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Streamline Ordertaking

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 17:53:47 GMT

Hello everyone, its Tom here with another very quick tip.

As most of the hotels in Ireland have now re-opened and the restaurants have not yet opened for in-door dining, the food and beverage departments in hotels are a lot busier than they may be normally.

Hotels are now servicing almost all of their resident guests in the F&B outlets every evening for dinner and many of these rooms are filled with "staycationing" families so the sleeper ratio is a lot higher.

Coupling this with additional non-resident “outdoor dining” this is putting the teams in some F&B operations under a lot of pressure particularly if they have lots of new team members who are still getting up to speed.

What typically happens is that the server takes the order at the table on a handwritten pad then they enter the order into the computer system, this generates a check in the kitchen and the kitchen starts to prepare the starters and starters are collected from the kitchen and served. When the server is ready for the main course they return to the computer and “call away” the main courses, sending another check to the kitchen and the main meal collected and served.

Because of the additional volume at mealtimes there are a few things going wrong with this process. These can be resolved with an investment in a handheld ordering system. Many of the POS providers offer this as an add on to their desk mounted terminals and it really helps to save some time and streamline the process.

The problem with the old handwritten system is you are doubling up on the work when taking an order from the guest then entering it in the system, this can all be done in a single process with a handheld system effectively halving the time.

Also, in some cases there may not be enough desk mounted terminals and the servers need to wait for their turn to use one and this also delays getting the order to the kitchen before it can be prepared.

Don’t forget, when it comes to calling away the main course this could also require a wait for a free terminal causing further delay.

If you are having similar challenges, you should research this handheld terminal option with your current provider to see if it is something they offer, if you’re not sure if you have this problem then conduct some observations in your Bar or restaurant to find out or give me a call and I will be delighted to help you with that as part of our LEAN Opportunity Assessment.

I’m confident the investment in handheld terminals will pay for itself in more efficient operations, faster service with happier staff and customers.

Essential Checklist Tips

Wed, 02 Feb 2022 17:53:52 GMT

Effective Checklists help us to deliver the extra-ordinary without forgetting the basics!

In my last blog we discussed the use of checklists on the Front Desk and how the items contained on those lists may not be adding any value to the customer or to the business so they should be Removed, Reduced or Re-allocated and the time saved can be re-invested in more value adding activities benefiting the customer.

Today we continue the checklist theme, and we look at the origins of checklists and I share some tips for creating effective checklists I have learned from “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande.

A lot of the time process failures are caused by the simple, basic, common sense tasks not getting done correctly or they are forgotten completely. It’s human nature to focus on the more enjoyable tasks and to forget the routine steps that need to be in place to make the activity successful in the first place.

It is also challenging when trying to ensure a process is implemented correctly and consistently with multiple people with varying levels of skills and experience so an effective checklist can go a long way to delivering a superior product or service.

The Pilots “pre-flight” checklist

In his book The Checklist manifesto the author Atul Gawande uses the example of the first flight of the B17 bomber aircraft in 1935 as an example to demonstrate the surprising power of checklists.

In the 1930s, the U.S. Army Air Corps held a competition for airplane manufacturers vying to secure a contract to build the military’s next long-range bomber. Boeing produced a plane that could carry five times as many bombs as the army requested and flew faster and further than previous bombers. On the day Boeing demonstrated its Flying Fortress, the plane lifted off the tarmac, stalled at 300 feet, and then crashed in a fiery explosion.

Investigators discovered the crash wasn’t caused by a mechanical malfunction, but rather pilot error. The problem was while the new bomber could carry more and fly faster and further than any other bomber in history, it was also an extremely complex plane to operate. To fly it, a pilot had to pay attention to four different engines, retractable landing gear, wing flaps, electric trim tabs, and much, much more. Because the pilot was so preoccupied with all these different systems, he forgot to release a new locking mechanism on the elevator and rudder controls. Overlooking something so simple killed the two men at the helm.

Instead of requiring more training, the test pilots implemented a simple pre-flight checklist. It spelled out all the basic tasks that were needed to fly the plane successfully. By implementing the checklist, pilots flew the Boeing bomber 1.8 million miles without a single accident.

