How can Shifton optimise restaurant operations

Competent organisation of workflow is crucial for the successful running of a restaurant. The lack of effective schedules for workers can easily lower the level of customer service and increase the risk of staff turnover.

This article suggests how the Shifton app can help restaurant owners improve the efficiency of their staff.

How to improve the productivity of restaurant employees?

To always be aware of what is happening in the restaurant, set your work schedules with the Shifton online app. Thanks to its user-friendly structure, this app can be implemented for tracking working hours in many hospitality establishments. Restaurant managers have instant access to all the information regarding schedules, employee shifts, and more since the data is stored in one place.

Modules available in the Shifton app are specially developed for restaurants and allow smart distribution of shifts between employees, taking into account overtime hours. These options significantly save time spent on scheduling and numerous revisions, which directly affects staff productivity.

Moreover, Shifton provides all employees with the option to propose schedule changes and be notified of all updates in working schedules. For example, if there is a need to replace a sick or absent employee, their colleagues get a corresponding notification on an open shift and can quickly take it over. If necessary, the request for confirmation of the shift swap is sent to the manager or shift supervisor, providing full control of all operations with the schedule.

Shifton is the optimal online app for increasing employee motivation

When creating a schedule for a restaurant, it is essential to consider the workload on public holidays and other peak visitor dates. The Shifton online app allows you to create schedules with the most optimal staff rotation for the busiest shifts (for example, on Friday evenings or public holidays).

Accordingly, each employee will have the opportunity to earn additional income from time to time. Such an approach to scheduling allows you to achieve two goals: keep experienced workers focused and give newcomers a chance to prove themselves.

For effective restaurant management, you can use other methods of employee motivation. For example, the Shifton “Bonuses and Penalties” module displays the relevant information to restaurant managers, and employees can check the amount of their earnings for the current month in their accounts. This awareness allows the restaurant employees to effectively control their income.

Summing up

The Shifton online app provides restaurant management with a complete picture of shift scheduling. Shifton allows managers to reduce the time spent on creating effective work schedules and focus on other aspects of running a restaurant business.

The Shifton module “Pay rate reports” helps to correctly calculate the salary of employees and keep track of overtime hours. The “Bonuses and Fines” module records all rewards and fines. The “Attendance” module displays the real-time when employees start and end their shifts and breaks and summarises this information for statistics.

Moreover, Shifton developers are always attentive to customer requests and ready to customise the app’s capabilities to suit the needs of your business.

* All original photographs courtesy of DialogMarket call centre. The review of Shifton by Coffee Molly founder Irina Uskova can be found here.

How Shifton Can Boost Call Centre Performance

Call centre managers need to keep an eye on the workflow and oversee the execution of the plan by the operators daily. One of their most important tasks is to create and maintain the call centre schedules.

Since customers can be located all over the world, there should always be operators in the call centre who work according to the subscribers’ local time. Call centre managers should take into account the work schedules and the number of operators on each shift when creating their monthly schedules. Otherwise, mistakes with working hours, shifts, and distribution of employees are inevitable.

How Shifton Enhances Call Centre Efficiency

1. Shifton Supports All Schedule Types

• Operators can work in two shifts, 8 hours a day, with a set lunch break four hours after starting the shift.
• This schedule format also assumes an 8-hour workday with a fixed start time for a call centre employee.
• Operators can take a lunch break and request breaks at any time during their workday.
• Operators can work in 4/8 hour shifts, determining the start of their workday and taking breaks during shifts.

This type of work schedule not only cuts the cost of call centre staff by almost 25% but also significantly improves productivity. Shifton can handle all these types of work schedules, supporting flexible start times, break requests, and time off. With Shifton, call centre managers can create schedules for any number of departments and employees.

2. Shifton Helps Maintain the Work Schedule

A call centre schedule must be arranged so that breaks, lunches, meetings, and other events do not disrupt the workflow. After the primary setup, Shifton will automatically configure your schedules so that operator breaks do not overlap. While several operators take a break, others continue to work. Thus, using the Shifton app helps eliminate downtime and maintain the schedule structure.

