How to Find the Right HR Software for Your Restaurant Business

What is HR for Restaurants?

Restaurant HR is responsible for a wide range of  several team-building activities, including hiring, onboarding, and recruiting. They might also oversee benefits, retain staff members, train employees, and maintain health and safety compliance for your business.

When necessary, restaurant managers can also receive advice on employee-related issues including recruiting and firing choices and disciplinary concerns from human resources professionals—in-house if your business is large enough, or through a compliance consultant. 

They can also instruct businesses and employees about business regulations as well as federal, state, and municipal employment and business legislation.

If restaurants and their employees don't have the proper HR rules in place, they risk serious safety violations, loss of talent, and compliance problems.

Do Restaurants Need HR?

The success of any restaurant depends on more than just its talented chefs and wait staff. HR is a must for every restaurant, whether it is handled internally or externally. 

In fact. restaurants require human resources support to keep their workers safe at work, give their patrons safe and enjoyable experiences, adhere to safety laws, and eventually expand as a business.

This importance is further underscored by data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reports that the average absenteeism rate for food service workers is 4.2 percent, higher than the overall average absenteeism rate of 3.6 percent.

To address these challenges and foster growth, restaurants must have strong HR practices in place. What better way to do it than curating a good restaurant HR department and investing in a restaurant HR software!

The Benefits of a Good Restaurant HR Department

An effective human resources department can have a big positive impact on the restaurant where it works. These advantages consist of:

Safety

Educating the kitchen and wait staff on compliance is one of the human resources team's most crucial responsibilities. This helps significantly reduce the possibility of liability problems resulting from worker accidents and, most significantly, guarantees worker safety.

Training

The kitchen and wait staff at your restaurant should receive training in the same way. Human resources can help with creating manuals and other documentation about your workflow, as well as putting training standards into practice.

Morale

One of the most important components of any organization is employee morale, particularly for a company that interacts directly with consumers and needs to maintain a positive attitude to keep them happy. A positive attitude among your staff directly benefits your consumers, making their experience more enjoyable. Numerous studies have demonstrated that contented workers exhibit higher levels of engagement and performance concentration.

Culture

Your company's growth and development are greatly influenced by your corporate or company culture. This is crucial if you are building a brand to expand it or enter the franchising market. Maintaining a particular direction for the ambiance or face of your brand is made easier by creating a strong corporate culture with standards for conduct, behavior, and other aspects. Your company's culture can be better portrayed with the aid of human resources, which will also guarantee that management and staff are communicating the appropriate message.

Consequences of Poor Restaurant HR

If an organization doesn't give restaurant HR adequate attention, it might have disastrous effects. It is critical to understand the following:

Compliance and Legal Risk

The goal of regulatory compliance is to protect workers and consumers by enforcing laws that cover the whole sector. Employee responses to these rules must be continuously observed through training sessions, regular reminders, sporadic assessments, and realistic situations.

Employee Turnover

Your employee turnover rate can be significantly impacted if you do not take full use of your human resource capabilities. This may be the consequence of low morale, an incapacity to effectively communicate through corporate culture, or other unfavorable circumstances.

Low Customer Satisfaction

For any restaurant, a low level of client satisfaction might be fatal. Customer satisfaction typically immediately suffers in the absence of a human resources department to assist with policy and regulatory compliance implementation.

Poor Hiring and Training

Hiring rates decline when your business lacks a consistent hiring and training procedure. Ineffective company culture also has a big impact on hiring and training new hires since it sends the wrong impression to them, which makes them more likely to look for work elsewhere.

What is HR software for Restaurants?  

Businesses utilize HR software for restaurants to handle hiring and other human resources-related tasks without having to deal with additional paperwork.

The most effective HR software for restaurants incorporates payroll, employee benefits, performance management, onboarding, rostering, recruiting, time tracking, and award interpretation. 

Virtually all solutions are created to optimize your Human Resources department’s operations and have a built-in library where your company’s employee records are kept.

HR software for restaurant can be either licensed and deployed on-site, which might also be called on-premises, or can be accessed through the Internet as Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions.

If you are planning on acquiring an HR system, then this is the time to evaluate which of your people processes require change the most. Consult with your HR specialists to find out what activities consume the most time, generate a significant amount of mistakes, and create a major headache for your personnel.

These will be the best starting points and in addition to this, the primary reasons for which HR software for restaurant can be beneficial.

Different Types of Restaurant Staff Management Software 

Employee software comes in many types and forms and can be met to suit any type or size of company and budget. Some are special restaurant labor management software intended for a specific segment of the work of the HR department, while others are complex systems helpful in organizing various aspects of managing your employees.

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) 

Controls the hiring process, from the advertisement of the job opening, the collection of the resumes and applications, the communication between the company and the candidates, the screening of the candidates, to the scheduling of the interviews and the evaluation.

Onboarding Software  

Ensures that new employees are well-welcomed and guided through an interesting and productive onboarding process. Some of the capabilities are the creation of electronic forms and documents, equipment and software configuration, adherence to labour laws, acting as a feedback channel to new hires, and data processing capabilities.

