This section offers advice and tips to help you get the most value from your purchase of ESP.
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This section is particularly useful for those people who spend longer than two hours per week to produce a schedule for one location. Over two hours to schedule is an indication that there are improvements that can be made to your data to help you save time and money. Review your data to make sure that you are taking advantage of all of the capabilities that ESP offers. Take a look through the topics below to learn more about ESP and to find ideas for improving the scheduling process in your location.
Editing
Effective use of Labor categories to reduce edit violations
Function key to display projected to actual differences
Function key to display statistics while editing on-screen
Function key to pop up the Edit shift information box
Function keys to speed up the schedule process
Function key to view employee information while editing on-screen
Use the Labor analysis report to reduce editing time
Employees
Day staff and minimum hours
Employee ratings explained
Management scheduling
Speed up employee entry with templates
Sales projections
Accurate sales projections
Better sales projections
Getting the right time
Optimizing your labor
Sales or transaction counts? Select your preference.
Shift design
Busy periods
Fixed shifts not appearing?
Hours of operation chart
Made for you
Manning charts
Understaffing during rush periods: effective use of allowed reductions
Unscheduled shifts
Using fixed shifts wisely
Screen printing function key
Setup for 24-hour scheduling
Shift priority charts
Special topics
Holiday scheduling
How good is your schedule - a quick check
Labor analysis report
Scheduling for holidays: closing your store for a day
Speed up employee entry with employee templates
Entering new employees each week can be a tedious process. Fortunately, you can significantly speed this up by using ESP's Employee template (main menu option C: Employee information, then option F: Employee template).
Any information that you enter on the template form is automatically filled in for you whenever you add a new employee. Then all you need to do is adjust any information that is not applicable to the current employee and fill in any missing information. Minimum and maximum hours, labor class, job codes, and availabilities are examples of information that you could enter on the Employee template.
For example, you may want to enter day names in the availability section but leave the actual availability blank. Then, when you hire a new person, the days will automatically appear and you will only need to enter the employee’s actual available times.
Better sales projections
Creating an accurate sales projection is the first and most important step in producing a good schedule. Without accurate sales you cannot create an accurate schedule, which leads to poor labor control and poor service for your customers.
The most common method for projecting sales is to average the past five weeks. This method will generally produce a very good projection for the coming week. You might also choose to average only the past two to three weeks but the result may not be as accurate as you expect. That is because, when you use five weeks or more, ESP automatically discards the highest and lowest sales value for each hour and then averages the remaining three weeks. This will eliminate the influence of unusual circumstances such as bad weather, power failures, buses, sporting events, and so on. If you use fewer than five weeks, ESP doesn’t discard these highest and lowest values because there would be too few weeks to give a good average. You can change the number of weeks to include in your sales projections by choosing main menu option B: Sales projections followed by Projected sales menu option D: Generate Projected Sales, sub-option D: Settings.
Another powerful option is Custom projections (as above, but choose sub-option C: Custom projection). This option allows you to choose the weeks that you want to include in your average. This is especially useful at those times of the year when your sales pattern changes dramatically. For example, when school goes back in September, it is unlikely that averaging the last five weeks from August will give you an accurate projection for the first week or two of September. By choosing custom projection, you tell ESP that weeks that you want included. For example you might select the first few weeks from September of the past year or past several years. This will produce a more accurate sales projection because the sales pattern will match your coming weeks more closely. To select a week to include in a customer projection, simply type a "Y" for "Yes" beside the appropriate dates. You can even increase or decrease each of these weeks by a percentage to allow for increases or decreases in sales over past years.
This option is also useful for projecting sales during weeks that include holidays. If the holiday occurs on the same day of the week every year, you can include the corresponding week from last year. If the holiday occurs on a different day of the week each year, you can still use the custom option, but be sure to review your projection and make manual adjustments.
Getting the right time
You can setup ESP to automatically poll sales information from most popular POS systems; if the computer that the schedule program installed on is connected to your POS. The sales transferred to ESP can be for any length period throughout the day.
However, if you manually enter your sales each week you probably enter them strictly on an hourly basis. This may be acceptable for most hours of the day, but there may be times when entering your sales by the half hour or fifteen-minute period may be more appropriate. Dividing your sales into smaller increments can help to more accurately project sales and labor needs around busy lunch and dinner periods.
ESP can accommodate any combination of whole-hour, half-hour, and quarter-hour sales entries. For example, you can enter hourly sales for most of the day, but use half-hour increments between the hours of 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM. You may even decide to enter sales in fifteen-minute increments during certain key times when your staffing levels are critical.
If you are currently using full hours only why not try entering your sales for half hour periods during lunch. Choose ESP main menu option B: Projected Sales and then A: Add weekly sales. When the sales screen is displayed, move your cursor to the Finish column, and then move down the column to the first empty spot and then type the new time period you wish to insert. For example, if you want to enter sales for 11:30 AM to 12:00 PM, you would type 1130a on the empty field. As soon as you press Enter, ESP will move this line to the appropriate slot between 11:00 AM and 12:00 PM; continue adding any new times and then move up the chart and begin entering actual sales. After you save your changes, ESP will automatically use your new time periods when you enter sales from week to week.
