Using Your POS System to Navigate the Labor Shortage
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, last November alone, 920,000 hospitality workers bid adieu to their jobs in the accommodation and foodservice category—at a rate of 6.9%, far higher than any other industry.
The labor shortage may prove a persistent concern for the year ahead, which is all the more reason for properly overseeing the employees you do have on staff right now (and, by using the right approach, you’ll have a better chance of retaining them over the long haul). It’s here that your POS system can be an invaluable ally.
Tracking employee productivity and sales data
First, by tracking employee productivity and sales data, you’ll be able to identify which employees are most effective at driving sales and generating profits. You can then assign them more difficult tasks or goals, or give them more challenging products to sell, in order to challenge them and improve their skills.
You can also use your POS system to better manage your staff by tracking their time, taking inventory and making reports. Time tracking tracks the hours employees spend on different tasks so you know how much time was spent on each one. This information will help you determine which tasks will take up more of an employee’s time. Inventory management keeps track of the items in stock so you know what needs to be restocked or replaced. This information will help prevent out-of-stocks from happening too often—and helps prevent or draw attention to employee theft. Finally, I recommend generating reports that show sales data by day, week, month and year, as well as reportable tax information for tax filing purposes at the end of the year if required by law.
Employee scheduling
There are a couple of key ways we utilize our POS system to improve how we manage our teams. First, we gather data for scheduling. We believe that the function of making a schedule is not only to control labor costs and run service, but also to retain your current team. It’s easy to see that the managers who write great schedules are better staffed than those who don’t.
Watch the clock
Perhaps the greatest tool to assist in labor management that these systems provide is the one that limits clock-in availability. If a schedule is built out with specific clock-in and clock-out times, management has the ability to restrict how soon or how late a team member can clock in or out. Employees often arrive early and decide themselves that, since they are on the premises, they should begin working and do not seek management approval to start early. Management is often busy with their daily tasks and don’t realize someone clocked in early. Especially in today’s environment, early clock-ins can result in hundreds, if not thousands, of additional labor dollars spent, resulting in lower profitability.
Read the full article here from our friends at PMQ Pizza Magazine.
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