How can the hospitality industry improve shift planning and scheduling?

Great service is what keeps customers coming back, and staffing is critical to delivering flawless encounters. Patrons want to feel like their needs are being met and everything is flowing smoothly – with 86% of people willing to pay more for a good customer experience.

But while there might be a financial incentive to attentive service, scheduling is a fine art for hospitality vendors. Too few people on the roster and standards are compromised; too many and operational costs outweigh the benefits.

Historically, finding the right number and mix of people for each shift has been a challenging task. However, many hospitality businesses are now improving the way they manage staff scheduling with investment in online shift planning software.

Reacting quickly to rostering requirements

In a round-the-clock industry like hospitality, careful resource planning is pivotal. Companies need to have enough staff on duty to ensure high levels of customer care, at the same time as managing overheads.

Achieving this is difficult in itself, and the challenge is made more complex by the fact that employees have different skills, seniority levels, contractual terms and pay grades. It’s very difficult to take all these conditions into account in a spreadsheet.

Online scheduling tools are highly valuable to hospitality companies because they allow people’s exact circumstances and availability to be factored-in to rostering patterns. For example:

Managing staff on different contracted hours e.g. full-time versus part-time
Taking day and time availability into account. For instance, students may prefer to work evenings and weekends, whereas parents might only be available during the daytime to fit in with school hours
Team members may have booked time off, so their regular shifts need to be covered by someone else in the company
A major event such as a wedding, work party or marketing promotion has driven high booking levels higher, so extra people are required to ensure things run smoothly
A number of temporary staff may be required for peak trading periods, particularly Christmas

In theory, scenarios like booking time off and covering someone’s shift can be managed via a spreadsheet or other manual system. However, it’s hard to keep track of every variable and make accurate changes quickly.

Online shift planning software is a much more dynamic way to manage the staffing rota, as it flags-up any contract clashes or gaps in the schedule so problems can be mitigated ahead of time.

A survival tool for pandemic disruption

The need for precision planning and flexible scheduling has been highlighted by the global pandemic. Hospitality was one of the hardest hit sectors by the Covid-19 crisis, with each UK business losing more than £40,000 due to mandated closures and trading restrictions.

One of the biggest problems that hospitality vendors faced keeping their businesses running was the continual changing of regulations. Some updates were made at very short notice – for example, when the government introduced a regional ‘tiered’ lockdown system in Autumn 2020.

Online shift planning tools helped firms to manage the pandemic’s financial impact by making it easy to adapt schedules and calculate staffing requirement as regulations changed.

More than just confirming staff availability during reduced trading periods, digital scheduling tools helped hospitality firms to make strategic decisions. For example, accurately calculating the number of team members needed to maintain customer service levels at reduced capacity meant company leaders could decide how many staff members to furlough.

Good shift planning is also helping the hospitality industry to emerge from the pandemic and get back on track. Schedules can be mapped out in line with the easing of government restrictions, to help organisations unfurlough people as needed – ensuring quality service as they return to full capacity.

Enhancing the customer experience

The hospitality industry walks a tight line between attending to every customer’s need and optimising profits. And how many people work each shift can have a massive impact on both of these areas.

As the sector starts to recoup its pandemic losses, scheduling tools will have a major impact on enabling revenue increases and driving repeat business without wasting money on overstaffing.

There are further user benefits too. Online scheduling software isn’t just easy for managers and senior personnel to access; every team member can be given sight of upcoming shift plans, so staff can check their roster whenever they want.

Running everything digitally makes it easy to coordinate essential admin alongside shift planning. For example, employees can check the holiday calendar and submit requests for time off through their shift planning platform. They can also get updates on open shift opportunities, for the chance to work overtime. Both of which help vendors to keep operations flowing smoothly, as well as meeting employee needs.

Integrating essential staff information within the work roster gives hospitality companies the visibility and capability to make strategic, informed choices as to who works when. And they can make changes to the schedule immediately, in line with employee availability and customer bookings.

Organisations may have already been working towards this type of system manually, but online shift planning software makes it so much easier to create effective shift patterns and share them with team members. It’s a vast improvement on spreadsheets and paper forms – and a better internal system will always enhance the customer experience.

WhosOffice provides digital shift planning software to UK hospitality companies including Perfect Stays, Meon Springs, Reef Developments and Norwegian Cruise Lines. Book your free WhosOffice trial to experience our platform free of charge.