3. Shifton Allows Instant Schedule Updates

If call centre staff do not feel at least a bit of freedom, they may lose interest in work over time. With Shifton, managers can allocate shifts so that operators work fewer days a week but with full hours. Additionally, if necessary (e.g., during lockdowns), employees can have flexible start and end times for shifts and even work from home on certain days or full-time.

4. Shifton Tracks and Evaluates Call Centre Performance

Analysing statistics in CRM is essential for proper scheduling in a call centre. Shifton offers powerful reporting tools that display statistics on call centre performance from various perspectives. Customisable modules not only display data in reports but also allow forecasts on costs, hours, and more, helping optimise company processes.

5. Shifton Supports Integration with Other Programs

No matter what software you use for employee management, accounting, and work tracking, Shifton simplifies your life. The Shifton app provides integration capabilities with many popular programmes to improve workflows, exchange data, and provide API access for various integrations. Since Shifton integrates with other programmes (e.g., Quickbooks), management gains access to all necessary reports—on working hours, shifts, salaries, fines, and bonuses.

Looking for new integrations or features? Tell us about your needs, and Shifton will suggest a suitable solution.

With Shifton, a call centre manager can effectively create schedules for any number of departments and employees with just a few clicks. Shifton’s available features and integrations allow you to use this application as a single programme for completing and tracking daily tasks in the call centre.

*All original photographs courtesy of DialogMarket call centre. The review of Shifton by DialogMarket executive manager can be found here.

We’re pleased to share another genuine review from one of our first clients – DialogMarket call centre.

Shifton: Kia ora! Please tell us about the specifics of your company.

Alyona: Kia ora! My name is Alyona Peshekhonova, and I am the head of the outsourcing call centre DialogMarket, based in Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine. Our call centre focuses on providing hotline and customer support services. A unique feature of DialogMarket is our ability to quickly launch startups and increase the number of operators on shift with just one day’s notice.

Shifton: What are your daily responsibilities?

Alyona: My main tasks as a manager include providing instant support to customers and responding to their requests and orders. I also control the number of people on each shift and am responsible for the smart distribution of shifts between operators, depending on peak load periods in each project. Operating 24/7, 365 days a year, requires properly and wisely designed schedules, especially as the project size increases.

Shifton: What are the most common challenges you face in running a call centre?

Alyona: When managing a project with 40-50 people, we encountered challenges in creating schedules that suit both our customers and staff. Now, imagine developing an effective weekly or monthly schedule for 300 people! If someone gets sick, leaves, or can only work certain hours or days, it disrupts everything. It’s like a house of cards—if one employee falls out, everything has to be rebuilt from scratch!

Shifton: How did you get started with Shifton?

Alyona: We chose Shifton after evaluating dozens of scheduling options. You’ve made our lives much easier.

Shifton: What features of Shifton do you consider most useful for daily operations?

Alyona: Employees really appreciate the shift-swapping feature, and most importantly, schedules are now compiled in just a few clicks! We also have no issues tracking sick leaves and holidays.

Shifton: How did the workflow in DialogMarket change after starting with Shifton?

Alyona: I always aim to create a clear salary calculation system for employees. Shifton makes this even easier. The Payroll Reports module allows me to maintain transparency in payroll accounting at DialogMarket. Each call centre employee can always know how much they’ve earned in a given month and can plan their expenses in advance.

Shifton: Would you recommend Shifton to other call centres?

Alyona: Definitely yes! This application is equally useful for both large and small outsourcing call centres and other businesses.

G’day to our subscribers and to everyone who happened to visit the Shifton company page by chance. Today, we’re offering an interview with one of our customers – the owner of a café chain, who has been using the Shifton online service for quite some time.

Shifton: Kia ora. Let’s introduce ourselves!

