Minimum wages are set to rise to $20 an hour by 2021 under the new coalition government. With the New Year upon us, the first of a series of incremental increases has already been announced. While this is great for employees, it will have a significant impact on hospitality and retail businesses across the country. So, how will your business survive in this new environment? Here’s three tips that could help you mitigate the impact of this change. Create a good employer brand

Knowing what your payroll costs are – daily, weekly, monthly and yearly – is an important part of running a successful business. It allows you to forecast future wage costs, ensures you don’t have any surprises come pay day, and gives you confidence in the stability of the business. But do you know the TRUE cost of your roster? The mistake we often see is the assumption that payroll costs are only based on the number of hours worked by your staff x their hourly wage. This is

A robust rostering system is essential in any hospitality or retail business. Ensuring you have the right number of staff rostered on will keep your customers happy, and your wage cost looking great. On the contrary, building rosters inefficiently can be a real time-waster. So, how do you get maximum results from your roster? Here’s five quick tips you can easily incorporate into your rostering practice today. Utilize “Role Rostering” First you need to work out what shifts an

When it comes to building rosters you want to be as accurate as possible when forecasting future staffing requirements. Time again, we’ve seen rosters being created based on instinct and manager experience. Negligence can lead to a substantial increase in costs for your business. Often you’ll hear your employees say, “you just missed the big rush!” only to find later on that your sales figures prove otherwise. Trying to find a happy medium to combat the chance of employees st

Metric #2 – Turnover Part two in our series on Key metrics for successful Hospitality business: click here if you missed Part 1: Wage Cost. Turnover – “The total gross sales for a given period” Experienced Hospitality operators understand that the day to day turnover figure is extremely difficult to predict. We’ve spoken with thousands of hospitality organisations over the years and have noticed that whilst many operators simply accept the fluctuations and simply try to be re

The Crab Shack is a popular coastal themed restaurant that opened in Wellington in May 2013, and on the 28th of January of this year, they opened the doors to their Auckland restaurant overlooking the city waterfront. Offering a casual dining experience with an emphasis on crab and other seafood delicacies, the Crab Shack caters to all tastes, and their menu includes dishes “From the Earth”, “From the Charcoal Barrel” and “By the Scoop”. Their meals are tasty and affordable,

As the owner or director of a business there’s always the fear of uncertainty, and the pain of implementation if ever comes the time where you need to change something that already works considerably well for you. Why change something when it already does the job? Ask yourselves the hard questions. Is it giving you a level of transparency necessary at the level of your position within your business? Is it giving you enough clarity, so that when it’s time for you to discuss wi

If someone were to ask you what you believed to be the true cost of an employee, do you think you’d be able to answer it? In our experience, most people can’t. The biggest thing standing in the way of those who can’t answer this is their inability to see things long term – they’d rather calculate figures on week to week basis and see that those costs are tracking correctly and align to their targets, rather than looking at the big picture. With the end of the financial year l