10 Tips on Scheduling & Managing Employee Time
Managing employee time off, whether authorized and approved in advance, or just a sunshine sick day call-in, is a continual restaurant problem. It leads to lost revenue, but it also leads to lost business as customer service frequently suffers.
And although everyone thinks they have an answer to the no-show problem and can absorb one less server in the dining room or one less line cook in the kitchen, over time business will erode.
The art of scheduling staff is a talent every top manager should possess. If managers lack that skill, they need to be trained in how to accomplish the goal. Keeping payroll percentages in line is a difficult enough task, but keeping it in line while still running a dining room and kitchen in step with each other is an Academy Award-winning talent.
Nothing disrupts a team, and in turn a dining room or a kitchen, and escalates to customer dissatisfaction faster than being one server down for a lunch or dinner shift. Professionals prepare mentally for the team members they will be working with on each given shift. And when they show up for the game and the team is a person short, or a new person is scheduled, it makes a difference on how the rest of the team performs.
Although managers may not be aware of the reason schedules are posted early and employees are teamed together, the shift lineup does mean something to the people who work together as a team.
The skill of teaming strong employees with less experienced or less talented employees is an art that good managers continually use to build a strong dining room team. Kitchen managers use the same techniques.
But employees who frequently take time off on short notice, and with disregard for other team members, need to be reviewed differently and acted upon immediately. Unfortunately, restaurant owners and managers often make light of this and appear to accept the fact that some servers take their jobs less seriously than others in an attempt to develop an "enjoyable place" to work.
But when it comes to scheduling, sick days, and no show/no call employees, managers need to be as corporate as possible.
Here are 10 tips on scheduling and managing time.
1). Divide you staff into two groups: strong and weak employees.
2). Evaluate whether each group is either strong or weak because of experience, skill, or talent.
3). Build two teams. Take your two strongest employees and build the teams around them.
4). Work down the list when building the teams from the strongest employee to the weakest.
5). Once your teams are created, pull from each team to build the schedule.
6). Use the same system for the kitchen staff.
7). Develop a policy for time off, vacation days, and sick days.
8). Stress the point that even though employees are hourly, they do not have the right to call in sick or to take personal days once they are on the schedule.
9). When employees abuse their allocated sick and personal days take them off the schedule for a longer than usual period of time. It will affect them financially.
10). Document abusive non-authorized days off. It will help when and if the labor board comes calling.
