Imagup General Magazine 2024
It’s never been easy to run a restaurant, and the modern restaurant industry has its own fair share of new challenges. Now, it seems like new restaurants are opening every day in cities across North America, and the competition has never been fiercer.
Plus, with ride-share companies hauling meals across the city, the restaurant industry is facing changes that were hard to anticipate. It’s a good thing that the modern world has also produced technological solutions to contemporary problems.
Keep reading to learn more about the software that’s saving restaurant operations across the country – employee scheduling apps.
Better Schedules, Faster
Restaurants need to whip up great meals to keep patrons flocking to their business, but behind the scenes, it’s crucial to have an efficiently run business if your restaurant is to survive. That’s why restaurant managers and owners need to check out 7shifts scheduling app which can create schedules in up to 80% less time than it would otherwise take.
This frustrating weekly task causes headaches and takes up a lot of time, but with the expedited schedule creation that comes with a scheduling app, the amount of time freed up amounts to a reduction in labor costs of 1-3%. This is historically one of the biggest drains on a restaurant business, so this gain amounts to a coup.
Plus, not only are the schedules created in less time, they’re much better schedules. That’s because every employee can remotely submit their availability to their manager, and request days off this way too. This way, whenever they figure out that they need time away from work, they can request it that instant.
Likewise, the manager can approve the requests remotely, so the restaurant can have its own schedule cemented earlier in advance, even while giving more control to their employees over their own personal lives.
Data at Your Fingertips
We live in an information age where every business knows that data is king. The thing is, it’s easy for businesses to get lost in the sheer magnitude of data available.
That’s why employee scheduling software distills all the vital information that a manager or executive could ever want, and displays it in easy to understand figures and tables. Right out of the box you’ll have the latest important economic indicators, such as:
- Total sales
- Labor costs
- Labor percentage
- Weather
The software links to your POS system, so it has all the latest information. In fact, the economic data it pulls are all given in real-time, so managers and executives always have the latest info.
It can also track whatever other metrics that a manager decides are of particular importance to their restaurant. Because the logbooks are cloud-based, the information will always be accessible from anywhere, and they can’t ever get lost.
XB Software provides services of development a custom resource scheduling and management software. Reach them out to get a free quote and consultation on your project.
Labor Compliance Made Easy
Part of making schedules better means distributing shifts evenly, so that no employee is scheduled for overtime accidentally, while other staff members need more shifts. This can disturb the balance, cause staff burnout, and results in the restaurant needing to pay overtime hours unnecessarily.
Now, managers receive a notification before staff is penciled in for OT hours. Your employees will be better rested, and your budget will be spared fees and penalties related to labor compliance.
Modern Time Clocks
Today’s time clocks don’t just let you punch “in” or “out” of a shift. Now, managers can create custom breaks, so reporting better reflects the way their employees actually spend their time. For example, rather than just punch “out,” now they can signal they’re going for a “coffee break” or “lunch.”
The time clocks themselves have an important feature that helps restaurants save labor costs. Managers are able to prevent early sign-ins, and employees who forget to punch out of shifts will be signed out automatically after a set amount of time passes.
This way, the restaurant only pays employees for the hours they were assigned to work. This is fair for everybody and reduces labor expenses while making them more predictable.
Efficient Communication Tools
Modern devices are all about keeping people connected, so even employee scheduling software has tools designed specifically to make staying in touch and relaying important information simple and fast.
For example, if a manager needs to inform a specific team about a lunch special, they can send a one-way message only to the team that needs to know. That way, nobody else has their time wasted, and the one-way message pre-emptively prevents a seemingly endless stream of needless replies that don’t only waste time, but may block employees from receiving the information they were meant to have.
On the flip side, if two-way dialogue is needed, it can be arranged in any configuration required. Imagine if a manager needed to find an employee to cover a shift in an emergency. All they’d need to do is send a group message to everyone on that team.
They’re likely to receive it right away because they’ll get an email notification. Whoever is available and willing to take the shift can let the rest of their team know in that chat, solving a problem before it has time to escalate into a crisis.
Employee Feedback
Running a fully functioning business means that managers have to have their finger on the pulse, and employee scheduling software makes this easy. Now, each employee will have a prompt after every shift, where they are urged to rate the shift and describe how they think it went in their own words.
This complements the data the platform provides by adding to it your employees’ first-hand perspective. They can even decide to leave feedback anonymously, so they don’t need to be nervous about being candid with their boss.
We live in a technological era which has the power to decimate certain industries and give rise to new ones seemingly overnight. Change is inevitable, but it can also bring about challenges. That’s why it’s good that technology such as employee scheduling software has the power to help restaurants thrive.