Irina: Kia ora! My name is Irina Uskova, and I own and run a chain of coffee shops called Coffee Molly in Nizhny Novgorod (Russia).

Shifton: Tell us a bit more about your business.

Irina: By the start of 2021, the company had over 20 baristas with varying levels of occupation. Coffee Molly has been operating in the city since 2014, focusing on catering to office workers. Currently, there are seven coffee shops in Nizhny Novgorod with a total turnover of 25 million rubles per year.

Shifton: Why did you choose to partner with Shifton?

Irina: The nature of the market is such that our employees are quite young, and therefore they often change jobs. For most of them, it’s their first job. As a result, working with personnel takes a lot of time and involves selecting applicants, training, mentorship, and professional development.

It became obvious to me that this process shouldn’t be taken too seriously, as the main focus is to maintain the core group of baristas – 5-6 people. They help newcomers to settle in quickly and easily.

This bustling activity impacts the daily work schedule, so it needs to be promptly monitored, and any changes must be communicated immediately to everyone.

Shifton: How did you handle these issues before?

Irina: In the past, we sent updates via a general chat, and sometimes we had to call employees individually to ensure they were aware of changes. But with each new coffee shop we opened, the need to automate these tasks became greater.

Shifton: Does your company need an automated online scheduling service?

Irina: Definitely, those keeping up with trends are aware that the food services market is increasingly adopting IT technologies. Handling schedules is a daily task for the administrator and senior baristas. When scheduling, they must consider employee preferences (personal matters, second job, etc.), the efficiency of the barista at a specific coffee shop and the nature of the day (weekend or weekday). Also, we need to organise training for newcomers, conduct inventory or general cleaning, find a replacement for the unwell, or split shifts between two employees. And, of course, we should consider all possible delays and overtime.

We automated this process a while back, but as the company grew, I wanted something more than just a program that set work rosters. I was looking for partner developers who could make the program function as payroll for each employee as well. There were even more ideas…

Shifton: Did your expectations get fulfilled as the cooperation with Shifton grew?

Irina: Yes, I’m absolutely pleased with it! Honestly, when I first stumbled upon Shifton, it took me some time to realise how flexible this tool can be.

During the testing phase, I asked numerous questions about what was planned for implementation and what features Shifton offers, to ensure employees would be confident with their schedules at any moment and know in advance the amount they will receive at the end of each month. I wanted payroll to be seamless, conducted in real-time, and accessible to staff on their smartphones at any time, not just on payday.

Shifton: Were your requests met? How satisfied are you with the support from Shifton developers?

Irina: All my requests were met, and I also realised that the program can be further customised to suit our needs. I worked closely with the developers for 6 months and communicated what we liked and what we expect further. We quickly implemented the program and immediately saw that we wanted to use it more and more and tailor it to our requirements.

Shifton: Have you been successful so far?

Irina: We’ve achieved several things: we automated individual schedules considering preferences, assigned baristas to branches, and adjusted bonus and penalty calculations. We removed errors in salary calculations where some shifts were overlooked or paid twice. We installed the app on all employees’ smartphones, so they receive notifications on updates and payroll instantly. We also reduced the scheduling time by 10 times and decreased turnover, as employees see their rosters/salary and can affect them, thereby overall enhancing the time planning process for everyone.

Shifton: Surely you have more ideas on Shifton’s tool customisation?

Irina: Yes, absolutely. We’re anticipating a more user-friendly interface for making changes in the schedules. At present, not all details can be changed, and adjusting certain parameters requires starting anew. We’re expecting more flexible settings in salary reports for overall periods and the ability to leave comments on work. As for service functions, we need the ability for staff to leave comments and prepare reports on completed tasks in the app. I’m also interested in the automatic calculation of bonuses based on sales indicators or KPI fulfilment and more flexible settings of the app interface for staff convenience: what to display on the main screen, what notifications to send, and what to report on.

Shifton: Thank you for your detailed and informative feedback, Irina. Can you recommend the Shifton online service to other company owners?

