Managing your restaurant’s employee attendance can get especially difficult as the holidays approach. You have employees who need to be home for the holidays, others who’ll be travelling and some who just need a breather. Unfortunately, you can’t give all of them time off at the same time. Creating a solid attendance policy lets every employee what to expect when the holidays roll around and minimizes future problems.
With the holiday season just over the horizon, here are five ways to establish an effective attendance policy.
- Decide which days are not available for time off. Your employees must know the days where they can’t ask for time off. Black out certain days that help keep your restaurant staffed when you most need it. A blanket policy that prevents employees from taking all the same days off will prevent having a packed restaurant with no servers.
- Give everyone time off — in one way or another. If employees fear they can’t get any time-off during the holidays, they’ll leave en masse. Assure them that they can and reinforce that you may not be able to give everyone all the time off they want, but that everyone will get something.
- Ask your employees to make schedule swaps on their own. Your attendance policy must have allowances for employees to swap shifts. Your employees can sort out much of their time off themselves by covering each other’s shifts. Make sure to create a shift swap form that your employees can fill out to keep things documented.
- Make exceptions for family emergencies. Your attendance policy can be firm but add some wiggle room. Letting people have time to attend to unavoidable family emergencies takes some trust but it will be worthwhile for retaining quality employees. Consider these changes personal leave that is none of your business, and ensure every employee that their privacy will be respected.
- Set the schedule far in advance. You must have a policy for yourself that sees schedules published at least a month in advance. Schedules that are created six to eight weeks in advance are easy to change, and your employees have plenty of time to plan their holiday activities. Holding yourself to the same standard as your employees will help level the playing field in the restaurant, and you will enjoy a better working relationship with everyone in the building. Everyone from the hostess to the executive chef needs to know what their schedules will be, and your job as a manager is to make everyone else’s job easier. Creating schedules over the holidays can be difficult, but you have an obligation to your customers to have a full staff every night. The best manager will create a firm attendance policy that makes exceptions for family emergencies.
Quality managers create schedules far in advance, and employees are left with several opportunities to swap shifts. Everyone in the building has a personal life outside work, and the attendance policy you create will serve everyone’s need during the holiday season.
