We
all know what a hassle organizing shifts in a restaurant can be.
First you have to make sure all your employees hand in their
preferences for when they want to work. Even if all your waiters,
cooks and hostesses hand in their preferences on time, you, the shift
manager, are still left with a stack of papers to sift through in
your office in an effort to fulfill the requirements of each shift –
making sure there are enough cooks and waiters for the lunch rush,
enough experienced bartenders for the night crowd, etc. – and still
keep everyone happy and follow restaurant policy – at least three
day shifts and one weekend shift per week, no more than two night
shifts in a row, or whatever specific rules your restaurant has on
the matter. When you finally finish, possibly after several hours and
numerous false starts, you might post it for your employees to see,
only to have them make additional requests, ask to be switched, or
come to you at the last minute and say they can't work a given shift,
leaving you to call all your other employees in a rush to find a
replacement. And when you finally have everything set and in order,
you have to copy it over to a log book for long-term tracking before
starting the whole process over the following week.
Wouldn't
it be great if there was another way?
With
modern shift scheduling software, such as EZShift (www.ezshift.com),
shift managers can create schedules for their employees quickly,
easily, and with no errors. Sophisticated shift scheduling software
allows you to set conditions for the schedule – hours, number and
types of workers required on a given shift, and so on – as well as
properties for individual workers – different groups depending on
their qualifications – and then let the software build the schedule
for you. What once took hours of frustration can now be accomplished
in minutes with ease.
Let's
look at a relatively simple example of how shift scheduling software
like EZShift can help you. Suppose your restaurant gets especially
busy around lunchtime, so you want an experienced waiter on duty from
11 AM. Before, you would have to sit and struggle to arrange the
schedule in such a way that your more experienced waiters were on
duty at the right time, and start over once you realized a certain
schedule arrangement wouldn't work. You could be at it for hours
before you got it perfect. With shift scheduling software like
EZShift, you simply define who the more experienced waiters are,
define the 11 AM shift as one where you need an experienced waiter,
and let the program find the best schedule that fits those
requirements.
Shift
scheduling software also allows for easy, efficient communication
between employees and managers. You may find that in the current
situation, some employees don't fill in their shift preferences
simply because they forget and won't be back at work before the
preferences are due. Advanced shift scheduling software like EZShift alleviates this issue by providing a built-in messaging system so
employees can fill in their preferences from the comfort of their own
computers. These software packages also alleviate the possibility
that employees won't put down enough shifts, whether total shifts or
types of shifts (time of day, day of the week, etc.), by making it
impossible to submit a preference list without fulfilling the basic
requirements set by the shift manager.
Let's
look at another example. One of your waiters, Jim, clocked out and
went home before filling in his preferences for next week's shifts.
Instead of you and Jim having to track each other down on the phone,
Jim can simply log into his section of your restaurant's shift
scheduling software and fill in his preferences from home. If Jim
needs to work three morning shifts and at least one weekend shift, he
won't be able to save his preferences until he marks his availability
for at least three morning shifts and one weekend shift. Shift
scheduling software like
EZShift can thus save you and your employees
time, energy and frustration.
So
instead of spending hours making sure you have enough waiters, cooks
and hostesses to fill out the shifts for the coming work week, let a
shift scheduling software package like
EZShift do the work for you.