Sponsored by Crunchtime
Today’s labor challenges go beyond attracting and retaining workers. Foodservice operators also struggle with scheduling crew members. Managers must keep track of employees’ availability, respond to time-off requests, and make sure each shift has the appropriate number of workers to meet demand.
Federal and local labor laws add to these challenges, as operators must comply with rules regarding minors, overtime, breaks, and more. In many jurisdictions, new Fair Workweek laws further complicate scheduling, as employers must provide employees with advance notice of their schedules.
Technology can help. Today’s advanced scheduling solutions can enable operators to forecast sales, staff each shift appropriately, and automatically comply with a plethora of labor laws.
Scheduling struggles
According to the 2023 Restaurant Operations Report, a study devised by the operations management platform Crunchtime, 38% of shifts are not properly staffed in any given week. The 200-plus operators who participated in the survey noted that shifts were either overstaffed, which raises labor costs and limits profitability, or understaffed, which can result in unsatisfactory customer experiences and reduced repeat visits.
Managers often estimate staffing levels based on anecdotal evidence about past shifts, their own perceptions of how busy a daypart will be, or simple guessing. The most accurate way to schedule future shifts is to create a forecast that analyzes historical sales data, recent trends, and any external factors like weather, holidays, or marketing campaigns that impact traffic. If done manually, this is an arduous process for busy managers.
Challenges with compliance
For multi-unit restaurant operators with stores spanning across different jurisdictions, labor law compliance becomes increasingly challenging. When scheduling workers, managers must comply with all federal, state, and local labor laws, which include minimum wage, overtime pay, youth employment standards, and more. Managers must ensure that schedules account for all necessary meal breaks, overtime pay, and minors are not working past their allowed time each night.
In many localities, a new category of laws known as Fair Workweek, or Predictive Scheduling, are making scheduling even more challenging for operators. Jurisdictions ranging from the state of Oregon to major cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and others have passed legislation designed to give employees more predictable work schedules. The laws require employers to post the schedules a minimum time period, typically two weeks, before the schedule begins. Employers also must allow a minimum number of hours of rest between shifts. If an employer does not post the schedule with enough advanced notice, or makes last-minute changes to the schedule, they may be required to pay the employee a premium.
Given these factors, it is no surprise that compliant scheduling has become a headache for many restaurant operators nationwide.
The solution
Crunchtime Labor & Scheduling helps operators take control of labor costs and stay compliant. The platform forecasts each location’s labor needs and uses staffing templates that are easily customized based on sales, guests, checks, and even fractional guest counts, — all enabling managers to staff each shift optimally and stay within budget. The program uses store location sales data and information about each employee’s skill level to help managers schedule productive teams and respond quickly to fluctuations in demand. To save managers time, Crunchtime’s auto-scheduling tool can instantly fill open shifts with available, qualified team members.
In addition to staffing shifts, the solution also helps operators comply with all labor laws at the local, state, and federal levels. Scheduling guard rails will alert a manager if the drafted schedule violates a labor law, or incurs premium pay, such as staffing an employee to work more than 40 hours in a workweek. There are also alerts if minors are assigned to work late nights or too many hours. For Fair Workweek issues, the system sends an alert if the manager violates a predictive scheduling regulation. The manager can then choose to accept the premium pay penalty, or they can go back to make edits to the schedule.
A free scheduling app, Teamworx by Crunchtime, is a self-service portal that allows employees to view their schedules, request time off, and trade shifts. Managers can message employees, assign tasks, and approve shift swaps. The team uses mobile devices to communicate with each other, so managers spend less time on the office desktop and more time engaging with the crew and customers.
Operators are finding success with the solution. “With Crunchtime Labor & Scheduling, our managers have reduced the average time spent writing schedules by almost 50%,” says Jenn Huntress, senior operations services associate for Sweetgreen. “Instead of spending extra time writing schedules and forgetting about a half-an-hour break that Fair Workweek introduced, it's all very clearly written out for them.”
At Five Guys, Teamworx allows management to use data to determine if they’re falling short of sales goals or if they need to adjust staffing levels. “We can schedule each hour based on the number of sales and make sure that we have enough people on a shift to take care of that volume while remaining within our compliance guidelines,” says George Anthony, Crunchtime administrator at Five Guys. “We can also see hours scheduled, sales recorded, and any variance in the forecast of sales and labor.”
For more information, visit www.crunchtime.com/labor-and-scheduling.
