I love doing consultancy work. I find that the debate with other people really forces me to think, analyse and invent. And occasionally, it sparks a moment that I need to write down. Last week was one of those.
Historically, I have talked about ‘coach party’ rostering, which I thought up when I was at M&B, using it when we bought a load of pubs from Whitbread.
Coach party rostering was my response to those who always had an extra member of staff on incase a coach party arrived. It is the practice of a manager, or owner, who stands in as an extra pair of hands, incase service gets busy. Last week I renamed it +1 management.
Of course, we all know that this is a commercial disaster. Firstly, whoever comes in feels like they are working, when in reality, they aren’t. This just makes their week feel longer, unnecessarily. They should be working a shorter week, coming in only when required.
Secondly, it causes costs to mushroom. An extra 10 hours a day, or 70 hours a week, is not far off £50k a year down the drain. But even in our own pubs, it seems very easy to drift back to +1 management. Our teams seem to like having three instead of two front of house in quieter sessions. Why?
Is it because they can stop and chat? Is it because of the proverbial coach party? Or is because they like to have one on the bar, one wait staff and one food runner?
When I ask my own team, I can’t seem to get a straight answer, other than a repeated promise not to do it again.
I am conscious that my last article was on lowest common denominator management, and I am in mortal danger of wanting to do the same!
However, our root out of conundrums like this is threefold:
1 – Have a shift plan that ensures multi-tasking is part of how the shift is run – not just slack tasks, but also the key role of ‘float’.
2 – Teach management that having an extra person on, ‘just incase’, is poor management practice. It will make service worse, and you won’t recoup the costs.
3 – Make your labour costs visible. If you are just managing labour ratio, you will never see this detail, and will be oblivious to the problem, which is even worse.
So, I suppose I should be grateful. I can see the problem, and know what to do, and I now know the best way to explain it the team that need to deliver day in and day out.