Another key factor in relation to the wage budget that you will have to consider when developing a roster is penalty rates and allowances. There are many different penalty rates to be aware of.
These include:
➢ Weekends
➢ Public holidays
➢ Overtime
➢ Late night shifts
➢ Early morning shifts.
Weekends and public holidays
The rates of pay vary between different awards. According to the Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2010, full-time and part-time employees should be paid 125% of their usual wage rate for working on Saturdays, 175% for Sundays, and 250% for public holidays. For casual employees, this should rise to 150% for Saturdays, 175% for Sundays, and 275% on public holidays.
Overtime
Employees are due the following rates of pay for overtime worked in hospitality:
➢ Monday to Friday:
o 150% of their normal rate of pay for the first two
hours of overtime
o twice their normal rate of pay for the rest of the
overtime
➢ Between midnight Friday and midnight Sunday:
o twice their normal rate of pay for any work done
➢ On a rostered day off:
o twice their normal rate of pay for any work done
o an employee has to be paid for at least four hours even when they work for fewer than four hours, e.g. if asked to work for three hours, they must still be paid for four hours.
Some employers may agree to offer time off as paid annual leave for overtime worked instead of paying the above overtime rates. The time to be taken off should be during ordinary working hours and should be agreed upon between employer and employee. This can help to save on wages, however relies on the business being able to manage with individuals taking additional annual leave.
Late night shifts and early morning shifts
Employees are entitled to an extra 10% per hour of their standard hourly rate when working Monday-Friday between 7:00pm to midnight, with this rising to 15% when working between midnight to 7:00am.
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Activity 1A
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1.2 – Maximise operational and customer service efficiency while minimising wage costs
Maximising customer service efficiency
One of the key duties of an operations or human resources manager is to develop a roster that minimises wage costs without hindering operational output and customer service. For the majority of businesses in the tourism, travel, hospitality and event sectors, labour is one of the largest or the largest variable cost. It may seem tempting to lower staff numbers and reduce costs, but this often has the consequence of reducing output and customer service quality. However, taking time to consider rostering rather than quickly putting a roster together can help you to maximise efficiency.
Understanding customer service
It is important to have a comprehensive understanding of customer service and the expectations of your consumers. Without seeking information from customers, you will have little means of gauging whether you are currently providing an acceptable level of service with the amount of staff being utilised.
Surveys can be designed to question customers about their needs, expectations and satisfaction levels.
Examples of surveys that you could use include:
➢ Personal interviews – questioning takes place face-to-face, with the interviewer usually asking the customer questions from a set list and writing down the answers. This can be useful when asking an individual about an experience they have just had, such as dealing with an employee, as the experience is fresh in their memory. However, it is usually not possible to gain detailed responses and some customers may provide answers that they feel the interviewer wants to hear, such as by not criticising the customer service
➢ Postal surveys – this method may involve handing surveys to customers and asking for them to be returned by post or sending the surveys directly to their addresses. Although you may be able to send surveys to a wide array of customers, response rates are typically low, and you therefore cannot be sure that responses are representative of the wider customer base. Offering gifts or entries into a competition is a method used by many businesses to attempt to increase the response rate
➢ Telephone interviews – contacting past or existing customers by telephone usually leads to a higher response rate than postal surveys. However, many people decide to ignore phone calls or may be unwilling to provide responses, so there may still be an issue with representativeness
➢ Internet surveys – response rates are normally higher with internet surveys and they are relatively cheap to administer. You might not always have contact details for customers to complete an online questionnaire though, and it is not possible to ask the sort of follow up questions that can be asked in face-to-face interviews.
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Customer focus groups
A focus group is a method of qualitative research whereby participants are questioned about their perceptions, expectations, or needs regarding a particular topic, product or service. Conducting a focus group enables respondents to expand on each other’s answers, potentially providing more detail than individual interviews.
There are some potential problems with focus groups that the interviewer must control, though. They have to prevent one person from dominating the group. For example, if an individual was to continually interrupt others, they ought to remind the group to let other finish what they want to say. Additionally, they should attempt to encourage reluctant respondents to contribute to the discussion if they are not speaking much or at all. Not obtaining answers from the entire group for each question will not provide the fullest coverage of the topic.
Common customer needs and expectations include:
➢ Friendliness – speaking politely to customers and greeting them upon the start of a conversation
➢ Empathy – the ability to understand and appreciate the circumstances of the customer by placing yourself in their shoes
➢ Fairness – being able to treat all customers with the same level of respect, regardless of their circumstances
➢ Clear instructions and information – the ability to provide the customer with the information that they are seeking
➢ Options and alternatives – when the needs of the customer cannot be immediately met, it is important to provide them with alternatives.
Minimising wage costs
Once you have interacted with customers and gained an impression of their satisfaction and expectations regarding customer service levels, you can attempt to incorporate this into developing a workplace roster. For example, through speaking with customers through focus groups or interviews, you can seek information about the number of staff members they feel are necessary at certain periods. Do they feel that there are not enough staff working at a particular time of day or day of the week? Do they think there are too many employees working at other periods? Understanding such information can be valuable in deciding where resources need to be placed at certain times.
Further to this information from customers, examining sales information can also facilitate the efficient rostering of employees. Look at your sales figures with other senior personnel and establish when your facilities or events experience their busiest periods. This may include looking at times of the day, days of the week, and periods in the year. Generally you will require the largest number of staff during your busiest periods. Information in relation to demand can be vital when discussing with employees when they should take their annual leave; it could be damaging if numerous employees are requesting leave at the company’s busiest periods.
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Leave and overtime
As mentioned previously, policies and procedures regarding leave and overtime can impact on wage costs.
For example:
➢ Is it more cost effective to employ a number of casual staff who are not entitled to annual leave but require a higher base rate of pay?
➢ Is it more cost effective to pay staff for overtime or offer the time as paid annual leave at the normal rate of pay?
➢ Does an employee taking their leave in a number of small intervals or in longer periods make a difference to costs, such as having to recruit more part-time or casual staff?
Recruitment
Human resource or operations managers should play a central role in the recruitment process. They are likely to have the most informed opinion in relation to the number of employees that are required and the type of contracts that will provide the greatest cost effectiveness for the enterprise.
There will need to be a decision about the type of job being offered. You might require full-time employees to work long hours, casual or temporary staff if you only require them to work for a short period, or part-time staff if there are particular shifts that need to be filled with quality employees.
Wage levels are also a crucial aspect that needs to be deliberated. You might offer low wages in the hope of lowering costs, but this can result in the more experienced or high quality individuals avoiding your organisation. You might make the business decision that offering a higher base rate of pay will result in people being recruited who can offer a high level of customer service and do not require the same level of training or supervision than less experienced people. In either scenario, it is important to advertise for individuals who will work effectively in your workplace as well as being able to recognise who these individuals are once they have applied.
You may consider the following when assessing potential employees:
➢ Does the person have a positive attitude?
➢ Can you identify empathy in the voice of the person?
➢ Have they maintained a job role in the past for a reasonable length of time?
➢ Do they make good eye contact?
➢ Can the candidate demonstrate high attention to detail?
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This may be summarised as:
➢ “Persons of a cheerful disposition who can stay calm under pressure.”
You may also want to add that you are looking for persons experienced in working in a customer service role. Experienced applicants have usually dealt with difficult and irate customers and know exactly how to handle and defuse such situations.
Making it clear that a particular attitude is required shows how important this characteristic is. Such roles may require a demonstration of this attitude and / or an explanation of how candidates have managed in similar situations in the past.
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