7 ways hospitality businesses can boost revenue through employee training & scheduling

How hospitality businesses train their teams and prepare & issue staff rotas, aren’t areas you would immediately associate with increased revenue and return on investment. However, if done well, employee training and scheduling can have a big impact on your bottom line. In fact, Rotaready customers see an average ROI of 620%. So, is better scheduling and training the next step to your financial stability?

1. Real-time visibility over costs & informed scheduling

The right rota software will incorporate key data from multiple areas of your business, such as sales and wage costs, to give you real-time visibility over your costs. This will enable you to easily optimise your wage spend in line with sales and demand.

Rota software with the ability to predict future demand will help you ensure you always have the right people in the right place and at the right time; whilst avoiding overspending, or equally important (and expensive) but often overlooked, underspending. Ultimately this will help you perfect your labour cost percentage.

2. Automatic sanitisation of attendance data

If you have rota software in place that allows you to monitor employee attendance, you can be confident that you’re always paying your employees correctly. Rotaready’s sanitisation feature automatically prepares employee clock-ins and outs for payroll, per your company policy. The tidied attendance data can then be fed directly into payroll, so you can be sure you are never under or overpaying your team for the time they have worked. This is more about cost accuracy than cost saving, but the savings come from the reduction in time your team has to spend on payroll and the elimination of any payroll errors.

3. Better service = repeat custom

With the right training, your team will be able to deliver exceptional customer experience, which will ultimately encourage repeat custom. You can make assumptions about the key things your customers want, such as efficient & polite service, but to really stand out amongst your competitors, use customer feedback to identify more detailed nuances to help inform the training you deliver. For example, was the service they received too pushy, did they wait too long, or not long enough, and what did they think of your teams’ menu knowledge? With this insight, you can take customer service one step further and ensure repeat custom.

4. Training to upsell

In recent a webinar by Access Hospitality, experts discussed the impact of ‘trading down’ and the impact it can have, especially in January when there is generally a reduction in average spend. The example given by Virtual CFO, Tim Cundy,  was…

A restaurant sees £54k profit in the year (£25k a week, profit of 5%)

If every table traded down 1 drink on average, this could reduce profits by £30k or around 60%

With high fixed overheads – Any fall can be a killer.

But if you were to upsell the same amount, you would have the same upside – a £60k swing

…. So, training your team to upsell where appropriate, can have a big impact on your profits. Consider incentivising them with a bit of healthy competition – for example – the employee that sells the most daily specials, pairings or item of the day, gets a prize or bonus.

Of course, there’s a fine line here. You don’t want to come across as ‘pushy’, but rather as an ‘advisor’. With careful sales training, you can have confidence your team will be seen as helpful and trusted advisors, rather than ‘pushy salespeople’.

5. Remove compliance risks

Perhaps one of the less obvious revenue boosters, but ensuring your team is trained in line with legislation, will help you avoid any unnecessary fines and compliance breaches. Solutions such as CPL Learning enable you to bring new employees up to speed ahead of their start date and ensure ongoing compliance.

Similarly, scheduling solutions such as Rotaready will help you guarantee your rotas are always compliant with laws such as the working time directive; so, you can be confident you’re ticking all the boxes for any legal requirements across the business.

6. Rotas that incorporate employee skill sets

A good staff rota should take into account employee needs and preferences, as well as their skill set. It’s not just a case of filling shifts; it should be about having the best person for the job, all whilst incorporating employee preferences and availability. This will help you operate more efficiently which will ultimately impact your profitability.

7. Reduced employee turnover

With a combination of clear training & progression opportunities, connected technology that makes life easier for your team, and full visibility of upcoming shifts and holiday, for example; your employees are likely to be happier in the workplace.  And happy employees = greater employee retention, which = minimal recruitment costs. Evidence of this comes from Rotaready & CPL Learning client, Gusto Italian, who recently reported a 63% reduction in employee turnover as a result of using connected technology.

“We also measure the success of the Rotaready integration project by turnover of team members which has seen a massive improvement… Our annual turnover is currently tracking at 52% whereas it was previously 140%.” – Head of People, Gusto Italian

You can read more about how Gusto Italian are benefitting from using Rotaready & CPL Learning together here.

We hope this article has given you greater insight into how you could become more profitable through a combination of great employee training and scheduling. If you have any questions about any of the points covered in this article, or would like to find out more about Rotaready or Access Hospitality’s CPL Learning, then get in touch with us at comms@rotaready.com. We’ll be happy to answer any questions you have.