As restaurants grow, managing their human resources becomes increasingly challenging. The workload can quickly become overwhelming for human resources (HR) teams, from scheduling to attendance tracking. Fortunately, workforce management tools can automate tasks and optimize restaurant operations by streamlining staffing.
The benefits of workforce management tools are numerous, from reducing staff turnover to improving compliance with labor standards. The following covers how current workforce tools have helped restaurants cut down on manual tasks and focus more on strategic staffing decisions.
Automation of Scheduling
One of the most challenging aspects of workforce management is creating schedules that accommodate restaurant needs and employee preferences. Workforce management tools can take on this task to free up time for HR staff. These tools leverage advanced algorithms to produce schedules that ensure coverage for specific shifts while considering employee location, cost, experience, and other vital factors.
Improving Payroll Management
Manual payroll management is a tedious process that leaves a lot of room for mistakes. In contrast, workforce management tools can integrate payroll information with attendance data for streamlined payments. Instead of data entry, restaurants can look at their employees' hours worked and pay per hour, which makes it easier to prevent mistakes and ensure that employees receive accurate payments on time.
Automated payroll processing also lowers the chances of errors such as duplicate entries, missed hours, or overpayments, saving time and money. Restaurants can reduce staffing costs by paying employees accurately based on their hours. Furthermore, automated payroll systems can help streamline their tax obligations, providing a more accessible time for calculating and paying taxes.
Employee Time-Tracking
Tracking employee attendance can generate a range of challenges, particularly if a restaurant has multiple locations or employees that work remotely. HR teams can spend countless hours monitoring employee attendance, verifying timesheets, and following up on sick or vacation leave taken. However, workforce management tools provide an automated solution for tracking employee attendance. These tools automatically collect attendance data and timesheets as employees' clock in and out or complete tasks, automating real-time attendance tracking.
Improving Communication
Effective communication is a crucial component of successful workforce management. Nevertheless, as restaurants expand, communication can become increasingly complicated. When employees work remotely or in different areas, keeping open lines of communication can require a great deal of time and resources from HR teams. Thankfully, workforce management tools offer various essential tools that enhance team communications to make remote working more productive.
Investing in a comprehensive workforce management tool can allow HR staff to communicate with employees through mobile apps, instant messaging, or video conferencing from a single integrated platform. This simplifies the communication between HR teams and employees and enhances the overall management experience.
Improving Compliance with Labor Standards
In today's food industry environment, restaurants must meet countless legal standards and compliance obligations to comply with legal and ethical frameworks. These can include minimum wage requirements or annual work hours. Non-compliance with these requirements can result in penalties, fines, or lawsuits that harm the restaurant's bottom line. However, workforce management tools help restaurants to stay up-to-date with these standards and laws, providing automated reminders and alerts when schedules do not meet compliance obligations.
Having automated notifications when a worker is close to reaching maximum daily or weekly working hours, for example, can help managers stay compliant with laws out of the box, which reduces the restaurant's risk of regulatory penalties or lawsuits. Likewise, this helps maintain employee goodwill by ensuring they do not work long hours and promoting a fair working culture that does not lead to burnout.
Conclusion
Streamlining your staffing through workforce management tools can optimize your restaurant operations by automating tasks that would otherwise consume a lot of time for HR teams. With modern workforce management tools such as attendance tracking, automated payroll management, seamless team communication, automated scheduling, and compliance with labor standards, HR teams can focus on more strategic staffing decisions to help their restaurant grow. With a comprehensive workforce management tool, you can reduce errors, increase productivity, improve employee satisfaction, and ultimately excel in your restaurant operations. Talk to us today to schedule a product demonstration.