Made for you
Made for you, Just in time, KVS, or whatever you may have heard it called is growing fast and many stores wonder what changes need to be made in ESP to accommodate these procedures. The answer in most cases is: Nothing!
Most stores have a single job code (such as GRL or K) set up to represent kitchen staff; you still use kitchen staff with Made for you. Resist the temptation to break your kitchen down into too many sub-categories because the manning requirements for these sub-categories are too small to schedule efficiently. Instead, rely on the single job called kitchen, design the manning charts to specify the correct number of people in this area, and then adjust their positions while they're on the floor.
Your labor costs will be lower and your schedules will be easier.
Employee ratings explained
Ensuring that you have the proper blend of your most experienced and least experienced employees scheduled is often of critical importance; especially if you have recently hired a large number of new employees. ESP has two ways to help you control the skill level of the crew that are scheduled.
The first place to look is the Job codes and ratings chart (Setup charts menu option F). On this chart, you enter the overall average rating required for each job in the Req rating field. Note that this specifies the average of all the employees scheduled at any given time and not the minimum rating required for each employee. For example, suppose you enter 2.0 as the required rating for Counter shifts. When assigning shifts, ESP will try to ensure that the rating of all assigned Counter employees averages out to 2. So, if you have four Counter employees assigned, two may be 1-rated and two may be 3-rated resulting in an average of 2. Alternatively, ESP may schedule one 4-rated, one 1-rated, and two 2-rated employees, again resulting in an average rating of 2.0. Naturally, whether or not ESP is able to achieve the average rating requested depends on the employees who are available to fill the shifts. In general, a setting of 2.0 for most jobs works well. You may decide to use a slightly better rating for your most important jobs. For example, you may wish to use 1.7 for Drive-Thru to improve the quality of the employees who are scheduled there.
This is fine for specifying a general average rating used for most times throughout the day. However, during your busy lunch and dinner rushes, you often want to ensure that you have high-rated employees working. In these cases, you can use the Exception ratings chart (Setup charts menu option G) to specify times when you wish to override the average rating you specified on the Job codes and ratings chart. For example, you may want only your best kitchen employees during a busy Saturday breakfast period, or perhaps you want a stronger Drive-thru employee on during your Friday dinner rush.
When setting exception ratings, it is generally best to use a reasonably long time period. If you attempt to increase a rating for just one or two hours, you will often find that you do not have enough shift changes during that period to affect the rating. Instead, use a period of three hours or more. To view a summary of your employees' job qualifications and ratings, print the Labor analysis report. The Job qualification summary portion of this report lists the number of employees rated 1, 2, 3 and 4 for every job in the store. This report can be used to help you pinpoint training needs in your store.
Use the Labor analysis report to reduce editing time
One way to check how effective the schedule you have produced is to look at the number of red shifts that are displayed when editing your schedule on-screen. While editing, some of the shifts appear as yellow lines and others may appear as red lines. A red line indicates that the shift has some conflict or labor violation that needs your attention.
Ideally, there should be a minimal number of red shifts when you first generate your schedule and none when you are finished editing your final schedule for the week. A significant number of red shifts are a clear indication that you need to review and update your employees' files. A quick review of the Labor analysis report will give you the information to pinpoint potential employee problems that lead to these red shifts. This report can be printed from the Generate new schedule screen or the Print current schedule screen.
The Labor analysis report is divided into three sections:
- The first section is the Unassigned shift report, which lists any shift that was not assigned an employee along with the reasons why the shift was left unassigned.
- The second section is the Job qualification summary, which lists how many people are qualified to work at each job, broken down by their rating.
- The final section of this report is the Labor violations report, which lists all the red shifts that appear on your schedule along with a detailed list of the conflicts and violations that are associated with each shift. You should print this report every week and use this information to review and correct your employees' information. This will help reduce the number of unscheduled shifts each week and help you produce a better, violation-free schedule.
Your goal should be to have no red shifts and a violation-free schedule every time.
Function key to view employee information while editing
on-screen
While reviewing and editing your schedule on-screen, remember that you can get full information on any assigned employee by highlighting the shift that you're interested in and pressing the [Shift]+[F9] keys (hold down the [Shift] key and then press the [F9] key).
All the details about the employee will then be displayed; a complete view of the employee's permanent information, along with a list of their availability and actual scheduled shifts for the coming week. Most of the information that is shown will be in yellow text. However, any violations or conflicts will be shown in red to bring them to your attention. This can help you quickly identify any employee information that should be reviewed and updated.
Related topics
Function keys to speed up the schedule process
Function key to pop up the Edit shift information box
While reviewing and editing your schedule on-screen, you can pop up the Edit shift information box without going through the menu by highlighting a shift and then pressing the [ALT]+[F9] keys.
Related topics
Function keys to speed up the schedule process
Function key to display projected to actual differences
Pressing the [F9] key when reviewing and editing your schedule on-screen opens the Edit choices menu. Select option E: Display differences on this menu to see whether you are plus or minus labor for each hour of the day.
When you choose this option, the top of the screen will change from projected labor hours to labor variances. The first line titled Job +/- displays how many plus or minus hours you are for the currently highlighted job for each hour of the day. The second line titled Total +/- displays how many plus or minus hours you are for every job combined for each hour of the day. This is a great tool to help you pinpoint where you can cut labor and where you may be short staffed.
