Hall & Woodhouse completes WFM roll out

Hall & Woodhouse has completed its roll out of a Kronos workforce management (WFM) system across 54 managed public houses and 1,500 team members. 

The Kronos implementation is enabling Hall & Woodhouse to control labour costs and improve workforce productivity by accurately forecasting required team member levels, optimising staff scheduling and improving payroll accuracy.

 

The roll out is part of a five-year transformation plan at the company to become the most highly regarded public house and restaurant chain in the UK. WFM operations are a key area of the overarching project designed to change both culture and processes across the organisation.

Hall & Woodhouse will forecast team member levels based on historical sales data and known labour standards using Kronos time and attendance (T&A), as well as forecasting and scheduling applications. These new WFM capabilities have helped it gain greater visibility into how working hours are used, and allowed the organisation to quickly flex staffing levels to sales.

It has also introduced schedules that start and end at 15-minute intervals, which reduces the possibility of over-staffing which often happens when employees are scheduled at hourly intervals. And biometric data collection used to verify an employees’ identity as enabled a better understanding of exactly where hours were worked and improved further improved forecasting.

Using the organisation the new Kronos InTouch time clock to record employee working time also offers an intuitive interface for team members to access their own information. This further reduces the level of management administration required to answer queries.

Duncan Rouse, Hall & Woodhouse transformation manager, said: “A significant driver for this project is to increase sales per labour hour – a key performance indicator in our sector. It’s not an exercise in cutting costs – more an opportunity to accurately align team members with forecast demand, eliminate under- and over-staffing, and ensure that we have enough people in the right areas to deliver the high levels of service expected from our customers.”