The benefits of a restaurant labor scheduling platform are clear. Your staff can save time while putting together more accurate staff schedules. But rollout remains challenging. How do you get your organization–area managers, store managers, employees–to use a new scheduling platform?
As restaurant leaders at Dunkin’, Papa Gino’s, and D’Angelo Grilled Sandwiches shared during Crunchtime’s 2024 Ops Summit, a successful rollout often comes down to three key factors: clear communication, hands-on training, and showing the platform’s immediate benefits.
1. Put together a strong training and communication plan for your managers.
Creating a structured training program is a great first step to ensuring your team sees the value of a new platform and knows how to use it. Papa Gino’s and D’Angelo set up a train-the-trainer course for their team when they rolled out Crunchtime Labor & Scheduling. In the course, the team learned how to create sales forecasts, set schedules for their restaurants, and publish the schedules in a hands-on format. The training also started small.
“We trained a set of restaurants first to make sure what we were putting together was accepted and it was something that we could do for the rest of the brand,” said Greg Sheehan, Director of Learning and Development, at Papa Gino’s and D’Angelo’s Grilled Sandwiches.
For companies that operate in a 100% franchisee model, like Dunkin’, how they communicate about the new platform is just as important as training. In addition to providing training to a small set of restaurants first, the Dunkin’ team emphasized that the labor scheduling platform they chose was their brand standard. That means franchises can rely on the corporate office to support the platform, taking the stress off store and regional managers when something goes wrong.
2. Make your scheduling solution part of onboarding.
Dunkin’, Papa Gino’s, and D’Angelo’s Grilled Sandwiches all built the new labor scheduling app into onboarding so employees saw it as a critical part of their day-to-day from day one.
“We put a course in our learning academy. When you're hired as a team member, you immediately get this introduction to the Crunchtime scheduling course,”Sheehan added. “Those are the things that really helped us. Immediate exposure to the app.”
From day one at both companies, new employees download Crunchtime’s Labor & Scheduling app to their phones and start using it immediately to see their shifts, pick up shifts, and swap shifts as needed.
3. Emphasize the benefits of using the app with your store managers.
Time savings and accuracy are two big perks that Dunkin’ and Papa Gino’s and D’Angelo relied on to help with their biggest challenge: winning over managers who think they know their restaurant inside and out.
Sheehan asked his managers to think of the labor scheduling platform in terms of a math problem. If a manager had to analyze four weeks of sales and staffing, they would likely make more mistakes than a computer would.
“The system is pretty smart. It does math pretty well,” shared Sheehan. “Let’s take advantage of that and remove the tasks that are mundane. We can make it easier for them and give them a tool that does it.”
On the time-savings front, McDonough estimates it takes his Dunkin’ teams about 30 minutes to create the weekly schedule now, down from about an hour before adopting Teamworx. But that’s not where the app’s benefits end. There are also additional efficiencies that the app has brought with it that store managers like.
McDonough explained, “managers no longer have to carry around a little daily labor card with everyone’s name on it. I reached out to several franchisees and one of the things I got that I always like is ‘no more post-it notes. I used to keep a calendar in my desk drawer. You have to know where the names were written on the request-offs, who got it first. Now it's done for you. Crunchtime has it all."
Crunchtime also makes it easier to track and prioritize time-off requests, taking that stress off managers and creating a fairer experience for employees.
The work doesn’t stop after a successful rollout
While Dunkin’, Papa Gino’s, and D’Angelo Grilled Sandwiches succeeded in bringing a new labor scheduling solution to their stores, they’re still looking for new ways to continue optimizing labor.
“For us, labor is never a done project. We’re continuously working on it. We’re always trying to refine standards and find a better way of doing it,” concluded Sheehan.
If your organization is looking to optimize its labor scheduling solution, read more about how Crunchtime’s Labor & Scheduling platform can help your organization.