Performance Management Software 

Correlates with how effective your people are when it comes to processes. This may refer to the establishment, monitoring, and evaluation of performance targets, as well as the offer of feedback, training, and professional development.

Employee Engagement Software  

Assesses and enhances the emotional attachment of employees toward your business, organization, or venture. This can be; via surveys and polls, recognition and reward systems, and learning and development resources.

Payroll HR Software 

Comprehensively handles your payroll and employees’ payment responsibilities, reconciles salaries and wages, liaises with legally required authorities and tax authorities, tracks working hours and employee time, maintains employee benefits administration, and lets individuals access their pay data online.

Human Resources Information System (HRIS) 

Delivers several HR solutions together into one, this makes the processes of people improvement in business quite affordable.

This may comprise employee documentation, the application tracking system, recruitment, performance appraisal, compensation, training and development, staff satisfaction, and diversity and equality.

Cloud HR software 

Several benefits can be accrued from choosing Cloud HR software for restaurants instead of the on-premises ones. While in the traditional system, the restaurant staff management software and its data are kept in the company’s server within its compound, then in the cloud computing system, it is stored in a separate server owned by the software provider.

Why Do You Need HR Software?

HR software for restaurants can help you decrease manual HR duties and streamline HR procedures, as well as meet compliance requirements that consume a significant amount of your time.

Examining cloud-based HR software tools could be the answer, as dealing with Google Sheets and Excel can still be quite time-consuming.

You can concentrate on more strategic HR initiatives, such as culture and employee wellbeing, that will set your company apart from the competition, using the time and energy saved by using HR software.

Restaurant HR software makes every process within the human resources department operate fluidly and saves many person-hours that are better used in other areas.

Staff Hiring and Lifecycle Management

Record the history of each employee's involvement with the business. Career milestones, employment dates, and other areas of emphasis can all be easily recorded.

Standardized and Efficient Onboarding and Training

It is necessary to create a standardized onboarding and training process to ensure best practices throughout your company. This maintains your restaurant up to specific standards and allows everyone an equal opportunity to learn the same system.

Employee Record Documentation

Most human resource departments are in charge of documenting employee records. This covers certifications, driver's licenses, and other required paperwork. The program maintains and stores all of these records in a single location.

Integrate Seamlessly for Payroll and Benefits Management

To keep track of all employee benefits, the system stores and maintains all payroll and benefit information. These are simply retrieved for upgrading or employee distribution.

Efficient, Secure Team Communications

The software offers a portal for precise and efficient communication amongst all staff members. All queries and feedback from staff members to HR can be handled by the communications tool.

Employee Scheduling

Software for restaurant scheduling is revolutionary, especially when it comes to organizing the schedules of several restaurants. To assist in developing new programs, review previous schedules, and maintain a record of all hours worked.

Regulatory Compliance

One easy-to-access site allows for the logging and access of all regulatory compliance certificates. To meet standards, compliance agencies can print these.

Essential HR Software Features for Your Restaurant

Choosing the best HR software for a restaurant is a significant choice. Additionally, it's one you need to purchase properly.

First things first, write down what you need. Why?

In the long run, the purchasing process will be simpler if you take the time to thoroughly define your requirements upfront. You and your coworkers will be able to recognize the manual procedures and sources of friction in your company that require more work. It will enable you to ensure that the company's needs are met in the future as well as those that are urgent right now.

The bells and whistles might easily captivate one's attention, but it's crucial to remember the essential features. So, while you're narrowing down your choices, make sure to search for these key elements.

1. HR and Payroll Integration

Maintaining two separate systems is ridiculous given the significant overlap that exists between your payroll and HR data. Opt for restaurant staff management software that works with your payroll system instead.

This eliminates a ton of paperwork as well as various forms of double handling and reconciliation work anytime something is entered into the system by HR and payroll updated accordingly. Reporting will become easier and you'll be able to gather more data.

To alleviate your administrative workload and lower the possibility of human error, modern human resources software interfaces with various aspects of your organization.

2. Security

Payroll and HR records, as you are aware, hold highly confidential employee data. This contains all of the following: home addresses, tax file numbers, birth dates, employment histories, bank account information, health data, background check results, and so forth.

HR managers are very concerned about the possibility of theft or unauthorized access to this sensitive information. Thus, be sure the cloud-based HR software provider you select delivers the best security standards on the market.

This implies that the HR software—along with your data—is housed on safe servers under the supervision of professionals, equipped with continuous backup power and emergency power supplies.

3. Mobility and Accessibility

In today's constantly connected society as a whole, we have been accustomed to instantaneous access to information on any device, from anywhere, at any time.

It's the same situation with HR software or business-related apps. A cloud-based solution should be provided by the HR information system you select. One that permits workers to access it from any location.

As a result, your team members can use their mobile devices and leave the workplace to access the employee portal. Bonus points if all users can download the vendor's free mobile app.

4. Scalability 

Choosing HR software that will support future business expansion is just as crucial as making sure it satisfies your present demands.