Irina: I already suggest the tool to my clients, whom I assist in setting up their coffee shops, since Shifton is cost-effective, easy to use, and liked by my staff. Before starting with Shifton, I thoroughly tested over 10 different apps and programs. By the time I found Shifton, I had already agreed with a developer ready to create a similar program for us. And Shifton completely resolved all my scheduling and payroll automation concerns.

Shifton service developers have added a feature that allows you to dismiss company employees. This can be done on the Employees page. To terminate an employee and remove them from the list of company employees, you must click the «Dismiss» icon in the form of a yellow «x».

When dismissing an employee, you must select the date from which they won’t have access to the company. From the selected date onwards, an employee will not be able to access their account from any device. That said, the system will retain all information about a terminated employee.

At first glance, it seems like nothing could be simpler than making an employee work schedule. All you need to do is enter the employees’ surnames into an Excel document, set a few parameters and variables, and press Enter. In reality, it’s a bit different. Creating daily work schedules, especially shift work schedules for any enterprise, is a challenging and responsible task often assigned to accountants or HR specialists.

What can be achieved with a well-organised employee work schedule?

• Organise employee working hours at the workplace

• Ensure certain work commitments are met by staff

• Ensure accurate calculation of the company’s earnings

• Determine the average salary of individual staff and the entire enterprise

• And naturally, a well-prepared work timetable means that accountants will make fewer errors when calculating wages and holiday pay

Many businesses couldn’t successfully deliver their services or even exist without a shift work schedule. Convenience stores, hotels, hospitals, emergency services, police departments, and confectionery factories – the list of enterprises relying on it is endless. Yet, not many realise the challenges HR managers face when progressing with shift work schedules. Human resources experts need to update all account specifics, including holidays, sick leave, public holidays, overtime and many other components. Not to mention that an unexpected incident might occur after the roster is approved, requiring the HR manager to quickly rework the schedule from scratch.

Managing daily work schedules with Shifton

Shifton is an optimal service for easy and fast online employee scheduling offering a multitude of benefits. It was designed to make work easier for CEOs, accountants, and HR managers. Here are some features the service provides:

• You don’t have to handle the work process alone. By delegating the authority to create and edit work rosters to company administrators;

• Shifton service will aid in creating a shift work schedule for an unlimited number of employees to maximise the usefulness of work timetables;

• Shifton’s features allow for adjusting work schedules while considering data such as the number of shifts, employees, and workdays;

• While creating and editing work schedules, you will be able to allow swapping shifts between users with or without managerial supervision;

• When unexpected things occur, you will be able to quickly make adjustments to the roster.

• If you use Shifton, you will receive notifications about changes in rosters and new company events.

Shifton service provides free technical support available 24/7. You can contact our operators at any time you need and get answers to any queries you might have. Another crucial aspect of the service is that Shifton allows the creation of rosters for both small enterprises and large corporations employing thousands of workers.

Shifton is regularly updated and aims to stay current. You should also strive to improve. Stop wasting time on manual employee scheduling when there is a convenient and high-quality service specifically designed to save your working hours.

We often encounter the concept of planning in our daily lives. Once a year, we meticulously and thoroughly plan our holidays, less often think about changing our workplace or celebrating anniversaries and wedding days. Of course, almost all of us plan how the monthly budget should be spent and how family funds are going to be allocated. Unfortunately, many business owners and top-level employees overlook the necessity of forecasting labour demand. What’s even more interesting is that there are CEOs who don’t employ professional HR managers. They conduct interviews and manage employees on their own. This article will try to explain what workforce demand forecasting is and show that it is a necessary and crucial part of running any company.

We all understand that it is harder to achieve success without qualified personnel than it is with a team of experts. This is why a CEO or an HR manager must properly estimate workforce demand, select the most efficient calculation methods and find sources to cover this need before seeking new employees. But before we get there, we need to start with the basics and understand what forecasting labour demand means.