Related topics
Function keys to speed up the schedule process
Function key to display statistics while editing
on-screen
Pressing the [F9] key when reviewing and editing your schedule on-screen opens the Edit choices menu. Option F: Display statistics on this menu allows you to view the Statistics report while you are editing.
Reviewing the Statistics report will help you track the effect that your editing changes have on your labor cost. This report is calculated and updated immediately so any changes you make on the editing screen are reflected.
Related topics
Function keys to speed up the schedule process
Screen printing function key
Did you know that you can use the [F8] key to print almost any screen?
Don't use the computer's normal [Print Screen] key as this limits you to printing only what's visible on the screen itself. When you press [F8] all the information for the entire chart you are viewing is printed; even the parts that may not be visible on the screen. This can save you time because pressing the [F8] key will print the line-bar for the current day so, you won't have to interrupt your work to exit from the editing screen to navigate through the print menus.
Related topics
Function keys to speed up the schedule process
Optimizing your labor
Part of producing a perfect schedule is ensuring that your labor is properly controlled. To properly control your labor, you need accurate sales projections. Following are some tips to produce better sales projections.
The averaging method
An option that is often overlooked when producing sales projections is the Average daily sales option in the Schedule Preferences chart (option I on the Setup charts menu). This can have a significant effect on your schedule as the averaging method tells ESP how to calculate your hourly sales projections and how it should attempt to smooth out periods when your sales change dramatically.
In most stores there is a big increase in sales during the lunch hour, typically from 12:00pm to 1:00pm. For example, your sales from 11:00am to noon may be $325, while from noon to 1:00pm they might be as high as $850. ESP analyzes sales in fifteen-minute periods, even if you only enter them hourly so, in our example above, since we are entering hourly sales, ESP will assign each fifteen minute period from 11:00am to noon an equal sales rate of $81.25 (equivalent to the total hourly sales of $325 divided into four parts). But is it really true that all four fifteen-minute periods have identical sales rates? Probably not, since in the next hour we encounter a sales rate that is more than twice as high as the current hour. It is more likely that during the 11:00am to noon hour most of your sales occurred during the latter part of the hour.
The averaging method that you choose will determine how ESP adjusts these fifteen-minute segments. You have three choices: No averaging, ½ hour averaging, or ¼ hour averaging.
If you choose No averaging, ESP will assume that all four fifteen-minute periods are identical. This choice saves the most labor because it doesn't allow the program to "see" the rush until it happens; ESP, therefore, won't schedule anyone to start before a large rush to prepare for it. Be careful, however, as you may end up under staffed before a big rush because ESP won't know that you're getting busier.
The most common choice is ½ hour averaging. With this option, when projecting your sales ESP will look one-half hour ahead and use the coming sales rate to adjust each amount accordingly. Using our example above, the $325 hour between 11:00am and noon would be split into two unequal sales rates: the first half hour may be $110 and the second $215. Giving the same total sales rate as before but the second half hour is adjusted based upon the coming rush. The result is that ESP will schedule some crew to start at 11:30am instead of noon, since the sales rate for that half hour is significantly higher. This ensures that you have staff on hand to handle those extra sales in the second half hour.
If you choose ¼ hour averaging, ESP will adjust your sales on a fifteen-minute basis. So, you will see a number of people coming in at 11:30am and some coming in at 11:45am. This option provides the best balance between saving labor and having additional labor scheduled prior to rushes. The net result is that your customer service is improved.
Let's look at the impact of all three settings. Using information from a typical store the number of hours used with each averaging method could be as follows:
No averaging: 1132 hours
½ hour averaging: 1161 hours
¼ hour averaging: 1140 hours
Clearly using no averaging uses the least amount of labor but, remember, this option may leave you short-staffed just before your rush periods begin. Half-hour averaging uses more labor but will boost your customer service by making sure that you have extra staff on hand before large sales increases. Using Quarter-hour averaging is a compromise as it adds some staff a quarter-hour before large sales increases, which saves some labor over the half-hour setting, while still providing a cushion against large sales increases.
Effectively use of Labor categories to reduce edit violations
One of ESP's most significant features is the ability to tell it not to allow any labor law or other violations when editing the schedule on-screen. For example, ESP can require that the schedule be completely error-free before saving. Of course, you have the choice: you tell ESP the violations that the scheduling manager may override when editing in the Permitted editing violations section on the Schedule preferences chart (Setup charts menu option I).
This feature is very powerful and once you set it up, ESP will refuse to save a schedule with labor or assignment violations that you have set to NO. That is why it is very important that you properly qualify your employees for all the jobs and times that they are available for.
Most importantly you should set up your labor categories (Adult, Minor-1, and so on) properly. ESP allows you to define two adult labor categories and up to eight minor labor categories, which means you have the flexibility to group your employees so that all assignments meet your local labor laws and internal scheduling rules. For example, suppose you do not want any of your adult employees to be scheduled more than seven hours in a shift, unless the employee is a manager (they never get a break). In the Labor categories screen (Setup Charts menu option H) you would set the Adult-1 labor category so that the longest shift is seven hours and the Adult-2 labor category's longest shift length to ten hours. You would then categorize all your managers as Adult-2 and your other adults as Adult-1 on their employee information screen. Problem solved!
