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Restaurant operators dissect workforce management tools

Facing margin pressures, increased industry regulations and the need to enhance guest satisfaction to drive traffic, restaurant operators and executives from Pizza Hut, HMSHost and Stacked Restaurants discussed best practices of workforce management tools during a Nation’s Restaurant News webinar last week.

The webinar was titled “Integrated Workforce Management: A key strategy for building guest satisfaction, sales & profits” and was sponsored by Kronos Inc.

It featured a panel discussion by Baron Concors, chief information and digital officer for Pizza Hut Inc.; Tony Bonilla, senior management of total labor management for HMSHost Corp.; Brian Pearson, chief information officer for Stacked Restaurants LLC; and Liz Moughan, director of the retail and hospitality practice group for Kronos.

Listen to a replay of the webinar

With nearly 280 industry professionals registered to view the moderated discussion live or via delayed replay, executives at 49 restaurant companies also participated in a series of poll questions during the webinar.

Key takeaways from the live survey included even splits between operators looking to upgrade systems and those that already have improved technologies, as well as what types of tools operators find most useful, from pre-employment screening to online scheduling.

“Customer satisfaction is directly tied to the capabilities of your team members working in the restaurants,” Concors said. Referring to his chain’s “learning management system,” he added, “Having full visibility into who is trained, and who is trained within the allotted time frame, and tying those scores directly to customer satisfaction scores has been very enlightening and it’s been a tremendous success.”

Answering a poll question about what components of workforce management systems their organizations view as most important in driving guest satisfaction, 35.7 percent of respondents said they were best served by combined systems that provide or enhance pre-employment screening, labor scheduling assistance and support the employee review process.

Another 21.4 percent said that pre-employment screening capabilities alone were the most important workforce management technology component for improving guest satisfaction, and an equal percentage said the same about screening tools or review administration tools, in tandem with automated labor scheduling help.

About one in seven of the respondents, or 14.2 percent, indicated that the combination of candidate screening and personnel review administration tools was the right combination to improve guest satisfaction, while 3.5 percent indicated that labor scheduling help was key, and 3.5 percent felt the same way about help with the employee review process.

The numbers of operators participating in each poll varied by question, but results were representative of independent restaurants and chains of various sizes up through those of 501 units or more.

Stacked Restaurants’ Pearson said among workforce management systems he has “several loves,” but narrowed down his choices to include a web-based scheduling system, mainly because employees have taken to the idea.

But just as attractive, he said, is the “tremendous monetary value” inherent in staying in compliance with workplace regulations by using software that requires employees to approve or dispute manager-made changes to time-and-attendance records, or another tool that reminds workers about such things as mandatory rest and meal breaks.

HMSHosts’ Bonilla said his organization has benefitted greatly from its automated labor-scheduling tool, but also from analytical software that enables the company to better determine how it might adjust food or beverage outlet operating hours to generate additional profitable sales.

Of the 27 participating operators answering a webinar question about upgrading workforce management systems, 37 percent said they had not upgraded such systems during the past 12 to 18 months and had no plans to upgrade them during the next 12 to 18 months.

A third, or 33.3 percent, said they planned to upgrade their workforce management systems to a suite of integrated software applications that work together during the next 12 to 18 months. Meanwhile, 22.2 percent indicated they, too, will upgrade their systems during that time using a variety of stand-alone applications, while 7.4 percent said they already had upgraded such systems during the past 12 to 18 months.

About two-thirds, or 63.3 percent, of 30 responding companies said they considered their workforce management technology an important tool for helping to comply with existing or pending workplace laws or regulations. The remaining 36.6 percent said they did not view such technology in that manner, as such matters are monitored by other means or departments.

The most answered survey question among operators addressed the types of work-force management systems they currently have in place:

• 24.4 percent said they used a single-brand suite of integrated Web-based software programs fed data by freestanding digital time clocks or POS-system time clocks.

• 20.4 percent said they use a variety of stand-alone, personal computer-based or Web-based workforce management programs that natively, or through modifications, share data with each other and can generate reports formatted for use with their chain or company’s enterprise systems.

• 18.3 percent said they use a single-brand suite of integrated, personal-computer-based software programs that use data from freestanding digital time clocks or POS-system time clocks.

• 10.2 percent said they use a variety of stand-alone, personal computer-based or Web-based workforce management programs that share little if any data with each other and issue standardized reports.

• 6.1 percent said they use mechanical time clocks with punch cards, the data from which is manually transferred to paper forms or entered into store-level software.

• 20.4 percent said none of the survey choices properly described their situation or that they did not know the details related to their companies’ workforce management technology.

Contact Alan J. Liddle at [email protected].
Follow him on Twitter: @AJ_NRN

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