From Kitchen to Front of House: Restaurant HR Software Helps Everywhere

Managing restaurant staff is harder than working a week of doubles. It got tougher after the pandemic since millions of restaurant and hospitality workers never returned to their former jobs. Most restaurants already use POS software to manage orders and payments, so why not use restaurant HR software to better manage and care for your staff?

With restaurant HR software, you can simplify scheduling and payroll processes, reduce time spent and potential manual errors, and boost employee satisfaction and retention. The benefits of streamlining HR processes and improving the employee experience are clear. Ultimately, when you take care of your staff, they take better care of customers.

Restaurant HR software streamlines some of the biggest challenges in running a restaurant:

• Scheduling challenges

Food service isn’t a 9 to 5 industry. For most, worker hours and shift patterns are irregular–even erratic. Your full-time and part-time staff need their fair share of hours. At the same time, many workers have limited availability. You can’t (or shouldn’t) schedule a closer to help open the next morning. With the industry’s high turnover, you can never get a perfect schedule to run on repeat. 

• Time tracking difficulties

Timekeeping feels like a full-time job at a restaurant. You need reliable records to track shifts, PTO, overtime, and more to ensure compliance. Older punch clocks aren’t always functional, accessible, or accurate. Manual time entry allows for buddy punching and other shenanigans.

Additionally, employers need to measure significant trends, such as absenteeism and tardiness. Has your chronically late worker been getting worse or just been getting noticed? It’s hard to track details about tardiness when you’re already understaffed.

• Payroll complexities

Servers and kitchen staff have different pay rates, not to mention the tips. Credit card payments get employers involved in handling tips and tip outs. Withholding for income tax is calculated based on hourly pay and reported tips. Employee benefits and wage garnishments like child support need to be deducted. Why would anyone want to make these calculations manually for each pay period?

• Performance management issues

Staff deserve fair and consistent evaluations. Anonymous customer evaluations provide one metric for tracking performance. Verbal feedback and comments make it hard to compare trends over time. Generally, the opinions and observations of managers are valuable but subjective. A centralized record of performance data provides more objectivity.

• Compliance concerns

The wage and labor laws for restaurants aren’t exactly straightforward. Make sure you’re compliant with local, state, and federal regulations. New legislation can be hard for smaller businesses to interpret and implement quickly. Restaurant HR software makes it easier to avoid getting bogged down in paperwork. Don’t get caught by preventable mistakes like missed deadlines.

Restaurant HR Software Has the Recipe for Success

HR software simplifies some of the most challenging parts of running a restaurant. New people bring new complications, but humans are easier to manage with HR software:

Easier scheduling and time tracking

Managers shouldn’t have to spend hours rearranging weekly schedules like expert-level Sudoku puzzles. Use HR scheduling software to cover essential positions for each shift. Quickly generate error-free schedules with a drag-and-drop builder. Set custom thresholds for overtime alerts and tardiness notifications. Enable shift swapping (with manager approval), empowering employees to resolve their own conflicts.

HR scheduling software takes the guesswork out of overtime by automatically tracking when employees deviate from their scheduled hours. Learn more about your workforce with data that would have been too tedious to collect manually.

Streamlined payroll process

Payroll needs to be efficient and reliable. Automation with restaurant HR software reduces human errors. It doesn’t make sense to perform payroll calculations manually. It’s too easy to make mistakes in tax withholdings and other calculations. Use automation to improve speed and accuracy. Nobody wants payroll errors to leave staff waiting or underpaid.

Enhanced performance management

Evaluations should be fair and consistent. Restaurant HR software includes standardized evaluation tools and metrics. Collect data from timekeeping, customer surveys, and other reports in one system. A recent incident shouldn’t eclipse the employee’s longer history at your company. Analytics make it easier to compare performance records over time for informed decision-making. 

Increased transparency

Workers are easily frustrated with a lack of transparency. HR software lets you share resources and performance metrics with each employee. Let employees know how their performance is evaluated. The resulting feedback won’t seem as personal or arbitrary.

HR software makes it easier to stay compliant with new regulations. Pay transparency reduces conflict when everyone understands the policies behind pay discrepancies. Some states require pay transparency.

Improved communication

Office workers use communication tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams. Desktop software isn’t a practical solution for restaurant workers. Mobile-friendly HR software lets restaurant staff access messages from anywhere. Send out announcements and solicit feedback on policies. Enable push notifications for missed punches and whenever a new schedule is posted.

Automation of tedious tasks

At its best, automation software and AI tackle the tasks that shouldn’t be “people work” anyway. Restaurant managers don’t fantasize about spending hours in a closet with stacks of papers and a calculator. Scheduling and payroll are two of the most tedious tasks in a restaurant. In the end, it’s a win-win when restaurant HR software automates labor-intensive and thankless tasks. Reduce the manual workload and improve accuracy by letting computers do the work.

Data-driven insights

Collect and compare data over time to analyze weekly and seasonal trends. Restaurants already compare the popularity and profit margins of different menu items. Reporting is just as powerful for managing staff, policies, and individual performance. Use HR software to get useful reporting without all the manual number-crunching.

Discover how Netchex can help improve HR processes with industry-specific restaurant HR software: