Being in the food and beverage (F&B) business is tough without a doubt – long hours, never-ending customers, planning and updating your menus to follow the latest food craze. Coupled with the need to deal with suppliers while ensuring your F&B business stays profitable, it is no doubt a herculean task to keep your F&B business growing.
In addition to these hurdles, there is the question of labour cost control. High turnover rates are common within the F&B industry but that does not mean it has to be the same for your F&B business. Managing wages accurately can prevent unnecessary monetary losses and translate to more savings for your establishment in the long run. Moreover, paying your workers timely and accurately can in turn help to retain valuable workers.
F&B payroll management goes beyond timely and correct payment of wages. It includes proper time tracking, scheduling as well as training. Given that the F&B industry plays a rather vital role in Singapore’s economy, it would not be surprising to find several software vendors in the market offering payroll software for restaurant businesses.
Instead of merely relying on these payroll software to do the work for you, here are some tips to manage your workers’ wages with ease and efficiency.
Accurate Time Tracking
In the F&B business, shift work is extremely common. To ensure that your workers are paid correctly for the number of hours worked, it is essential to record the accurate number of hours worked. However, when you have that many workers on hand, it is difficult to keep track of all their working hours. Using tools like time-tracking or scheduling apps. Additionally, these tools typically provide you with productivity reports which could help you with scheduling too.
Proper Scheduling
Proper Scheduling can help deliver the greatest value to you, your workers and your business. For instance, building your schedules with the busiest shifts first will let you put your best workers where you need them most. Also, identify where are your peak sales periods so that you can put more workers for those shifts. Likewise, plan ahead for holiday periods whereby high volumes of customers are expected, such as Valentines Day or Christmas Day. That way, you will not be understaffed when there are high inflow of customers and vice versa.
Understand your workers and their needs
Given the flexibility of the business, you are likely to have a small core team of full-time workers and a handful of part-timers. Understand that full-time workers will require more predictability in their schedules and therefore, it is essential to ensure a regular and consistent schedule pattern. On the other hand, part-timers are willing to be more flexible. Additionally, give your workers the flexibility to trade shifts. After all, some things are simply not within our control.
Accurate Payroll
The last thing that anybody wants is to be underpaid. With proper and accurate time-tracking, this will help when you are doing your payroll. Moreover, if you are still doing your payroll manually, this is where a payroll software can be a lifesaver. Not only does it save you those long hours, it can easily help you calculate the pay for hourly and salaried workers, while reducing the risk of miscalculation. Businesses with large number of employees to process payroll for, having an external payroll provider to manage your payroll may be extremely handy. This frees up time for your HR and payroll staff to focus on strategic initiatives to drive productivity and efficiency.
Based on the definition from recruiting firm, Recruiter.com, payroll outsourcing is the process of exporting some or all of your payroll administration to a specialist third-party vendor. The payroll outsourcing package that your organization chooses is typically integrated with the business’ existing infrastructure and HR processes, ensuring that appropriate payroll services are delivered during each pay cycle.
Why outsource payroll?
According to PwC’s The 2018 Payroll Operations Survey, nearly all of the organizations surveyed outsource some portion of their payroll functions. The key motivations identified include cost management, skilled staffing concerns, and minimizing of highly administrative and paper-driven tasks.
Yet, when it comes to managing payroll processing for global operations, the majority of organizations surveyed (52%) typically pay employees in one country by processing payroll from a single central location. A smaller proportion of organizations (16%) indicate that they currently operate on a regional payroll-processing model.
However, organizations are recognizing the need and advantages of having a single payroll vendor to handle all their payroll needs globally. Results from Ernst & Young’s 2017 Global Payroll Survey indicated that more than half of organizations surveyed believe that there is a single vendor who can handle all their payroll needs globally, of which 43% find it very important to achieve global payroll delivery through a single vendor.
With an increasing number of organizations looking to reap the benefits of what a global payroll provider can offer, the international payroll providers are gradually beginning to deliver. Here are some reasons why a regional payroll provider can bring about significant benefits when considering payroll outsourcing.
Good food will only get your so far. What makes your customers come back time and again is the customer service that you provide. And compensating your workers timely and accurately will keep them motivated to provide even better service.
