In the competitive hospitality industry, where profit margins are often razor-thin, managing labour costs effectively is crucial for long-term success.
According to a study by Opus Business Advisory, labour costs account for approximately 28% of total costs in the hospitality sector.
Read on for five tips to gain control over your profit margins and reduce your labour costs.
1. Provide employees with predictable work schedules
Many employers have discovered the cost-savings and other benefits of providing shift workers with fair and predictable schedules.
Implementing similar practices in your workplace will likely decrease employee stress, increase employee morale, and significantly save labour costs. Employees have time to plan for transportation, arrange for childcare, and reduce no-show shifts. Here are three tips to implement fair workplace principles into your scheduling practices.
Actionable Tips
Give advance notice. Post employee schedules at least two weeks before publishing them to each employee electronically.
Provide ample rest time. Don't schedule employees back-to-back closing and opening shifts without at least 10 hours off between shifts.
Reduce schedule changes. Limit schedule changes after the schedule is posted to emergency situations only. Employees should be able to rely on their posted schedule.
2. Reduce pay overages
Unplanned overtime and penalties can inflate your labour costs. The easiest way to reduce labour costs is to cut some of these avoidable pay overages. Here are three tips to make it easier.
Actionable Tips
Use stress profiles to alert over time. While stress profiles might make you think of someone’s emotional state, in this case, stress profiles refer to an employee’s schedule. Use automated tools that trigger a warning if an employee is nearing the maximum number of hours a week so you don’t accidentally assign overtime hours.
Ensure appropriate rest time between shifts. In the UK, workers over 18 are entitled to rest breaks. Make compliance easier with a workforce management system that recognises the requirement for rest between shifts and avoids scheduling anyone in a way that will trigger a penalty.
Confidently record accurate timesheets. When you use manual timesheets, adding—or leaving off — hours worked is easy. Time tracking tools with built-in geolocation, timestamps, and record-keeping can help ensure you always have the right hours tracked.
3. Reduce labour costs by optimising schedules
Erratic scheduling based on guesswork rather than actual demand leads to over-staffing during quiet periods.
A workforce management system with demand forecasting helps create schedules aligned with expected occupancy and covers business needs without overspending on unnecessary labour hours.
Actionable Tips
Gain a better understanding of your business trends. Improving and optimising your schedule relies on having a clear performance baseline. Making informed changes is difficult if you don’t know where you’re starting from. Your workforce management solution should have a dashboard that pulls together your business's most important heartbeat metrics, such as sales, wage costs, and labour percentage. Those insights give you a clear, central report card that surfaces trends across your business daily and over time.
Control costs using budgets and scheduling guardrails. Once you know where your staffing levels should be for optimal business performance, you need to enforce it. With weekly hour or wage budget targets set, managers have a visual guide of their schedule compared to goals, allowing them to adjust as they schedule.
Make decisions on the go. As they say, time is money. You can’t spend hours glued to your computer to make some staffing decisions. Instead, use a mobile app to schedule — and make changes — from anywhere.
4. Reduce employee turnover and increase productivity
It costs far more to replace an employee than to retain great employees. So take the time to invest in keeping your staff happy. Whether you manage a craft brewery or a large franchise, you’re focused on making a quality product or providing top-notch service. But to do that, you need to attract quality talent, retain those workers, and use emerging technology to empower a smarter workforce.
According to a recent survey of more than 1,000 UK shift workers, 35% who are merely content with their jobs are looking to move. Here are three tips to help your staff feel more secure in their jobs — and to reduce the chances of unwanted employee turnover.
Actionable Tips
Empower your team. Enable your team to swap shifts with other employees in their squad to avoid last-minute no-shows.
Give your staff a seat at the table. Employees can quickly disengage when they don’t feel they have transparency in decision-making. Use your communication app — and turn on read receipts — to have a clear communication record.
Make wellness a priority. From mental to physical health, it’s your job to keep employee wellness in check. Happy employees lead to happy customers — and lower employee turnover.
5. Incentivise performance
Bonuses and commission payments are a great way to incentivise employees always to do their best work. Bonus plans should be based on measurable performance metrics. Likewise, commission plans should be based on meeting key sales metrics. When your employees are at their most productive, sales will likely be increased, leading to greater profit margins and greater employee morale -- who doesn’t love the opportunity to earn more money in the form of a bonus or commission payment?
Actionable Tips
Align bonuses with clear outcomes. Review bonus plans and make sure they measurably incentivise performance.
Make goals a priority. Review commission plans to ensure that sales metrics and commission payouts are current and aligned with your sales goals.
Communicate often. Communicate performance goals to managers and staff to ensure everyone is on the same page about what is required and the incentives.
Reduce turnover — and increase productivity
In conclusion, reducing labour costs in the UK accommodation sector requires a strategic approach focusing on fair scheduling practices, minimising pay overages, optimising work schedules, reducing employee turnover, and incentivising performance. Implement these tips today to start seeing an improvement in your labour cost efficiency.
Use emerging technology to empower a smarter workforce, streamline your workforce management and reduce labour costs: sign up now for a free trial of Deputy, and learn how you and your staff can be more productive — and save money.
