With a passion for breathing new life into well-loved local pubs, Moogies’ Founder Paul Mitchell understands the value of quality, and a well-trained staff bring to a customer’s experience in a classic British pub. Carrying the legacy of venues that got their first liquor license in 1524, Paul knows more than most that people make the difference.
But as he and his senior management team knit together their business know-how with a belief that the hospitality industry has its best days yet in front of it, Moogies turned to workforce collaboration software Planday to keep its staff engaged, retain their best talent for longer and take their business dream to the next level. After doubling the staff they have using Planday, the Group now saves two days a week – and £1,200 a month – in scheduling.
We spoke with Paul to see how Planday makes his day work.
A growing business needs a smarter way to schedule
But as the Moogies Group expanded and hired additional people, a whole new challenge presented itself – staff management for dozens of staff across two venues.
“Up until looking for a scheduling solution we were very manual – we were using an Excel spreadsheet. When we were just one venue it was relatively easy, as you have a smaller number of people. But when we went to two venues quite rapidly, that multiplied and it became a challenge,” Paul says.
“You get the challenges of communication and telling people what their rota is. You also have to tell them about any changes, so what we wanted was a tool that helped us easily rota across multiple venues.
“It needed to help us communicate with anyone affected by any change or equally provide the individual staff member access, so they had knowledge of when they work and what their start time is.
“The software also needed to help manage our casual workers – which also used to have a manual system. They used to sign a bit of paper when they arrived and when they left and then we used to manually work out how many hours they worked to pay them.
“So we wanted to make it easier to do that, quicker and more accurate, so the hours are always right and we pay people the correct hours when they work.”
Paul says time saved on scheduling is now around 60 per cent.
“We have estimated that time spent setting the monthly rota in the first instance has reduced by 60%,” Paul says.
“It had to be easily accessible to people, and obviously being an app, Planday does that very easily. The Planday app is very intuitive, it takes a very small amount of time to give people the knowledge they need to use it.
“We also wanted a platform that could help us in the HR department – whether that be in document storage or sending out information that was important.”
Finally, Paul’s wish list had one key feature that now saves time and money for his business – a seamless point-of-sale system integration.
“At the same time, we were also looking for a new till system and we looked at Lightspeed, so there was an integration there that we identified with Planday.”
Planday ‘ticks all the boxes’
Picking the right software that takes the guesswork out of staff rotas and can help take your business to the next level means ticking boxes for aspirations from different parts of the business.
While a cloud-based communications tool, seamless integration with Lightspeed and the time saved from upgrading the scheduling from a clunky Excel spreadsheet was already high on his agenda, Paul says Planday has other benefits for various parts of the Moogies Group.
“The scheduling managers love Planday. They love that when they are scheduling it is easy to see who had been scheduled and who hasn’t, but then you can also see it across all the venues so that it all has been filled equally,” Paul says.
“We were finding with a manual system that we would end up putting the same person on at the same time in two venues. All our venues are geographically close, we do share a lot of the staff between venues.
“Then the line managers love the holiday feature. It was previously all manual on Word and Excel, so they like that on Planday, it just gives them easy access to who wants what.”
For marketing, Paul says communications and the newsfeed function makes the job easy.
“Our marketing manager loves the newsfeed. When she wants to send out any new news like ‘we’re launching this on Monday’ or ‘we’re doing this, this week’, she can send it out via Planday,” Paul says.
“The platform lets her pick out who it goes to and she knows it will get to them. Marketing likes using the newsfeed to send out communication to everyone so that they all get the same briefing at the same time. We don’t give people company emails, so this helps with communication.”
And – for Paul personally – Planday significantly reduces the time he spends on payroll.
“I do payroll. Planday has cut my time massively, as long as my managers have done the schedule and approved the shifts. I just run the report, which is usually pretty accurate, and takes quite a small amount of time for me to then just finalise and send over to my payroll company,” Paul says.
Planday saves Moogies time and money
Planday has cut the time the Moogies Group spent on admin right across the business.
“In terms of time spent scheduling, we are saving two days a month,” Paul says.
“There’s then the shift changes, the communication and the fact that we can do that so much quicker, has also saved huge amounts of time. We’re putting that again to be something in the region of two hours every day saved. In terms of value, we’d say that’s around £500 a month.
“Next, there’s payroll. If you think we used to need every person in each venue to manually sign in and out, then we would take that signing in sheet and manually work out how many hours that equated to, you then have to take each of these weeks and add them up to your month’s payroll. By saving all the time that used to take, that is also saving us around two days a month.
“So if you take up those three elements – the scheduling, the payroll, time-tracking – gets you to a total saving of more than £1,200 a month.”
And Paul says the saving is even more when you add error-free scheduling, payroll and time-tracking.
“There is a lot more hidden cost saving than we are benefiting from. Without doubt there is a genuine positive monetary value saving that we are achieving by saving the human time, effort and energy,” Paul says.
Are you ready to make your day work?
What would you do with an extra £1,200 every month?
See the benefits Planday can unlock for your hospitality business with smarter communications, better staff management and integrations with systems like your POS.
To see how Planday can help you take the guesswork out of your hospitality business and make your day work, speak to a specialist for a solution tailored to your needs.
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