How to Make a Restaurant Schedule
Making a perfect restaurant schedule depends on balancing various things like working days and
hours, employees involved, the management’s contact information, the restaurant itself, and the
employees. The schedule should also be simple enough for anybody working within the
restaurant to understand who works where, when, and what. The following tips will help you
come up with an excellent restaurant schedule.
- Ensure the busy shift is scheduled and filled first.
Why busy shifts should be filled first is to ensure all employees have worked on a busy day. You
wouldn’t want one employee to work continuously on busy shifts while others take the less busy
ones. This process gives all employees a feeling of equality, putting no employee above others.
- The high dollar shifts should also be given to every employee.
A big dollar shift is waited for by everyone working within the restaurant since they want to go
home with some extra cash in their pockets. Do not be biased by just scheduling your favorite
people for the shifts. Also, ensure the new team members also get involved during such shifts.
- No more back-to-back shifts.
Back-to-back shifts can be exhausting, especially if you are working a closing shift and are again
to come back early in the morning. Back-to-back shifts can affect an employee’s performance
negatively. For high moral behavior of employees and high productivity at work, ensure each
employee gets time to rest after every tough shift before they come in for the next shift.
Scheduling soft wares can be quite helpful when you find it hard to use pen and paper to develop
a perfect scheduling plan for your employees. Soft wares not only schedule employees’ shifts but
also notice conflicts within the schedule. They are also equipped with reminder features that
remind your employees when their shifts are due. The software can also be used as a
communication tool where an employer can communicate to an employee directly or a group of
employees simultaneously. Scheduling soft wares are the current real deal when scheduling
employees’ shifts and constant communication with them.
- Scheduler longer off hours.
Longer off-hour will enable your employees to rest completely. Especially if their next shift is
very busy, if possible, schedule two days off in a row. Several benefits come with giving your
employees enough time to refresh themselves before returning to work. The benefits include:
they become highly motivated, the concentration ability increases, they become more innovative
and creative, they are more efficient in decision making no more asking for days off due to
sickness.
In conclusion, a great schedule, especially for a restaurant, should ensure each person is given
equal working opportunity as well as a resting opportunity. Try scheduling software to make
things easier and more efficient if scheduling using paper and pen is a problem. Either way, the
most important thing is to provide a fair and easy schedule to read and understand to avoid
confusion and conflicts.
