Labor Technology: BJ's Employees Just Phone it in
BJ's Restaurants' labor-management system lets employees swap shifts or ask for time off with a text message and lets managers quickly respond and then get back to the workers in the restaurant.
By David Farkas, Senior Editor -- Chain Leader, 4/1/2009
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BJ's Restaurants employees can swap shifts or ask for time off simply by texting. |
"There's no other industry I know of where employees call to see if they're coming to work next week," says Christopher Muller, a restaurant management professor at Central Florida's Rosen College of Hospitality Management. "Dealing with it takes enormous amount of time."
Not at BJ's Pizzeria & Brewery, declares Nanette McWhertor, vice president of operations support and restaurant openings at the Huntington Beach, Calif.-based casual-dining chain. Its employees send text messages from Web-enabled phones to a labor management system when they want to swap shifts or request time off, she says. The announcement is then dispatched to the unit's employees.
To check a work schedule, they access a Web site. "It's the most dynamic tool we have. There is no one who can't go into it," she says, adding managers now have more time to devote to on-duty hourlies.
A Simple Yes or No
Managers simply respond to pending text messages and either approve or don't approve the swap. "If the manager declines it, the message goes back to original team member. If he accepts it, the other team member gets notified that they have the shift," McWhertor explains.
Managers aren't likely to approve swaps unless they are between similarly skilled workers. A cocktail waitress, for instance, isn't likely to win approval if a new employee tries to pick up her hours. Nonetheless, the system saves employees time. "You don't have to ask or call 20 people," McWhertor says.
Total Approval
The labor-management technology, rolled out companywide in 2006, got no pushback from staff "They were thrilled to have access to work," McWhertor says of the access to the labor management program. Most BJ's employees are 18 to 24 years old and regularly send and receive text messages, she adds.
Besides generating "a fascinating number of reports," McWhertor says BJ's uses tool to notify employees of special events. "Like right now we have a big [sales] contest. The first three times they access their schedules, they get a blast saying, 'Hey, make sure you are competing in this contest.'"
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