Mastering Employee Scheduling for Seasonal Hospitality Operations

Employee scheduling software has emerged as a game-changer for hospitality businesses. Hotel and restaurant operators and managers are quick to recommend the high-tech approach to scheduling, especially during periods of elevated demand.

Periods of peak demand vary for restaurants and hotels but the challenges remain the same: simultaneously managing an influx in demand with new staff, hiring, training, and scheduling, all while maintaining the quality of the guest experience. In the U.S. alone, restaurants added more than 500,000 jobs in the busy summer months, and room occupancy rates continue to increase in hotels to account for pent-up demand.

Thanks to employee scheduling software, planning employee shifts across an upcoming workweek is now quick and easy, even when the busy holiday season arrives. Use employee scheduling software at your hotel or other business and you’ll find the complexities of staffing are both simplified and consolidated. Moreover, the right digital tools provide the added bonus of helping to establish important inroads with new talent.  

Tap into the true potential of high-tech solutions for the hospitality industry using tools like the Harri platform and you’ll bolster your retention rate and acquire new seasonal talent with maximized efficiency. The Harri platform can even convert passive job-seekers into active candidates who favor your organization over others who haven’t implemented tech tools.  

Above all, Harri’s software paves a path toward a fully staffed business capable of serving demanding customers throughout the year. This is your inside look at Harri’s seamless scheduling power, especially as it pertains to bolstering your workforce for a busy and successful holiday season.

Seasonal Hiring in Hospitality: An Overview

There is an ebb and flow to the hospitality industry. Hotels, restaurants, and similar businesses have seasonal peaks in which remaining fully staffed is essential for success. The most successful hospitality businesses are headed by owners and managers with foresight and a penchant for data. Analysis of seasonal demand sets the stage to increase hiring before and during peak periods of business.

The Unique Dynamics of Seasonal Hiring

Hospitality industry hiring often ramps up or scaled down based on periods of peak demand. The majority of the employees working for your business during this peak holiday season might not be working for the business six months or a year from now. 

Flexible hiring solutions are essential for success, especially when the turnover rate increases. Recognize there will be seasonal peaks and troughs, meet demand through flexible hiring, and provide positive reinforcement for employees who seem genuinely interested in remaining with the business beyond the periods of peak demand.  

Prioritize strategic forward planning well ahead of the seasonal transitions, ensuring you have enough workers to meet demand. Plan wisely and you’ll sidestep the cardinal sin of business: leaving money on the table due to lack of labor or product supply.

Challenges of Holiday Staffing

Getting people to work around the holidays is a challenge in and of itself.  Add in the pressures of family around the holidays and staffing becomes even more challenging. 

Moreover, demand is peaking when the holidays arrive, making employees’ contributions all the more important. The bottom line is hospitality business owners and managers should anticipate call-offs and other human capital challenges when the holiday season arrives. 

Harr is here to help your business maintain a balance between labor supply and customer demand with the use of employee scheduling software. Intelligent scheduling integration can help you generate an optimal labor mix based on historical sales, activity-based methodology, and accurate demand forecasting. This can help ease your mind, as you simultaneously train and onboard a wave of new hires in the weeks leading up to peak holiday periods of demand. 

When in doubt, schedule one extra employee per shift for peace of mind. This way, if an employee calls off from work, you’ll have enough labor to fill out the entirety of the staff. It is also in your interest to keep workers on call during periods of peak demand just in case several employees fall ill, can’t make it due to weather challenges, or have family emergencies.

The Power of Efficient Hotel Staff Scheduling

Think back to the last employee staff schedule you made during a period of high demand. Chances are you encountered one or several problems after creating that schedule. 

Pivot to employee scheduling software and you’ll maximize your staff scheduling efficiency. Every employee will greatly appreciate knowing exactly when they’ll work well in advance. Moreover, efficient scheduling also benefits customers as the business will be fully staffed to meet demand throughout the entirety of the year.

The Tangible Impact of Streamlined Scheduling

The days of creating employee schedules with pen and paper or even Microsoft Excel spreadsheets are giving way to a new era. Technology has evolved to the point that it is now possible to load information including preferences into scheduling systems for fully streamlined scheduling.