ESP's internal daily boundary time is 4:00am so if you have employees who work past this time you would ensure that the Labor category that they are assigned to has the Latest employee may work field left blank.
Accurate sales projections
A good schedule depends upon accurate sales projections; one of the first and most important steps in preparing your weekly schedule is to generate your projected sales. ESP offers a number of options for generating accurate sales projections. All the options below can be accessed by choosing ESP's main menu option B: Projected sales options, then option D: Generate projected sales
Adjusting your sales projections
The most common method for projecting your sales is to choose option A: Last # weeks. You can tell ESP how many or few of the past weeks to use, however, five weeks is the most common setting. When you choose to average five weeks or more, ESP will automatically drop the highest and lowest value for each hour, which helps eliminate the influence of unusual factors such as the arrival of tour buses, power failures, and so on.
To change the number of weeks used, select option D: Settings, which opens a screen where you tell ESP how many previous weeks to use, along with a sales adjustment factor. For example, you may wish to average the past five weeks and then add 10% to that result because you expect warmer weather next week. You can do this by entering 10 in the Adjustment for previous weeks field.
After generating a sales projection, you can change any hourly, daily, or weekly total on the View/edit projected sales screen. When you change a daily or weekly total, ESP will automatically adjust all the related hourly sales amounts and will correctly distribute the sales according to your sales pattern. This makes it very easy to adjust your weekly sales projection without having to regenerate your sales several times.
Adjusting parts of a day
Another important option on the View/edit projected sales screen is the Adjust range of times by percentage field. This option allows you to specify a range of times to adjust. For example, suppose you were planning to run a promotion next week between 4:00 pm and 7:00 pm and you expect an increase of your sales during these hours by 30%. To account for this, type Yes in the Adjust range of times by percentage field and press the [Enter] key. A window will open where you can enter the days and times that you wish to adjust.
Custom projection
Perhaps the most powerful choice is the Custom projection choice. Using custom projections allows you to choose any weeks from the past that you wish to include in the calculation for your sales projection. This is particularly useful for those times of the year when your sales pattern changes dramatically, such as Christmas week, March break, the start of school in September, or the end of school in June.
For example, when students return to school in September, your sales pattern will change significantly so, averaging the last five weeks of August will not necessarily give you an accurate sales projection. This is particularly noticeable if you are located near a school and experience a sudden increase in your lunch volume when school is in. To accommodate this, you can use the Custom projection option to use sales from last year as a model for this year's sales.
When you choose Custom projection a window will open showing all your sales dates on file. Type a Y in the field beside the date of the week that you want included. You may also increase the projection by a percentage to allow for increased sales. For example, you could select the first five weeks of September from last year and have ESP increase the sales by 10% for all five weeks to allow for a projected increase in sales this year.
How good is your schedule - a quick check
Although the length of time it takes to prepare your weekly schedule will vary from location to location depending upon individual circumstances, our research has shown that a typical operation with fifty to seventy employees should be able to prepare a complete, ready-to-post schedule in 1½ to 2 hours. Many of our customers take even less time if they have set the program up extremely well. So, how can you tell if your program is set to work at peak efficiency?
Two steps to better scheduling
First, count the number of unscheduled shifts you have: In general, if your store is adequately staffed, you should not have more than ten unscheduled shifts each week. If you have more than ten unscheduled shifts, you need to review your employees' information for accuracy. A general rule for determining if you are adequately staffed is to take the total number of shifts from the statistics report and divide it by the total number of crew used on the schedule (also from the statistics report). This tells you the average number of shifts every employee must work each week in order to fill all your shifts. If this number is four or higher it may mean that you are under-staffed and having difficulty filling shifts.
The second step to better scheduling is to determine the total number of hours scheduled: The number of hours that are scheduled immediately after generating the schedule before you begin editing should be within approximately 3% of the number of hours on your final edited schedule. For example, if your final posted schedule has 1125 hours on it, 3% of 1125 is 34; so, your schedule when you first generate it should be +/- 34 hours of the final result (1091-1159 hours). If you are out by more than 3%, your manning charts may need updating or you could be using too many fixed shifts.
Closing your store for the day
If you close your restaurant for Christmas or Thanksgiving it's easy to tell ESP not to schedule any shifts.
From ESP's main menu choose D: Setup charts and then C: Hours of operation. Beside each day is a column that asks if your restaurant is open that day; if you are closed for a holiday simply change the field to No. You must be sure to do this before you project your sales for that week to ensure that your sales projection for that day is zero.
The other step that you should perform is to specify that the day you are closed is a holiday when you generate the new schedule. From the Generate new schedule menu, choose option C: Statutory holiday days and enter a Yes beside the day of the holiday. Any time you designate a day as a statutory holiday ESP replaces the regular availability for that day with the Holiday availability for each of your employees. If you have not entered what times your employees are available on holidays, ESP will assume that your employees are not available and they will not be scheduled. In addition, any manning charts or shift length priority charts that are normally in effect that day will be replaced with the corresponding charts that are in effect on holidays. You must make sure that you have entered effective days and times for holidays on these two important charts.
Related topics
Labor analysis report
The Labor analysis report was designed to make filling your shifts easier, to pinpoint your hiring and training needs, and to help ensure you never break any labor laws again. It presents a wealth of information that can help you be more productive when preparing your schedules. You should print this report every time you generate a new schedule. A description of the three sections of this report follows below.
