Recruiting - Part 2 (Scheduling)

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Earlier we discussed some methods when looking to hire the right people; more importantly, to make sure that we get the right people on board at the beginning. However, how do we know if we even need people? And, once we get the people where / when do we put them into action? There's no doubt about it scheduling can either make or break your establishment. Staff too many people and your labor costs will skyrocket and you'll lose money. Staff too few of people and you may lose sales because your guests are not receiving the care that they deserve. Staff the wrong people in the wrong places and you could lose people because they're frustrated. Scheduling goes hand in hand with hiring. You need to know when to get more recruits and where to put the ones that you have.

Scheduling could be one of the more tiresome, grueling, imperative, and necessary things that you do for your restaurant. Since the majority of restaurants operate outside, what many would say, "normal" hours. Our first problem is to find staff that is available for the hours that we will need them. This will vary from establishment to establishment, the hours of operation, and the days opened. The next step will be to determine when your peak hours will be. This will, obviously, need to be the time that you have the most of your people working. It would be impossible to determine a layout for how many individuals you will need for your establishment, what your peak hours would be, etc. since there are so many different varieties of establishments out there. So, for all purposes I will have to assume that you have determined what works best for your establishment. Instead, I just want to address a few problems and possible solutions with scheduling in general.

Whenever I teach people on how to write a schedule I always tell them to do a couple of things. First, I recommend placing your staff in order of their skills, availability, and possibly seniority. One of these aspects should not be your guiding light; unless, it is their skill. You should never have someone at the top of your list just because of their availability and definitely not because of their seniority. Now, think of that last comment - especially "their seniority". I know many people will have a problem with that; especially those individuals that have seniority at a place. However, you can be with a place for a while and that doesn't mean that you're the best individual for the job. Hopefully, it doesn't mean that you're the worst person there either (if so, then they should have gotten rid of you a while back). There is something to be said for being consistent, however. A restaurant is a wheel in motion. Its motion began when it was first opened. It has been moving down its own path for some time. It doesn't matter where it was initially. It matters / cares for where it is heading. Seniority helped them yesterday; however, it may not be helping them for tomorrow. Too many times people want to slow down and become complacent because they feel that they've put their time in. However, this wheel needs continuous momentum and energy going into it. This means that the energy of yesterday is not nearly as important as the energy for tomorrow. So, if you want to succeed you need to look past those individuals of yesterday and look at the ones of today that are thinking about tomorrow. I've used a saying in my restaurants for years, "If you think about the shift next week, then the shift at hand will take care of itself." In other words, if you want to have job security, then do everything now to ensure that the guests will come back next week! So, once again...look pass seniority and focus on skill.

So, we've established that we should organize your schedule based on skill, availability, and then seniority. Now, when you write your schedule you should always write it from the top to the bottom and fill in your busiest days / times first and work back toward your slower days and down your schedule - to your least skilled, least available, and least senior people. In doing this, you will actually create a schedule with your best foot forward during your busier times. In turn, this should take care of the majority of your guests (peak times mean peak guest counts) and, hopefully if we're doing everything right, guarantee future growth. Your staff will be happy because they are working with skilled individuals. Your guests will be happy because they are being cared for by the best. Your new hires and least trained will be happy because they are working slower times, getting trained properly, and not getting as frustrated as the waves of the restaurant are moving at their speed and not over them. Your restaurant will be happy because it will be collecting the best revenue, reducing labor expenses by minimizing turnover of staff. All of this will make you happier!

Now, the last thing that you want to do is to have your slower days with only the least skilled, least available and the least senior individuals. Many of your guests will seek out slower days and times because they believe this to be the best time to get the best service. If you have all new, unavailable and unskilled individuals, then these guests will share their experience about how you can't even get the job done when there are 3 people in the building! So, be sure to fill in your slower days with some of your "seasoned" individuals. When it is slower this is a great opportunity to have them work with the others to increase their capabilities. It's also a good way to ensure that you will not be crippling your restaurant when the wheel is moving at a slower speed.

So, the last part of looking at the scheduling is to always plan. Like the old saying goes, "Failing to plan means that you're planning to fail." This saying also coincides with the starting quote that I placed, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." We should always write our schedules several weeks in advance. I recommend at least two weeks in advance. This gives you time to make adjustments based on things occurring around you, based on time off for the staff, parties booked, things going on in the community, etc. It also will give you time to move staff around based on their skill, their availability, and their seniority. At the same time by being a couple weeks ahead you will know about situations where you may be short on staff. You should correlate your schedule writing with your projections - what you think your restaurant will sale during these time frames. By making these projections and writing your schedules ahead of time you can produce a projected labor cost. By having these numbers you will be able to determine if you are scheduling yourself for failure by losing money in your labor expenses (too high of a labor percentage) or potentially losing sales because you are understaffed and unable to care for your guests (too low of a labor percentage).

The last part of scheduling is to not just live and breathe by the numbers. You must observe what your scheduling has done when the shift at hand occurs. Labor percentages, sales per hour, sales per person, plates per hour, all of these things are great but if ultimately the guest care and your expectations for your restaurant beyond the numbers are not being met, then you will want to make adjustments to your scheduling. Now, these adjustments may need to be made in many forms and some of them, unfortunately, are the unpleasant part of being in business. Individuals that do not get along or work are unable to work together may need to be rescheduled. Now, I don't encourage you going completely out of your way to rewrite schedules just so people can be professional. It's a business and they need to be professional. However, if you find it necessary to ease the tension, then by all means adjust your schedule. Individuals that are not prepared to handle higher volumes may need to be retrained further and/or moved to slower shifts. Individuals that have already been placed on slower shifts, failing to achieve your standards and/or failing to work with others may need to be let go.

So, the two main things that you should keep in mind when scheduling is to have some plan in mind when writing it. Know what you're expectations are for your restaurant. Know when you will be the busiest. Write your schedule with these things in mind and staff your best people in the busiest times and work your back to your slower shifts. Finally, stick to your guns. If you're going to go to the trouble to hire with strict guidelines, then you need to treat your schedule with those same guidelines in mind. Reward your staff that is the best with best pay and/or the best shifts. Make sure your staff is aware of how you schedule. If they know that there are goals and rewards for those goals you will find that the right people, when hired, will achieve these goals. In exchange, your restaurant will achieve the goals you set forth.