Got Restaurant Staff? Try a POS System to Manage Them More Efficiently

Managing your staff especially in a highly competitive restaurant business environment is not easy because you will be dealing with different personalities and characters. Often times, newbies are putting their best foot forward only on the first days of their being hired; the most maybe is just two weeks. Managers see their transformation to their true selves gradually as they perform their regular tasks every day. Some improve as they practice and become even better but we cannot discount the fact that there will always be a “standout” in being the least performer.

In Seattle, survey findings showed 86 percent of their restaurant staff are proud to work in the industry, 76 percent work the number of hours they want, and 89 percent talk to their managers to give them feedback about their work, number of hours and scheduling needs.

That is why every restaurant business needs a good POS system to monitor their employees’ attendance behavior and honesty in the workplace. You need a detailed insight into your staff’s total hours as your financial stability can be severely impacted.

With a Point-of-sale back office solution, you can create your employees schedule in minutes instead of hours. You will know who are available to work each particular day and shift or swap schedules as needed. In this kind of scenario, you will be able to avoid being understaffed or overstaffed as you are able to juggle schedules easily, handle unique requests and schedule vacations while maintaining labor costs. You will also view at one glance who is coming to work and leaving on time.

Restaurant management will have the luxury of reinvesting time gained to improve the quality of their business by removing the barriers with a powerful POS labor scheduler software application and address their labor needs effectively, as follows:

1. Minimize the time spent in your back office on writing shift schedules by the use of forecasting, planning and analyzing labor needs and budgets.
2. Line up your best performing employees to drive higher profits on your busiest days by calculating who works when they work and what work is assigned automatically based on skill and preference levels you control for each employee.
3. Pull up historical sales information that shows an employee schedule based on your key volume indicators with a combination of different factors to decide on how to project staffing needs and produce the perfect schedule in minutes.
4. Set limits for employee clock-ins and automatically enforce schedules you build to control punctuality costs.
5. Assign break times efficiently by increased break support, with the ability to split breaks into two types which are paid and unpaid. This simultaneously conforms to state-based break rules by excluding an unpaid break when calculating worked hours to qualify employees for their next break.
6. Implement one-time rules and regulations to balance business needs around restaurant hours and labor restrictions, to secure scheduling and eliminate unnecessary overtimes.
7. View recommended replacement employees quickly in response to no-shows and improve schedules with projection vs. actual labor cost comparisons. This catches scheduling problems instantly before they even occur.

This ease of labor scheduling with your restaurant POS solution not only provides precious time gained for Managers but also promotes good relationships with employees, which is as important as maintaining good relationships with customers. Thus, restaurant staff scheduling created with a POS solution reflect employees parameters and they don’t need to constantly request changes to suit necessary conditions.

What’s more, scheduling with a POS solution helps prevent employee theft, which is already a perennial problem in every restaurant business today. It may be difficult to eradicate this issue completely but there are ways for prevention through proper staff scheduling:

1. Limit the number of staff who have access to the POS. Too many users can throw out accountability when it comes to your tracking and analytics.
2. Give the proper permissions to the right scheduled user.
3. Each employee needs to log in using a unique, strong password that is changed regularly and difficult to guess.
4. Require your employees to reconcile cash at the end of their work schedule without letting them know the exact amount that they need to return. This is what we call the blind closeout process.
5. Watch all voids like a hawk, especially those made after closeout which a manager has to approve. Track through your point-of-sale system to see easily where theft is happening. You will detect right away if one employee is voiding transactions frequently at irregular hours.

Whatever you do to equip your business against theft, even if you have the most powerful POS system, there will always be hundreds of ways that your staff can think of to steal from your restaurant. So it is better to dig out the root cause of your staff’s impulse to steal.

Create a fulfilling work environment where your staff will feel a sense of ownership in their work. If they are happy and fulfilled at work, they will far less likely behave badly. Check your payroll thoroughly to make sure that schedule and wages match the tasks expected. You may also treat your staff to a lunch or dinner or maybe offer a discount for their friends and family. Knowing and understanding why your staff is stealing will make them feel valued, thus creating a strong wall of defense.

Invest in a powerful Point-of-Sale solution where you can manage your labor data and employee information centrally as complex scheduling, employee data management and payroll reporting could prove a lot in your bucket.

Author: Susan Orlain is a Virtual Office Manager at Touchpoint Hospitality Ltd where she manages a team who creates video tutorials in addition to overseeing websites’ content, social media, and marketing.