Unscheduled shifts analysis
The first part of this report is the Unscheduled shift analysis. Along the left side it lists each shift that ESP was unable fill. Beside the shift is the A (Available) column, which lists the total number of employees who are completely available to fill this particular shift. The next column, labeled A&Q (Available & Qualified) tells you how many of those employees who are available are also qualified to work this particular station.
The next column tells you how many of the employees who are available and qualified will exceed their maximum allowed hours for the week if they were assigned to this particular shift. Similarly the next three columns tell you how many employees will have exceeded their maximum days, closes, or days in a row if assigned to this shift. The next column, labeled Too close tells you how many employees will be working too close to some other shift that they are already scheduled to work. Generally this means that they are already working this day and would end up with a split shift.
The Same Day column indicates how many employees already have a shift this day if you allow shifts to be less than 8 hours apart. Since most stores do not allow this, you will rarely see any numbers in the Same Day column.
The Trainee violation column indicates how many available and qualified employees are trainees and cannot work this shift because more than one trainee would be working the job or that the trainee would be working alone.
The Labor class column indicates the number of employees who would violate one of the labor laws as defined in the Schedule Preferences chart.
Each week you should review this report to find the column with the most violations. This can help you to pinpoint why shifts are left unscheduled and help you take the corrective measures.
Job Qualification summary
This section summarizes how many people are qualified to work each job categorized by ratings. This can help you to identify the jobs that you need to concentrate on for hiring and cross-training.
Labor violations report
The Labor violations report can help you avoid costly labor violations. This report is an alphabetical list by employee of all the labor and scheduling rule violations in your current schedule. You can then use this information to update your employees' information to lower the number of unscheduled shifts and reduce the amount of time spent editing each week.
Holiday scheduling
One of ESP's nicest features is the ease that it allows you to schedule holidays. There are two types of holidays that you may encounter: Holidays that only affect a single day, such as Thanksgiving or Easter; and holidays that affect a complete week, such as Christmas.
For holidays that affect a single day you only need to tell ESP the day that is the holiday when you generate your schedule. You do this from the Generate new schedule menu choice C: Statutory holiday days. For each day that you specify as a holiday, ESP will use each employee's Holiday (hOl) availability instead of their normal availability. In order for this to work, however, you must make sure that you have entered holiday availability for your employees for this to work properly. As well as included the day hOl on your manning charts and shift length priority charts.
When a holiday affects the entire week, there are two steps that you must take. The first is to ensure that you have entered an alternate availability in the Summer availability section of each employee's availability (below their regular availability). The term Summer is misleading because you can use this section for any alternate availability. For those employees whose summer availability is the same as their regular availability (such as your day staff or other full time employees) just enter Yes in the Same as REGULAR availability section.
The next step is to define the days that are summer days when you generate the new schedule. Do this by choosing option B: Summer days from the Generate new schedule menu. For each day that you define as a summer day, ESP will use each employee's summer availability instead of their regular availability. This is especially useful if a large number of your day staff or full time employees take time off and you use your part-time employees to fill their shifts on holidays.
If you are closed for the holiday be sure to change the Rest. open? column in the Hours of operation chart to No before you generate your sales projections. The sales for that day will then be generated as zero and ESP won't generate any shifts for that day.
Related topics
Holiday scheduling: closing your store for the day
Management scheduling
Making effective use of your management shifts is an important part of scheduling your crew labor. In a typical week your managers may be working unit producing crew positions, working non-unit supervisory positions, and/or working part of their shift at a unit-producing position and the rest at a non-unit producing position.
There are various methods of scheduling your managers to make the most effective use of your management hours. Several of the most common methods are discussed below; you decide what works best for you. In each case we assume that you design your management schedule separately from your crew schedule and that you fix your management shifts for each individual manager before you generate the schedule.
Management scheduling the easy way
The most common method is to fix your management shifts with a separate job code called Manager and manually remove any additional crew shifts that are not needed during editing. This method works best when you have a limited number of managers whose shifts are predominantly non-unit shifts.
An alternative method is to fix the unit-producing shifts for each manager on the appropriate job. For example, fix some managers on Grill, others on Window, and so on. ESP will deduct these shifts from the remaining manning requirements for the associated jobs.
One of the more popular methods for scheduling managers is to fix the shifts and leave the job code blank. When the system encounters a fixed shift with no job specified, it will automatically assign a job based upon your manning requirements and employee qualifications. You must make sure that your managers are qualified to work the unit-producing positions that you want them to be assigned to. You must also make sure that the jobs they are qualified to work are requested on the manning charts. If you prefer to have your manager's unit-producing shifts appear as management shifts on the printed schedule, you can still use the above method. However, after the schedule is produced, edit the shift and change the job code to the Manager. This will make the shift appear as a management shift while at the same time appropriately reduce the number of crew shifts.
If you want only a portion of your managers' shifts assigned to a crew position you can fix them to two different jobs for the same shift. For example, you may have a manager who is working from 11:00 am to 7:00 pm: you want him to work on Grill from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm and then at a management position from 4:00 pm until 7:00 pm. To do this, simply enter both shifts on two separate lines for the same day and ESP will automatically display the shift as two separate parts.
