Rob Barclay, a Newbridge Director, talks about how the industry can manage their staff more effectively
Managing your staff better: Managing staff is one of the toughest jobs for bar and hotel operators and is certainly one of the industry’s largest controllable expenses. Yet, when it comes to managing staff to best advantage, an epos system is probably not the first tool you’d think of. However, owners and managers can use high level software like Newbridge Software’s to manage staff performance and save their businesses time and money.
Armed with the management information an epos system like ours provides, managers can easily measure individual performance, motivate, reward and train staff, tighten work patterns and even uncover fraud. Here are a few ways to exploit the information generated by our software to uplift staff performance, and improve businesses from within.
Measure performance: You run a busy business, possibly with multiple outlets. Each employs waiting staff, some full-time, many part-time. While you’re focusing on the essentials, how easy is it to measure how each member of your front-of-house team is performing? Using the unique sign-on process to your epos system, it’s simple to analyse the transactions each employee puts through: who is generating the biggest checks and upselling most specials and extras.
Highlight training needs: By analysing the performance of each member of staff, something that’s almost impossible to do manually but made simple at the touch of button, you’ll be able to home in those who are not upselling and making mistakes at the till, be it by entering products wrongly or cancelling orders. Thanks to this data, you’ll be able to target training and to underperforming staff.
Protect staff and reduce shrinkage: Shrinkage is a fact of life but it’s tough for staff that are completely honest when a colleague signs on with their ID and commits a fraudulent act (intentionally or otherwise). Your Newbridge system provides a secure individual sign via a unique ID. Not only does this reduce shrinkage and pilfering by showing up voids but it means till misuse due to error or lack of diligence can be quickly identified.
Give credit where credit’s due: With epos used by all servers and transactions logged against unique IDs, sales are accurately attributed. This makes staff happier as everyone gets credit for their sales. Assessing, measuring and rewarding performance is undoubtedly the way to retain your best staff. This intelligence can also serve as the basis for “best practice” guidelines and pep up staff needing more competition and encouragement to excel.
Measure loyalty: Using your epos system to record staff working hours and the business they generate helps you to assess their loyalty and the fact they’re going the extra mile. You’ll be able to see precisely who is working longer hours or doing extra shifts when others don’t show for work. In short, there’ll be no doubt which staff are the true backbone of your business – the people on whom you can rely.
Manage staff shifts better: One of many epos functions is to record trading trends and staff clock-in/out times, making it easy to compare working days or periods. As a result, you’ll be able to fine-tune your shift patterns to ensure you have the resources on the floor that the business needs, but no more. You’ll be able to reduce payroll costs by identifying staff at risk of overtime too, all of which affects profitability.
Newbridge’s epos solutions are multi-faceted business tools that can do much, much more than just process point-of-sale transactions. Giving your business “people power” is just one of their many assets.
