week trading, and a mix of full, part-time and temporary workers, it’s especially complex in the hospitality trade. However, as our menu of top tips and customer examples show, it doesn’t have to be that way — there are ways to ease your scheduling headaches!
By James Lintern, co-founder, RotaCloud