When it comes to restaurant worker scheduling, managers and owners often find themselves challenged by labor shortages, varying schedule requirements, and other staffing wrinkles. These issues can be even further exacerbated by many restaurants’ tendencies to hire mostly young, minimum-wage workers or those who work multiple jobs.

Fortunately, advances in restaurant technology have largely made these headaches a thing of the past. In addition to providing a cloud-based restaurant POS that organizes menus, seating, and payment options, the NorthStar restaurant POS system also allows restaurants of all types and sizes to manage work schedules with flexibility while ensuring compliance with federal, state, and local labor laws.

How Restaurant POS Systems Can Help Resolve Scheduling Issues

You may classify point-of-sale systems as a way to accept credit card payments or make it easier to balance the cash drawers at the end of a shift. But today’s POS systems can do so much more, from organizing seating to setting up each week’s shift schedules.

Traditionally, restaurant owners have used either pen and paper or a spreadsheet to generate a new schedule each week.

But both of these methods have some clear disadvantages: they take up a disproportionate amount of time, don’t easily allow for last-minute changes, and require the manager to either be tethered to a laptop or to have the written schedule on-hand pretty much around the clock.

When workers need to swap shifts or call in sick at the last minute, scrambling to find a replacement can take an owner’s attention away from other, more pressing matters.

Restaurant POS systems provide a means by which owners, managers, and employees can use their mobile devices to swap shifts, share changes in their availability, or directly message another team member to pass along time-sensitive information. From an owner’s perspective, this open communication can be invaluable.

For example, if one server wants to switch shifts with another to accommodate a family event, both may assume that, as long as the shift is covered, there’s no issue — and no need to involve management in the process. But if the employee taking over the shift is relatively new, or the shift is an extra-busy one, the manager may prefer this swap to occur between two equally-experienced servers.

Using the Northstar POS software can iron out these issues quickly and let you avoid saddling your workers with unexpected, last-minute changes that impact their ability to do their jobs.

Meanwhile, workers often appreciate the commitment to open communication that employers demonstrate by shifting their scheduling responsibilities to cloud-based restaurant POS software like the NorthStar POS system.

Restaurant Worker Scheduling Through the NorthStar POS System

This comprehensive POS system lets owners and managers make scheduling changes on the fly from any web-enabled device. No longer will you be forced to spend hours wading through spreadsheets each week or spending time troubleshooting scheduling issues—instead, manage and edit everything from menus to pricing to seating charts to schedules with just a few clicks.

NorthStar’s restaurant POS system can change the way you do business, freeing up your valuable time to focus on value-added tasks. Visit our website to learn more about the features our innovative software offers or to schedule your free live demonstration.