A number of organizations that use a Labor Management System (LMS) or have implemented labor management reporting using Excel spreadsheets have furloughed or laid off personnel who, previously, were responsible for overseeing the labor management systems. Today, it is understandable that most of these systems and tools have been temporarily shelved during the current COVID19 crises. It isn’t essential to have a comprehensive labor system to plan, schedule and track labor when you’re running on a skeleton crew.
But we also know that our industry will return and there will again be a need for effective labor management systems. Many organizations that have a home-grown system have few internal resources to manage the system when many corporate offices have reduced staff. The problem is even more severe in organizations that have had custom spreadsheets developed which are unique to the individual property and managed, more often than not, by an assistant controller, or clerical person in the accounting department. While it has always been challenging to maintain these systems as they are dependent on a high level of Excel expertise, it is impossible to maintain them when that one expert is no longer there. Moreover, because the industry is changing, those spreadsheet tools will be of minimal use, if any, due to the inevitable changes in service and labor standards.
What then is an organization to do as it looks down the road and recognizes that a labor management system will be even more valuable during business recovery as owners and management scrutinize every cost? In response to this, there are a few essential considerations.
- Easily Updated / Modified Labor Standards – A good labor system will automatically utilize standards that adjust based on occupancy and ADR. The system must allow all these standards to be used without someone having to go into the system to reconfigure the standards for varying conditions.
- Mobile Technology – A viable LMS system should incorporate mobile technology to allow employees to see their schedule – eliminating phone calls and extra trips to see schedules – request time off, ask for shift swaps, modify personal availability, and pick up shifts that become available due to call outs or higher-than-anticipated guest volumes.
- Data Integration – Many home-grown LMS and Excel based tools frequently require significant manual inputs. Today’s LMS system should easily accommodate data integration with Time & Attendance, POS, PMS, Data Warehouses, and Event Management systems, thus eliminating manual data entry.
- Automated Processing – As much as possible, LMS tools must require minimal human intervention to run the various processes. While it’s essential that managers be able to intervene as needed, the system should be able to auto-run key processes without someone having to remember to press a button. This would include generating forecasts, calculating labor needs and schedules, generating labor standards, distributing reports, and so on. Part of the intrinsic value of an LMS system is that is saves managers time on administrative labor tasks so they can engage in the activities that require the human touch that is essential in service businesses.
- Support – If the key people who have supported your system are no longer there, the future may call for you to work with a company that can offer resources to support you through a downturn and help you get back up and running.
Any time an organization – either at the corporate- or property-level is dependent on the expertise of one or two people, there is always the risk that the systems they manage will be unavailable as they may not return from furlough or the position may have been permanently eliminated.
If you lost your labor management system when your labor manager left, consider selecting a Labor Management System which is supported by a technology company that offers the above mentioned features and – as importantly – available account management and tech support so that you can be sure that you will always have a viable labor management tool.
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