Day staff and minimum hours
You can specify both minimum and maximum hours for an employee.
The maximum hour entry is a guaranteed maximum: ESP will never schedule an employee more than this number of hours.
The minimum hour entry, however, is not guaranteed; it is treated as a request. However, ESP does its best to make sure that a person with minimum hours is given priority over all other employees when shift assignment takes place. A common mistake is to request a minimum number hours for all your crew. The minimum hours should be set to zero for all your crew except for the few people who must receive a minimum number of hours. If you assign minimum hours to all your crew, ESP will not give anyone priority for receiving shifts over any other employee and it becomes unlikely that anyone will receive their minimum hours.
Understaffing during rush periods
Do you experience a large sales peak for one hour at lunch time? A peak occurs when the sales for one hour are dramatically higher than the hour before and after it. This often results in understaffing during the peak.
ESP tries to minimize wasting labor while providing adequate staffing levels when you experience a large sales increase for just one hour ESP and this becomes more difficult if your shift length priority chart specifies longer shift lengths. Longer shift lengths can lead to wasted labor because your employees are on for longer than necessary.
The solution
After determining your manning requirements, ESP draws the required shifts based on the shift lengths you have specified in the Shift length priority chart.
If you have a peak for just one hour and have defined shift lengths of four hours or longer, ESP must determine whether to over schedule for three non peak hours or more or, to under schedule slightly for the peak hour. The end result is a compromise between the two with the emphasis on being adequately staffed. This is true even if you have set the AR (Allowed Reduction) field on the manning chart to zero. Setting the AR to zero minimizes under scheduling but does not eliminate it. This problem becomes even more pronounced if you have very long shift lengths since it reduces the program's flexibility to draw short, labor-saving, shifts.
The easiest solution is to have two shift length charts in effect over peak hours. The first chart would be your main chart that specifies the shift lengths you actually prefer. For example, it may be in effect from 6:00 am until 4:00 pm with shift lengths of six to eight hours. The second chart would be in effect only from 11:00 am until 3:00 pm and would have a shift length priority of 1 for a three hour shift length only. This indicates to the program that during the day you only want longer shifts but during the peak period over lunch it can draw short three hour shifts to reduce over and under staffing.
Sales or transaction counts? Select your preference.
Do you prefer to use transaction counts instead of sales when projecting your weekly volumes? Version 4.1 has a new option called Sales measurement in the Schedule preferences chart (Main Menu choice D:Setup charts, Setup charts choice I) that allows you to make your own choice: Sales or transactions.
If you choose to use transactions, all aspects of the program are updated to take the new measurements into account. Your volume patterns, manning charts and all printed reports reflect your choice. There’s one caveat: when you use transactions: the labor percent will no longer be shown on your statistics report — since the system is no longer keeping track of sales, your labor cost can no longer be calculated.
Some owners feel that scheduling by transaction count results in more accurate schedules, while others prefer to stay with sales volume. The choice is yours.
Function keys to speed up the scheduling process
Your keyboard holds the key to making scheduling easier.
Single key entry
To make menu choices: you can quickly make a menu choice by pressing the letter beside the option. For example, if you wanted to view or change your Hours of Operation chart, from the Main menu you would press the letter D to choose the Setup charts option and then press the letter C to open the Hours of Operation chart.
To enter days of the week: use the first letter of the day name to enter Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Friday. Use the second letter of the day to enter tHursday, sAturday, or hOliday.
To fill in Yes or No fields: speed entry by pressing Y for yes or N for No in any field that requires a Yes or No answer.
To scroll through options: pressing the space bar allows you to scroll through all the options available for the field that your cursor is on.
Function Keys
The help key. Pressing this key will open a window that gives you details and tips about the menu or form that you are on. Pressing F1 again will open a window with information on all the Function keys.
F2 Pressing F2 switches the bottom line between listing all the function keys and the help information for the field that your cursor is on.
F5 The copy key. This key allows you to copy the contents of the field above. An asset when first setting up your scheduling information, and when editing employee information or setup charts.
F6 The restore key Allows you to restore the contents of the current field to its original contents but only if you have not moved off the field.
F8 The print form key. Pressing this key will print the current form or screen that is displayed. Ensure your printer is turned on and there is paper in it before you press this key.
F9 The pop-up menu key. When positioned on a field with multiple choices, such as a job code field, pressing F9 will open the menu of all choices.
F10 The store key. After you change information on a screen press the F10 key to store the changes on file.
The Esc key
The Esc key has multiple functions. In menus it returns you to the previous menu that you were using. In screen forms it indicates that you wish to cancel any changes you made. When generating or printing a schedule, pressing the Esc key will cancel the process.
Templates
Speed up adding new employees by designing the employee template with information that is common to most of your new employees. The information you enter on the employee template will be automatically filled in whenever you add a new employee. Then you only need to adjust information that is not applicable to the current employee and fill in any missing information.
Quick editing
Shift+F9: when viewing your schedule on-screen, highlight the shift that you're interested in and press the Shift+F9 keys together to view the employee’s information. Most of the information shown will be in yellow text. However, any violations or conflicts will be shown in red to bring them to your attention. This helps identify employee information that you may need to review and update.
