We have all been there. Being an F&B owner in Singapore just isn’t easy, especially if you have just started out. From a McKinsey study, only 60% of small Singaporean F&B businesses have made it past the five-year mark. Having to hit that profit margin, having to schedule your part-timers in, having to look out for the welfare of your staff. The list goes on and on.
Backed by the findings in our StaffAny survey that we have recently conducted, here are the top few things that may possibly cause significant amounts of distress in Singaporean F&B owners.
1. Oh wait… Who’s opening my stall today?
The start of a new day means having to open your store. Believe it or not, you’re not alone! It is one of the first few things most owners think of when they wake up in the morning. You might now recall that particular incident where one of your staff members did not make it in time to open your store… To make things worse, he might be the only one with the key!
As an F&B owner, you can do everything – from hiring the best and most reliable people and assigning them the opening duty and so on. But at the end of the day, getting and retaining reliable staff is not an easy ordeal. Occasional slip-ups like staff lateness are prone to occur in the workplace. We all could really use some real-time information updates.
2. The admin work you never wished for
Most owners, operations and HR managers spend huge amounts of time scheduling their staff and churning out timesheets at the end of every month.
Companies had previously scheduled their staff through manual means, such as printing out excel sheets, and using pen and paper. But what would you do if you had more employees or looking into scaling your business? Managing that many part-timers and full timers can be a giant headache. Not to mention, tabulating time-sheets at the end of the month is just equally, or even more, frustrating!
Fortunately, many Singaporean F&B stores have turned to adopting automation tools in their operations process. Gone are the days of pen and paper scheduling, and consolidating information from lengthy Whatsapp messages! Automation allows for efficient collection of staff availabilities and consolidation of timesheets.
3. Overpaying your staff
We understand that as F&B owners, managing costs always remains a priority. Timesheets are always prone to tabulation errors, and consolidating them is a great responsibility which you can’t easily delegate to somebody else.
If you’re lucky, you would probably have a trusted HR or Operations manager to help you solve your timesheet and payroll issues. However, at the end of the day, human error is inevitable. Errors in your timesheet cost your business a significant amount of monetary loss.
4. Time theft
Time = Money. This is especially true when you run an F&B business and where time theft is common. Time theft happens when employees clock-in and clock-out (CICO) early, or report incorrect working hours (intentionally or unintentionally, we all know that the former is more likely). In addition, one of the most common causes of inaccurate timesheets is having your staff forget to clock out.
Your company might utilise a punch card system to get your staff to clock-in and out of your venue, but time theft is still possible when your staff leaves the venue or does not presume his or her job responsibilities within work hours. Furthermore, if your company does not implement any CICO methods, it can get tedious while tracking your staff’s punctuality.
Imagine this:
Assume a staff “steals” an addition of 0.5 hours per week. That is equivalent to 2 hours a month. That would be 2 hours x $15* = $30 a month per staff in terms of labour cost. If you have around 10 staff who “time-steals” in your F&B, that would cost you $300 per month!
*The above estimate is based on a 1.5x rate on $10 per hour per staff.
All these amount to a greater figure in the long run!
It is easy to get caught up with the day-to-day operations of your F&B business. As F&B owners, you are not left with much time at the end of the day after all the painful paperwork and managing your staff. To remedy this situation, many companies are turning towards adopting automation tools which help simplify work processes.
Automation has allowed for:
- Increased speed in workflow for mundane and repetitive tasks
- Improved accuracy and better visibility in a business’s operations
- Increased employee and employer connectivity via real time information updates
LiHo and Gelare have started using our time and attendance automation tool, StaffAny, to assist them in their day-to-day operations. From the results of the StaffAny survey, users have seen a 47.5% to 60% reduction in their staff scheduling time, and taken up to 50% less time to tabulate their payrolls!
Automated solutions do not have to cost a bomb to be able to help you achieve your business goals. Find out how our automation tools can help your F&B business! 🙂
www.staffany.com
