#3 Mastering Slack Series – 2 min read

Treat every day like it’s Christmas

 

“Moving from fixed tasks to slack tasks”

Our teams tell us daily about the endless things that need to be done before a shift starts. The kitchen is particularly militant when it comes to the labour hours invested in pre-shift prep. They are right of course; a great shift is a well-prepared shift, and this justifies the huge cost of labour that is spent on this time. 

However, even in the best planned week, there is a minimum of 20% of hours on the rota that are over the required level to meet service standards (AKA slack!)

For 364 days of the year, most kitchen prep is considered a ‘fixed task’ that needs to be done at a fixed point before or after a shift. Yet, when it comes to the lead up to Christmas day, tasks such as making the Yorkshire pudding batter and prepping the veg seem to get done in a quiet moment on Christmas Eve.

We observe our teams start to get on with a fair few of those fixed tasks during slack time the day before Christmas.

The benefits of getting into the habit of moving as many fixed tasks into the slack hours are significant over the course of a week, and colossal over a year across multiple sites.

The next on the Slack Master Series: #4 The enemy of good service – slack task part 1