When you concentrate too much on your present demands, you could unintentionally overlook your company's future requirements, which could mean that you'll have to switch HR software once more when it comes time to modernize.

It's crucial to select HR software that can expand your company at a reasonable cost for this reason.

5. Compliance with Local Legislation

If you're depending on spreadsheets and manual procedures, record-keeping, and regulatory compliance can be labor-intensive and prone to human mistakes.

Your restaurant labor management software should ideally include:

• Templates for employment contracts that have been revised to comply with local employment laws
• Templates for standard HR notifications and letters
• Rules-based procedures (such as automatically-generated reminders, escalations, and approvals)
• An HR knowledge base tailored to regional laws
• Templates for policies (such as those on harassment, social media, codes of conduct, etc.) that include acceptance monitoring and policy distribution.

6. Onboarding Tools

Your onboarding process must contribute to the long-term success of your employees because the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) projects that up to 1 in every 25 workers quit their employment as a result of subpar onboarding.

Verify that the restaurant labor management software you select allows for paperless onboarding and has the following features:

• Create and deliver offer letters to prospective hires.
• Make or utilize templates that are compliant.
• To enable online acceptance of offers, use electronic signatures.
• Monitor the onboarding status of new hires in real time.
• Create introductory materials, such as a welcome video, a company manual, and company values.

7. Employee Self-service

Employee self-service features lessen the need for you to handle administrative support duties by enabling your staff to handle standard HR procedures.

An efficient system will enable employee self-service (ESS) so that staff members can quickly update personal data such as:

• Private information (such as address and emergency contact)

• Bank information

• Tax returns and retirement assets

• Details of a passport and visa

They ought to be able to request leaves of absence using a projected leave balance thanks to the system.

8. Time and Attendance Management

Scheduling is easy with an automatic time and attendance monitoring system. It's simple to manage numerous shift patterns and compute salaries while indicating penalty rates for overtime or weekend work when it's set up to the correct awards for your company.

Find a solution that provides:

• Digital time logging feature.

• Assigning skills, entering availability, and letting the system suggest the best candidates for each shift enabled by smart rostering.

• Interpretations (you can apply different work rules to the start and stop times of each employee so that they are automatically interpreted into every payroll element).

9. Performance Review Management

To get the most out of your employees, it is essential to recognize their achievements. However, conducting employee performance reviews manually can be time-consuming and offer little benefit to staff.

Alternatively, you can develop KPIs with staff members and explain how they align with the company's overall objectives with ease by using HR software solutions.

A robust system offers:

• Review templates for employee performance.

• A manager is prompted to complete their assessment after receiving the completed self-assessment, which may be customized along with other review components like goals and values. Additionally, automated performance review workflows are available.

• Evaluation systems that point out areas in which a worker's performance is strong or needs work.

10. Applicant Tracking System

With the ability to post job ads simultaneously across several channels and trace each candidate's progress through multiple interviews and screening calls, an application tracking system is a recruiter's best friend in the computer world. 

The best part is that they serve as a repository for rejected candidates who came extremely close to landing a job and might be worth contacting again for a subsequent opening.

An effective candidate tracking system consists of:

• The ability to submit a job posting to several websites at once, such as Indeed, SEEK, and Jora

• A comprehensive tracking system to monitor the entire hiring process, from creating a shortlist to setting up interviews to hiring new employees.

• The capacity to design a digital onboarding process to greet new hires.

Xenia - #1 HR Software for Restaurants You Need to Try!

As a robust and comprehensive HR software designed specifically for restaurants, Xenia offers a mobile-first solution that simplifies and enhances the management of frontline operations. 

This platform provides restaurant managers with customizable templates and tools to streamline daily tasks, from scheduling and compliance checks to team communication and real-time monitoring. 

By centralizing these activities, Xenia allows managers to focus on improving efficiency and maintaining high operational standards without the hassle of manual processes. 

The software’s AI-driven capabilities further empower managers to create SOPs, conduct inspections, and generate insightful reports, ensuring seamless and compliant operations across all levels.

Key Features

• Task Management: You can use task assignment and tracking to manage employee duties, ensuring accountability and performance tracking for HR reviews.

• Custom Checklists & SOPs: You can create checklists and SOPs for onboarding, training, and daily operational procedures, ensuring consistency and compliance in HR practices.

• Inspections & Audits: Regular audits can be tailored for HR compliance, including health and safety regulations, and employee satisfaction checks.

• Team Communication: You can streamline communication between HR and employees, facilitating announcements, policy updates, and feedback collection.

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Final Thoughts

Every business's success is based on its people processes. Your employees will be happier, more engaged, and more devoted to the more successful and efficient your HR team operates. 

Using the best restaurant management software has several advantages, including time savings, the elimination of tedious admin, improved experiences, and a decrease in errors. Some solutions can help you do all of these, regardless of the type of business you run or the number of people you have. 

Selecting which advantages would yield the most return on investment and beginning the process of vetting HR software suppliers based on features and capabilities may be accomplished by collaborating with your HR staff to identify problems and opportunities for development.

We hope this guide helps you to find the right HR software for your restaurant business, such as Xenia!