How to organize staff shifts in hospitality businesses

Recruitment, selection and training in F&B

Cooking Europe. Tilburg, August 3, 2022

It is hard for a company to obtain all the performance in terms of productivity if it doesn’t have a good organization.

In any hospitality business, it is impossible for the business to function properly if it is not well organized in the labor schedules. The staff are our representatives to our clients!

In order to cover the hours that our business is open, we have to implement rotating shifts. Cooking Europe wants to share with you some important points so that you can implement them. Thanks to the analysis of many businesses we know what works and what does not work.

The staff is the center of everything.

The first thing is to think about what are the needs of the personnel that we have in our hotel or restaurant. If we want to provide a good service to our customers, our workers must be 100% motivated. Forbidden to do weekly shifts lightly, it happens to many businesses, don’t be like the rest! This means that they are not well planned and focused on the performance of the hospitality staff.

Talk to your workers constantly and check if they are better off working in the morning, at night, in the afternoon… Within the possibilities, you always have to give them the best time and scheduling. It is true that sometimes you will not be able to satisfy them all but try to make it fair when some have to sacrifice, later it will be the turn of others.

There are schedules that some workers will always want and that is why you will have to make them rotate: one week for some at the desired schedule and another week for others. Always in balance so that there are no disputes and so that the entire team realizes that they have the same benefits and the same sacrifices in their work schedules.

This will help you to have a good atmosphere between waiters, cooks, chefs, sous chefs, bartenders and all the staff of your business. Always look for everything to be in balance.

Software to get the best performance

If you have a program specialized in shift management, it will be easier for you to organize it and it will take away the headache of having to do it on your own. In addition, there are programs that send the information directly to your workers with the information from the quadrant, with which you will achieve easier communication with the staff of your restaurant, hotel or bar.

This software will also help you plan staff vacations and you will be able to better manage time in your hospitality business. Important: check that the software is complying with what it must comply with and that no worker is favored by any error in the software itself.

If you cannot afford specialized software, you can create an excel sheet to see, month by month, how many hours more some people have done and if you want to be 100% transparent, this information can be made available to everyone. Make sure you have a good team environment because that will make your business work properly.

Rest to perform

It is 100% proven that hospitality businesses that make their staff rest properly are the ones that work best. Our workers are people who have a lot of wear and tear in the kitchen, in the dining room serving customers, waiting tables… and their physical wear and tear is high.

We have to find the hours of best performance and that all shifts are covered, optimizing the needs of our hotel or restaurant and the needs of our hospitality staff. Our time management software will do it, but we must constantly supervise so as not to leave everything in the hands of technology. If we want our chefs to prepare the best dishes and the waiters to give the best customer service, they must rest properly and you must supervise and be aware that this is the case.

Rush hours

These are the times when our hospitality business is performing the most and where we need to pay the most attention. Our management software can distribute the hours but we know our staff and we know their strengths, what they do best and how they perform best. We must pay close attention to these moments in our restaurant or hotel. Hospitality businesses always have these peak hours, which is when the staff is most worn out. We must have these peak hours in our businesses well detected and be able to provide the necessary staff so that they can provide the best service to our customers. We must anticipate that at this time, the kitchen of our hotel or restaurant will be at full capacity, like the rest of the business, so staff cannot be lacking. We want our customers to leave happy and to come back again and again to our hotel or restaurant.