Alt+F9: to open the edit shift information screen without going through the menu, highlight the shift you.re interested in and press the Alt+F9 keys together to open the edit shift information screen.
The bottom line
Found exactly where it sounds, at the bottom of the screen, the bottom line tells you the options available for the field that your cursor is on. In some cases, it displays Function keys or single letters that will speed up data entry.
Busy periods
The Busy Periods chart is one of ESP’s most misunderstood charts — you’ll find it at Main Menu choice D:Setup Charts, sub-choice D:Shift Definition charts, sub-choice B:Busy Periods. This chart is used to tell the system if there are times of the day when you consider your store to be too busy to allow any shifts to start or stop. For example, you may not want any shifts to start or stop at 12:30 PM in the middle of your lunch rush. The last thing you need is to delay your service by changing cash drawers, and having one employee pick up in the middle of another employee’s orders.
The times you specify on the Busy Periods chart will allow shift changes at those times but not between them. For example, a busy period from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM will allow shift changes at 12:00 PM and at 2:00 PM, but not at 12:30 PM, 1:00 PM or 1:30 PM. But don't forget setting up busy periods will stop shifts from stopping and starting during those times, not just one or the other.
The effectiveness of the Busy Periods chart is controlled by a parameter in the Scheduling Preferences chart called Shifts span busy times. You set this parameter to anything from zero — which means to completely ignore the Busy Periods chart — all the way up to 1,000 — which means that ESP will never start or stop a shift in the middle of your busy periods (fixed shifts, of course can override this). Any number less than 1,000 gives ESP some discretion about whether or not it is allowed to start or stop a shift in violation of your busy periods. Generally if you are sure you want ESP to adhere to the busy periods you have set up, a setting of 900 or higher will work well. This tells ESP to avoid the busy periods except in extreme circumstances, such as accommodating a fixed shift that ends during a busy time and scheduling a new person to start at that same time to take their place.
Despite this, most stores do not need to make any entries on the Busy Periods chart at all because ESP naturally tries to avoid shift changes during busy periods. As well, your crew are often able to make these shift transitions with minimal disruption.
This is why we often refer to the Busy Periods chart as a problem solving chart. This means that you should leave it blank unless you have a specific problem you are trying to solve. In some cases, the Busy Periods chart can cause conflicts with entries you have made on some of your other charts. For example, suppose your opening crew starts at 5:00 AM, you have defined a busy period from 11:30 AM to 2:00 PM, and the only shift lengths you allow for your opening crew are 7.0 or 8.0 hours. With this setup, ESP would not be able to schedule any crew to start before 7:00 AM because any other shift would end in the middle of the busy period.
Consider another example. Suppose your store is very busy on Saturdays from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM and you need sixteen people to cover the busiest part of that period from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM but eight people are enough for the rest of that period. ESP will still have to schedule 16 people from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM, since the busy period does not allow any shifts to start or stop between those hours. That would waste a total of twenty-four hours of labor. If you do need to use the Busy Periods chart, limit the time ranges to very short periods: generally two hours or less is sufficient.
Another disadvantage of using the Busy Periods chart is that it discourages the one thing that most stores want: well-staggered shifts. It is generally not desirable to have a large number of shifts all starting or stopping at the same time. It is better to have one or two people starting and stopping every half hour or so.
One possible use of the Busy Periods chart might be to force all of your dinner crew to stay a bit longer than your sales dictate, to help clean up after a busy dinner rush. For example, suppose your dinner is very busy but it slows down enough between 7:00 PM and 7:30 PM to allow you to have some crew off at 7:30 PM. However, you may decide that you want them to stay until 8:00 PM to assist with cleaning and stocking up the store to reduce your closing crew’s responsibilities. In this case, you may set up a busy period from 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM.
A good rule of thumb is to start with no entries on your Busy Periods chart at all. Then, if you find you have shifts that are starting and/or stopping at undesirable times, set up a short busy period to fine-tune the shift placement.
Fixed shifts not appearing?
Have you ever assigned a fixed shift to one of your employees only to have it not appear on your schedule? This can occur if the fixed shift you have assigned violates one of the rules that you have designated as Not permitted in the Schedule preferences chart (Main Menu choice D:Setup charts, sub-choice I:Schedule preferences). Any such violations will not be allowed on your schedule under any circumstances.
There are two classes of scheduling rules: Those that can be broken, and those that can’t. For example, you may decide that it’s acceptable to assign an employee’s shift so that he works more than his maximum hours, but not to allow him to work more than his maximum days. You would designate the first as a Permitted edit violation, and the second as not permitted.
If you assign a shift that violates a permitted violation rule, you can save the employee information while viewing the employee or editing: However, the shift will appear in red on the editing screen to indicate the violation. If the shift violates a rule that you have specified as Not permitted, the system will not allow you to assign the shift to the employee: If you try to press F8 to save the employee information, the system will display: Violations in shift not permitted. Press ESC.
You must correct the violation before you can continue. In the case where you have assigned the shift as a fixed shift to an employee before generating a schedule, the system will still schedule the shift, but will remove the employee’s name and print a warning that it was unable to assign the employee. Review the indicated employee’s information to ensure that his fixed shifts do not violate any of the rules you have designed.