Workforce demand forecasting is part of a bigger workforce planning process. Its main goal is making a list of necessary positions and experts that can become vital in growing the company business, achieving goals and milestones in the near future.

Workforce planning goals:

• Providing the company with necessary employees while keeping time and financial costs low;

• Supplying the business with the right, professional workers in the shortest possible time;

• Workforce demand forecasting allows for cutting unnecessary workforce segments or optimising their labour

• The right planning and employee placement ensure the proper and highly effective use of any employee’s resources, based on their skills, knowledge, and abilities.

Factors that should be taken into account for proper workforce planning:

• What is the financial situation at your company and what is the current general state of the economy?;

• Workforce reorganisation (plans on cutting, firing or transferring employees to new positions. It is also necessary to consider retirements and maternity leaves);

• Analysing and understanding the situation in the employment market and among your competitors is another crucial point;

• The level of salary in the company;

• Perhaps one of the most important factors is having strategic plans and goals for the company.

Knowing the current stage of development of your company has to be one of the factors you should be aware of when forecasting labour demand. In most cases, effective planning can be achieved during periods of active growth and at the time of establishing the enterprise.

Before you tackle workforce demand forecasting, it is also vital to understand that it is a process of consecutive, thought-through actions and decisions that have clear goals in front of it. The main objective of planning lies in the idea that any enterprise or successful company directory has to hire and employ fairly qualified personnel at all positions so that work can be done in a high-quality and effective manner.

Types of workforce demand forecasting:

• Strategic or long-term planning;

• Tactical (situational) planning.

When making strategic plans, it is critical to come up with a programme aimed at discovering potential employees who may be required by the company in the future. This process also requires creating a strategic human resource development programme that simultaneously evaluates the necessity of these resources in the long run.

Tactical planning requires a careful analysis of demand for employee organisation during a period laid out by the CEO. For example, it may cover a month, a quarter, or a year. This necessity will depend on several factors: the level of employee turnover in a given period, the number of retirements, maternity leaves as well as staff cuts.

Workforce planning periods

• Short-term planning — planning for up to 2 years;

• Medium-term planning — a strategy for 2 to 5 years;

• Long-term planning — making plans for the next 5 years and beyond that.

So let’s imagine for a moment that you are a new head of the company or an HR expert. What should you start with first in terms of workforce demand forecasting?

First, you must gather information on the results and milestones a company has to achieve in the coming quarter or year. If you are an HR expert, obtain that information from your higher-ups. Then study all short and long-term enterprise goals, tasks, and plans.

In most cases, accountants and department directors will help form your understanding of the enterprise you are working at and its plans, whether you work in human resources or run the place.

Things required for successful planning:

• First, you must carefully review employee data. You will need to access personal case files, distribute questionnaires, and collect information concerning worker skills and abilities not related to work done in the enterprise;

• A work timetable or a schedule of all company employees;

• Data on the percent of employee turnover at various positions across departments.

At this stage, a thorough analysis of workforce demand in the company is conducted for various positions over a certain time period. That’s when you answer a large number of questions that are vital for the planning process: how many employees must be hired, how qualified they must be, and what’s more important, when will certain workers be required to fill particular positions.

During this process, you also decide whether or not to bring in internal human resources or if requalifying existing employees will be a more financially reasonable decision.

It doesn’t matter if you are a CEO or an HR professional. Remember that any process has to be consecutive, based on balanced decisions and a systematic approach. As soon as you start taking your job just a bit more seriously, you will be able to approach any task, even ones as complicated as workforce planning, with ease, passion, and dedication.

In the previous part of this article, we’ve talked about just a portion of the leadership skills any good top manager should have. This part is going to discuss character traits like a good sense of humour, curiosity, and the ability to negotiate and delegate authority. Let’s get started.

