Online Scheduling for Restaurants: Part 2Use pay-rate exceptions to manage overtime

In some countries it's common that people working in hospitality earn different rates of pay depending on the day of the week or if it's a national holiday. It's also possible that your company pays staff a different hourly or daily amount when they work overtime. If this applies to you then you can use pay rate exceptions to calculate the amount your staff need to be paid at relevant times. You can find more information about pay-rate exceptions in this post.

TIP: To quickly enter overtime rates that need to be applied to a shift, simply use a multiplier entered as a comment underneath a shift time on the rota. For example if a chef or a waiter needs to be paid double, the comment "x2" will double their usual rate. For "time and a half" you would use "x1.5".

Shift reminders to improve staff punctuality

It's very common for restaurants to have a lot of part-time or temporary staff and if they are often working irregular shifts, tardiness or missing shifts can be a problem for managers. Tackling this issue is easy with Findmyshift as the system automatically sends shift reminders (by email, SMS or push notifications depending on your settings) prior to an upcoming shift. You can also make it mandatory for staff to accept shifts so you know that they have seen and acknowledged when they are working.

Use templates to quickly schedule repeating shift patterns

While you will have some staff working ad-hoc hours, it's very likely you'll also have full-time staff working roughly the same shifts each week. To speed up scheduling these shifts, rather than entering them in manually each week, you can use the Findmyshift feature called "Templates", which allows you to save regularly worked shifts as a Template. Once saved, you can then apply these templates to future weeks, when relevant. You can create up to 20 different weekly shift patterns as templates and you can easily apply them using the right click menu on your mouse. To find out more read this post about saving time with shift templates.

Let your staff request and swap the shifts they want to work

It won't suit every restaurant, bar or cafe, but letting your staff request shifts could save you a lot of time figuring out who's going to work where and when. To allow staff to request shifts you firstly need to tick "Staff can request shift times and comments" under "Settings" > "General". Once you've saved this setting, staff can log in and right-click on a day (or a selection of days) to make a request.

You can also allow staff to swap shifts among themselves, again by firstly ensuring you have the right settings in place. To find out what these are and to read more about how staff can swap shifts, read this post.

Track your restaurant's staff costs with reports

Time flies when you're working long days and dealing with the everyday demands of running a restaurant, but taking time to reflect on the efficiency of your staff, especially in relation to labour costs is something you should try to make time for now and again. The good thing about using Findmyshift to schedule your staff rosters means that you have instant access to a number of really useful reports that can tell you how much your staff are costing you - day by day, weekly, monthly or on a yearly basis - and if you compare these figures to either your lab[o/ou]r costs budget or the amount of turnover you make, you can start to look at how to save money - or make more money!

Find out more about the information you can find on your reports dashboard in this post. Again, these reports are all included in your Findmyshift account, and they can be downloaded as many times as you like.

Use the noticeboard to save and share important information

Your Findmyshift noticeboard can be used to send important messages to all staff members and to have these messages saved in one place so they aren't lost as emails or on phones. You might want to attach your restaurant's staff handbook, health and safety guidelines, HR policies, or any other important documents that staff may need regular access to. Follow these instructions to learn how to upload documents as attachments.

TIP: The default settings on your Findmyshift account will mean that staff members are sent an email when a new item is posted to the noticeboard. You can change this and more notification options under Settings.

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