After reviewing the printed warnings, if you are still unsure which rule is being broken, edit the schedule and assign the shift manually. When you do this the shift should turn red and blink. Press ALT + F9 to edit the shift and the specific rule being violated will appear in the Shift status information at the bottom of the edit box.
Use fixed shifts wisely
The Scheduling System can help you avoid over-scheduling by allowing you to assign a fixed shift without specifying a job. When you assign such a shift, the system evaluates the jobs for which the employee is qualified, and assigns them where they are needed most. This can help when you want to ensure that you want an employee to get a specific shift, but don’t care which job they work. It also helps with job rotation, ensuring that your employees get a mix of jobs each week, and reduces over-scheduling by letting the system determine where the employee is needed most.
Hours of Operation
The Hours of operation chart contains more information than just the hours your restaurant is open. This chart allows you to specify how many employees must be scheduled to come in before open to set up your restaurant, and how many employees must stay past close for closing duties. Under each day of the week you enter the number of people for each position. Next you enter the number of quarter hours early/late you wish them to be scheduled. For example if you wish your employees to be scheduled 1/2 hour before open, you would enter 2. Finally you enter the job they will be working when the store opens, or the job they were working before the store closed. This part is important. You cannot specify a job that is not being used while the restaurant is open. For example if you only have 2 grill and 1 counter person working when the restaurant first opens, you cannot specify that you want one person on the "Lobby" position to start a half hour early. It must be one of the unit producing jobs that has manning requirements at that time of day.
In order for your "openers" and "closers" to work properly you must ensure that the shift length priority charts you have are in effect during all hours that you want shifts to be scheduled. For example, if you open your restaurant at 7:00am, but want your opening shifts to start at 6:00am you must have shift priority charts in effect starting at 6:00am. The "Close shift" column is another important column. When an employee works past the time indicated in this column, their shift will be counted as a close shift. However it is important to know that the shift must go past the time indicated. A shift ending at the time indicated does not get counted as a close shift. In each employee's file, you may specify how many close shifts they are permitted to work. This allows you to limit the number of late night shifts that your employees work, which is often important when you have a large number of minors, or student employees.
The "spanning time" column is used to let the system know if there is a particular time of day when you wish to force a complete shift changeover. This means that all shifts will end and all new shifts will begin. Typically this is used when you have predominantly students working after school, and all your day staff wish to be off before dinner begins. In this situation you might enter a spanning time of 4:00 PM, since your students may not be available to start work before that time. A spanning time of 4:00 PM would force all the day shifts to end at 4:00pm or earlier, and none of your dinner shifts would start before 4:00 PM. Spanning times are rarely used on weekends, since most weekend employees are available throughout the day.
Unscheduled shifts
A store that is adequately staffed can expect between five and ten unscheduled shifts each week. If you consistently have more, here are some changes that you can make to help ESP fill these shifts for you.
First, make sure that your location is adequately staffed. A quick way to check is to divide the total number of shifts on your current schedule by the number of active crew. (Both of these numbers are printed at the bottom of the Statistics Report.) This will give you the average number of shifts each employee must work in order to fill your weekly shifts. The average number should be 3.75 or less. If your average is above four then it is highly likely that you are under-staffed.
If your location is adequately staffed, you should next look at your employees' information. ESP will never schedule anyone in violation of any rule you have specified, so it’s important that you are not too restrictive when entering your employees. Some things to look at are:
Maximum hours
Setting the maximum hours field too low will create editing work for you. For example, if you set your part time employees maximum hours at 12 and ESP needs to fill a 4-hour shift but the only employee available already has 9 hours scheduled for the week, ESP will leave the shift unscheduled. We suggest setting the maximum hours field to 40 for all employees except those few who have asked you to limit their hours. Let’s look at an example of an average restaurant that schedules 1,000 hours per week and has 65 employees. Of those 1,000 hours, 450 hours are assigned to the full- time crew (day staff, maintenance, managers, etc.), leaving 550 hours for the remaining, part-time crew. If 50 of the 65 employees are part-time, that means an average of 11 hours per employee. As you can see, setting the maximum hours to 40 will give ESP the flexibility to assign your shifts. It will also help ensure that when your sales increase due to summer volume, holidays, or other events, ESP will be able to fill the additional shifts needed, without you having to modify all of your employees.
Minimum hours
ESP uses the minimum hours field to determine the employees who should receive preference when being assigned to a shift. You should set this field to zero for all of your employees except those to whom you have specifically promised a set number of hours. If you assign minimum hours to everyone, you limit ESP’s ability to assign shifts based on preference, and it becomes less likely that anyone will meet their minimum hour goal.
Maximum days
ESP uses the maximum days settings to limit how many days per week, weekend, total and in a row an employee may work. In most cases, it’s best to set the maximums as follows: Weekday: 5, Wknd/Hol: 3, Total: 5, In-Row: 5. Close shifts should be set as: Weekday: 1, Wknd/Hol: 1, Total: 2, In-Row: 1. An exception would be overnight, or other fixed crew who may work more than two closes during the week. For these people set their close shifts to the maximum that they can be scheduled for the week.
These settings work well for both full-time and part-time crew and setting it up like this will allow ESP to fill all of your shifts for the week, even when your sales increase. And, as shown above under maximum hours, most of your part time crew will probably only receive between ten and fifteen hours per week.