The ability to negotiate

At first, it seems that there’s nothing hard about negotiating and holding business talks. People meet, chat, drink coffee, show off, and sign stacks of papers. That’s how a typical negotiation is seen by an average envious employee. Few people know that holding negotiations is one of the main leadership skills. The most important issues are discussed, multi-million dollar deals are signed, and critical decisions are made during these talks and business meetings. That’s why one must never underestimate the value of proper negotiation skills. By the way, there are plenty of books on the subject, with yearly and monthly meetings and training sessions dedicated to this crucial skill. Don’t hesitate to attend these meetings and read a couple of books on the subject. Then, even the most demanding and hectic negotiation will go as smoothly as butter.

Curiosity

Curiosity is another crucial leadership trait of a professional boss. If you want your company to grow, you have to be curious in a positive sense. We’re not saying you should be interested in the personal lives of your employees, or about who’s dating who and where someone went on holiday. We’re talking about another type of curiosity, maybe even inquisitiveness. It’s important that when you become a director, you don’t lose your spark and curiosity, remain interested in learning about new technology in your industry, attend conferences, exchange experiences with colleagues, and keep moving forward.

The ability to delegate authority

When working in a run-of-the-mill position, you get used to doing all the tasks yourself. If you aspire to become the head of a company and learn to manage personnel effectively, you have to learn how to delegate authority. Not only will this save you time, but it will also allow you to adjust the company workflow as all employees will have something to do, making them feel valued and needed. Many people fear distributing tasks among employees or giving important assignments to one of them. Understand that if done correctly, a department or business you manage will function like a well-oiled machine.

The ability to set goals and achieve them

Any experienced director knows one must properly formulate assignments and see them through. If you run a business aimlessly and make illogical decisions chaotically, nothing good will come of it. A director with great leadership skills must be balanced, calm, and able to clearly outline their personal and company goals. Then employees will see them as a leader and also strive to achieve the common goal. Objectives have to be understandable, clear, and well articulated. For example, the goal of becoming the best in our industry sounds vague. It’s also unclear why people should strive to achieve it. If you set a goal for your employees that sounds something like, “In the coming year, our income should be double the income of the previous year,” they’ll understand what they have to do and strive for that desired result. Still, when you set a financial goal for your employees, don’t forget to reward them once it’s achieved.

A good sense of humour

A sense of humour is another valuable leadership trait that characterizes a successful boss. However, this trait has a peculiarity – you can’t learn it. You’re either born with a good sense of humour, or you aren’t. On a more serious note, we have to point out that finding a company director with a good sense of humour is rare. You’re very fortunate if, aside from all the above-mentioned qualities, you’re also able to make intelligent jokes and appreciate jokes told by others. We must admit that a sense of humour helps us in the most complicated and seemingly unsolvable situations, which you will inevitably encounter despite the position you hold.

A positive outlook on life

Living in today’s world makes it challenging to maintain a positive outlook on life and the world in general. If you wish to become a truly successful company director, you absolutely must look at things in the most positive way possible. You have to understand that you’re the head of a company, and your mood, opinion, or outlook on life influences the mood of all your employees. Each time you attend work, imagine you’re the captain of a massive ship. If you emanate negativity, you’ll become tense and irritable, your ship will sink, or all sailors and chief engineers will abandon ship, while you’re left alone in the turbulent business sea. If you don’t want this to happen, try finding happiness in the little things and see the best in the world and your work.

Inspiration skills

We’ve left the main leadership skill, without which there’s no point agreeing to work in a top position, for last. If you are uninspired by the work you’ve committed your daily life to, you won’t be able to inspire employees towards new victories. Any top-notch director must know how to inspire people, give them hope, motivate, and unlock their potential. This skill is easy to hone if you’re genuinely in love with your work or are passionate about your business. If you’re uninspired yourself, it’s hard to cultivate the opposite feeling in someone else. That’s why we advise finding work you love or one that irritates you the least while providing a good income.

Should you master all of these skills, the road to a promotion will be an easy one. Strive, learn, dare, and always improve yourself!