Absolute Payroll Inc helps restaurant transform schedule management, rein in costs, and maintain a loyal workforce.

Coat and Thai is an upscale Thai restaurant whose owners are planning to open a second location with hopes of franchising in the future. It deals with the complications common to the restaurant industry; service peaks, specialized staff, and high employee turnover.

Overwhelming Workforce Management Challenges

Coat and Thai’s sole manager was the only one doing the hiring, scheduling, and time tracking, creating a bottleneck that soon became an all-consuming burden. She was handling employee time, attendance, and scheduling with a 90’s era punch clock, Excel spreadsheets, and a small dry erase board hung in the kitchen. The establishment has team members working from 5:00 a.m. until 2:00 a.m., seven days a week, further complicating the logistics of scheduling.

Additional challenges included maintaining adequate staffing for every shift, adapting schedules to unanticipated surges in business, managing schedule requests, tracking staff member meal breaks, and keeping skilled chefs and experienced servers from jumping ship to newer restaurants opening in the neighborhood; a sour prospect for any organization.

Workforce Management Suite Sweetens the Sour

Coat and Thai determined that the first order of business was automating employee time and attendance. TimeWorksPlus allows associates to clock in/out from their mobile devices, eliminating the need to crowd the kitchen during critical shift changes, and allowing staff members to transition in and out of shifts with greater efficiency.

Diners are enjoying better service, and Coat and Thai has done away with costly guesswork and back-dating when congestion forced team members to skip clocking in. Mobile clock also permits their head chef to clock in off site when buying produce at local farmer’s markets, saving time and reducing time card errors, something both management and employees appreciate.

Reduced Labor Costs

Coat and Thai has seen a reduction in labor costs as a result of incorporating integrated clock in/out features for unpaid meal times and breaks. Before Workforce Management Suite, associates often punched out for a meal and forgot to punch back in, creating problematic back-filling and costly guesswork. With Workforce Management Suite PunchLogic, busy employees are only given logical options when accessing the clock in system to decrease mistakes, gather better records, and expedite payroll.

Filling holes in the schedule has become much easier with the TimeSimplicity Virtual Trade Board. Previously, the manager would sling change requests to the staff, and then re-circulate when options were proposed. Now, team members simply place requests on the Virtual Trade Board. Managers can rapidly view, monitor and authorize shift request changes online. Once a shift trade is confirmed, TimeSimplicity automatically alerts the appropriate staff members. Since the system conversion, the restaurant has rarely been caught shorthanded. Job codes and pre-set requirements make scheduling easy so classifications such as the age requirement to serve alcohol don’t get missed during shift swaps or replacements.

SOLUTION — Workforce Management Suite

• TimeSimplicity for automated restaurant scheduling and mobile coordination.
• TimeWorksPlus for integrated time and attendance tracking.
• Mobile access delivers employee access and management control.

The team members love the Virtual Trade Board because it has significantly reduced the time it takes to manage work schedules and submit time cards. Many team members are college students whose schedules change each semester. Adapting schedules to better deliver staff flexibility has considerably improved staff member morale and curtailed turnover.

Ready for Expansion

The owners of Coat and Thai are better prepared for planned expansion into new venues and franchising. With a handle on the complexities of crew scheduling, and seamless integration with payroll, owners and management can now concentrate on service and growth. Custom templates make schedule replication quick and easy, and centralized reporting permits the business to monitor and adjust to changes while reducing pricey overtime, scheduling conflicts, and peak service emergencies.

Most importantly; associates are eager to participate in the growth of the company and share their enthusiasm with their increasingly satisfied patrons.

UPGRADE TODAY

Absolute Payroll Inc offers Workforce Management Suite, the powerful, fully-integrated Workforce Management Suite that makes it easy to optimize the performance of your managers, employees, and organization.

Workforce Management Suite includes TimeWorksPlus, TimeSimplicity, and TimeWorks Mobile. Workforce Management Suite is created for busy employers like you who need to streamline scheduling, automate time and attendance tracking, maintain regulatory compliance, and reduce labor costs.

How much can you save? Check our Absolute Payroll Inc ROI Calculator.

We can get you up and running with Workforce Management Suite in minutes. Contact us today to set up a demo.