Employee scheduling software really is a significant competitive advantage, especially during periods of high demand when a fully staffed hotel is essential for elite customer service. Add in the fact that employee scheduling software boosts staff morale and there is even more reason to add it to your business.

The icing on the cake is the operational cost savings created through streamlined schedules. Operations run that much more efficiently when a scheduling system plans out employee shifts well ahead of time. The end result is highly efficient operations, satisfied customers, and your business’s ongoing financial success.

Embracing Seasonal Staffing Solutions

Ask anyone who has attempted to create a full week of employee shift schedules about the experience and you’ll find it wasn’t easy. Planning employee work shift schedules at a hotel is even more difficult, especially during periods of high demand. A single mistake in scheduling has the potential to ruin the customer experience due to insufficient service or place an undue burden of additional stress on employees. 

Use adaptable employee scheduling tools and you’ll find scheduling is truly seamless. Today’s scheduling tools are advanced to the point that they modify schedules based on your selected parameters and preferences. The program implements updates and modifications as selected by you in real time. Your scheduling software can even integrate with additional human resources functionalities for a cohesive whole.

Harri’s Employee Scheduling Software: A Game Changer for Seasonal Operations

If you’ve been tripped up by seasonal staffing and scheduling challenges in the past, rest assured you are not alone. Be proactive and put those problems behind you for good with the help of Harri’s advanced scheduling software. Give our software a chance at your business and you’ll find it makes scheduling employee shifts fast, easy, and smooth, especially during those hectic holidays. From flexible shift scheduling to employee shift swapping and more, our software makes it easy to keep your business fully staffed throughout the entirety of the year. 

Check out the software for yourself and you’ll find it is easy to define shift rules for workers. Specific rules can be established for late shifts, early shifts, unscheduled shifts, and more. The software even gives you the option of enabling pick-up, direct, or automatic shift functionality for your hardworking contributors. 

Features Tailored for Seasonal Operations 

Choose Harri and you’ll quickly transform your employee scheduling from a weakness into an asset. Our software was painstakingly designed to provide hotel owners and managers like you with truly unparalleled scheduling flexibility. 

As an example, hotel managers rave about the software’s ability to automatically generate schedules using factors such as skill, performance, and position. The system empowers you to create the optimal shift schedules based on previous demand during holidays, seasons, and other periods of the year. Even nuances such as the availability of employees, weather forecasts, and labor laws can be used to shape scheduling. 

Take a deep dive into Harri’s software, explore its features and you’ll find it is the perfect strategic approach to seasonal scheduling. The software makes it easy to automate the creation of schedules in accordance with anticipated customer demand. 

Employees are empowered to trade shifts with one another on the fly. Harri’s also facilitates adherence to state and federal labor laws for full compliance even when demand is at its peak and scheduling is tight.

Benefits Beyond Scheduling

Harri’s software provides extensive benefits beyond facilitating smooth and efficient employee scheduling. Take a macro view of the software, play around with its features and you’ll find it provides holistic benefits that prove especially helpful when demand ramps up.  

Hotel owners and managers across the United States and the United Kingdom heap on the praise for Harri’s ability to engage employees in this pressure-packed industry. Engaged employees are essential for top-notch customer service, establishing a rapport, and earning continued business. 

The Harri platform lends itself to heightened levels of engagement thanks to its litany of communication tools. The software helps employees communicate through a dedicated mobile app. This is the efficient teamwork your business needs for true cohesion, especially if there is more than one location.  

The Harri platform also presents the opportunity for hardworking teammates to communicate through custom message groups. Invite employees to group message channels, watch them collaborate and it won’t take long for engagement to increase. 

 The platform’s channels can be segmented by work unit, employee roles, work site and more. 

The platform also provides hotels like yours with the ability to transmit company newsletters directly to team members for quick and easy viewing.

Future-Proofing Seasonal Operations with Harri

In the end, your ability to pivot and adapt to seasonal demand trends has the potential to make or break your hotel. Preparation is essential for hospitality industry success. Prepare for seasonal peaks and troughs, implement the right employee scheduling software and it will serve as the tide that lifts all boats. 

Choose Harri’s efficient employee scheduling software and you’ll emerge from busy periods of high demand with an intact and unified workforce. We invite you to try a demo of the Harri platform today.

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