The 5 Benefits of Automated Employee Scheduling

Do you find yourself wondering which staff is working this week? Answering this question shouldn’t be a recurring headache. Automated employee scheduling makes the process as easy as the touch of a button, and frees up time from repetitive tasks so you can focus on delivering amazing customer experiences. Machine-learning software is exactly what you need to improve workplace efficiency through labor management. Worried about computers taking over your restaurant? Don’t panic — think of automated employee scheduling technology as a sidekick that takes care of repetitive tasks so that you can focus on creating human connections with customers.

What is automated employee scheduling?

Efficiency is the name of the game when it comes to running a profitable restaurant. Automating repetitive tasks like scheduling is one of the easiest ways to be more efficient. With the help of an employee shift scheduling tool, you can build the perfect restaurant schedule in one click. How does automatic scheduling work? 7Shifts’ Auto-Scheduler combines your labor spending goals with machine learning, sales data, staff availability, and even weather forecasts to create a shift schedule with 95% labor spending accuracy. Now, that’s something that would be almost impossible to achieve without a tech sidekick. Fun fact: you can even integrate your employee shift scheduling tool with your restaurant’s point-of-sale. Talk about efficiency!

The 5 benefits of automated employee scheduling

1. Save time and resources

Savvy restaurateurs understand that time is money. Anything you can do to reduce the time spent on tasks will lead to higher margins. When you automate scheduling, you reduce labor costs and free up time to focus on tasks that improve the customer experience. Let’s say it takes you and your managers about 3 hours every week to plan your staff’s schedule. If their average hourly wage is $20 and your restaurant makes about $20,000 a week in sales, your restaurant could save more than $23,000 each year on labor spending just by automating scheduling.

Using an employee shift scheduling tool can reduce your labor spending by up to 3% and reduce the time you spend managing schedules by 80%.

What does this mean for your restaurant? Plug your business’ numbers into this restaurant labor cost savings calculator to see for yourself.

2. Stress-free task delegation

Delegation ensures that your more experienced employees use their time effectively. Automatic staff scheduling tools take your labor spending goals into account and build your restaurant schedule with up to 95% accuracy. That kind of accuracy enables you to delegate scheduling to less experienced members of your management team. You don’t need to worry about making sure that the best servers are working the busiest shifts or that requests for time off have been taken into account. Automatic scheduling already takes these factors into consideration. In the end, all you need to do is communicate the schedule with staff, which can also be done automatically through a mobile restaurant scheduling tool.

3. Make smarter staff scheduling decisions

While it may be difficult for your ego to admit that a computer can do certain aspects of your job better and faster than you can, it’s ultimately good for your business. When your scheduling software integrates with your POS, the scheduling tool makes decisions based on your establishment’s historic sales data.  That integration ensures that you schedule just the right amount of staff to fulfill your customers’ needs, without wasting money on overstaffing.

4. Decrease employee turnover

The restaurant industry is notorious for its 73% annual turnover rate. With low-profit margins, it’s difficult for restaurants to retain employees by offering higher wages. However, predictive, automated scheduling can help you keep your best talent happy and working for you for a long time. Predictive scheduling is the practice of giving employees ample notice of their work schedules. When employees can plan their lives outside of work in advance, their workplace satisfaction increases. And we all know that happy employees are more likely to give customers amazing service.

5. Create happier customers

So how does automated employee scheduling lead to happier customers? When you spend less time on employee scheduling, it enables you to focus your energy on making sure operations (taking orders, sending them to the kitchen, serving and being attentive to customers) are running smoothly. In other words, you can worry less about behind-the-scenes logistics and concentrate on making sure your customers are getting memorable service from the time they sit down until they pick up their check.

That sounds like a win to us.