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Insight is invaluable in any aspect of business. The more you can know about your company and its systems and processes, the more sound decisions you are likely to make.
The same principle applies to rostering.
A well planned roster will see you reaping all the benefits – tangible AND intangible. Under the following four main brackets, we will list what goes into the mixing pot for a sleek, sophisticated, and sound roster.
Visualisation
Visualisation is key, especially if you’re the type of person that’s a visual learner. It’s a lot easier to see how your business is tracking in graph form rather than in a long list of numerics. A graph takes all of your most important information and lumps it together into one digestible piece of information. Perfect for those who are time-conscious or under time pressure. Obviously, for those taking this pace, technology integration is crucial and is inevitable for all businesses in today’s age. We have no choice but to join the parade of the technology-driven crazies and embrace its existence.
Visualisation also allows you to see your people mix. No one knows your people better than you do. Who works well together, who doesn’t? Who has the potential to cause friction and who brings out the best in their peers? Having a piece of technology that allows you to drag and drop different mixes of employees screams more benefits than you could ever have thought possible. Not only does it give you the ability to keep your employees happy but it also allows you the opportunity to roster what is going to give you the best output for a shift. Because at the end of the day – what is most important to you? The output, and subsequently the revenue brought in by that output.
Communication
Effective communication is the most pivotal element of rostering. Without communication, there’d be no point in even having a roster! Time and time again, we some some painful and heartbreaking methods used to create rosters. Really, it’s quite awful. Often people become so stuck in their ways and I get it, I really do. Why change something that works? But we must constantly be reviewing our systems and processes. Times are always changing and to become the best business owner you can be, it’s important to keep pace with trends of the time. Technology driven communication has seen a considerable increase in more efficient and effective rostering.
It’s time to start automating those tiresome and monotonous tasks. Who honestly in their right mind would want to spend a day emailing out rosters, or answering phone calls form employees asking “When does my shift start?”, “I didn’t realise I was working today!”. *Cue the migraine* Eliminate undue stress and invest in the right technology now.
Define the relevant financial information
It’s not uncommon to think that it’s important to have every single piece of financial information in front of you. You just can’t bare the thought of skipping over some small but crucial figure that may or may not dramatically affect your turnover. Newsflash – the figures that you currently think are imperative in the day to day running of your business, probably aren’t. For any hospitality business, the most important costs that you need to be monitoring are your fixed costs, your cost of goods sold, your employee costs and your profit. These four things will provide you an honest reflection on how your business is tracking.
Having this information enables you to participate in a lot of forward thinking. It’s give you the underlying information necessary to make justified and sound decisions. No one likes to make decisions without doing their prior research, or without having the facts in front of them. Employee costs are the mist manageable of them all – by being able to understand and visualise these allows you to trim back the excess where may be spending too much or too little.
Planning and discipline
The title speaks for itself. What you put in, you get out. Rostering doesn’t have to be a painful task. The effort you put into streamlining the process and investing in the right technologies, will ensure that you receive the optimal output from your investment. Better rostering will put you in the best financial standpoint to make better management decisions whilst reaping all the benefits.
Remember: insight is invaluable. Grab it at any chance you get.