The Surgical Safety Checklist

Another more recent example is in medicine, prior to 2005 errors occurred in surgical incidents in nearly 15% of all patients globally!

The World Health Organisation (WHO) started work to address this in 2006 and in June 2008 WHO launched the “Surgical Safety Checklist” modelled on the pre-flight checklist pilots undertake.

The checklist is a simple 19-item tool which addresses serious and avoidable surgical complications, by ensuring that critical steps outlined in the guidelines are done in every surgery, every time, everywhere. It also serves as a critical communication tool for the operating theatre team.

Mandated for use in the NHS in 2009 and in other countries around the World; studies have found that surgical deaths were reduced by approximately one-half and surgical complications were reduced by more than one-third when the surgical safety checklist was implemented.

Similar checklists have since been introduced to other hospital departments to improve patient outcomes, communication and save costs.

So, what do checklists do?

Checklists verify that the necessary minimum gets done - Because the stupid simple stuff is so stupid and simple, we often fool ourselves that it’s not important in the grand scheme of things. But as we’ve seen, it’s often our most basic tasks that can spell the difference between success and disaster.
Checklists free up mental space - You don’t have to think about remembering to do the stupid simple stuff because there’s a checklist for that. Offloading the need to remember basic tasks frees up the brain to concentrate on the important stuff.
Checklists instill discipline - Because checklists provide a binary yes/no answer, they instill discipline in the person that uses it. Research shows that giving someone a checklist for a task increases his or her chances of completing it.
Checklists save time - checklists can prevent errors caused by skipping basic steps, you spend less time fixing mistakes and more time doing constructive work.

How to Make an Effective Checklist

Here are some tips from The Checklist Manifesto to help you create a truly useful checklist:

Investigate your failures and look for “killer items.” Examine why you aren’t getting the results you want. Look for failure or friction points in the tasks you do routinely. These failure or friction points will serve as the basis for your checklist.
Focus only on the “stupid” essential stuff that’s frequently overlooked or skipped. You don’t need a checklist that lists every single step on how to complete a task. just focus on putting down the “stupid” but essential stuff that you frequently miss. Your checklist should have no more than 9 items on it. The shorter the better.
Decide if you need a “communication” checklist. communicating with others becomes vital to managing all the moving pieces. In such a case, create a dedicated communication checklist and make sure it includes who needs to talk to whom, by when, and about what.
Decide if your checklist will be a “DO-CONFIRM” or “READ-DO” checklist.
With DO-CONFIRM checklists, you do your job from memory and experience, but then at a certain point you stop to go through your list to verify you did everything.
READ-DO checklists require you to read and perform a task on the checklist before you can move to the next task.
Test your checklist in the real world and refine as needed. If you’re still experiencing the same failures or if the checklist makes work cumbersome to the point that it becomes a stumbling block, then you need to refine your checklist.

In the Hospitality business a lot of what we do every day are simple, repeatable, common sense tasks and that’s what makes them easy to forget!

Remember the mantra: “Common sense does not equal common practice”!

Remove, Reduce, Reallocate Menial Administration tasks

Tue, 01 Feb 2022 13:38:09 GMT

Have you ever wondered what the Front Desk team are doing when they are clicking away on their computer screens every time you pass Reception?

Very often they are allocating rooms to todays arrivals, checking the status of check-out rooms, answering e-mails, or running system back-ups which are all productive, necessary tasks.

However, in a lot of cases the work they are doing is manual, menial and completely un-necessary administration tasks which add no value to the guest or the business. In some cases, the same list of tasks is completed by every person on every shift!

Of course, it’s not the fault of the Team-Member as this is how they have been trained; they have been given a checklist of tasks by their Supervisor that tells them what tasks need to be done by the close of shift each day.

It’s not the fault of the Supervisor either as very often this is the same list that they were given on their first day and that is how they have always done it!

Perhaps the list of tasks has grown over time, but it rarely gets shorter, why is that?

If there is a culture of a “continuous improvement” in the business, then someone completing those tasks or someone in charge of people completing those tasks would ask; is it necessary to complete everything on this list?

Once this question has been asked, curiosity takes over, team-members start to ask why?

Why am I running this report?
Why does it take 15 minutes of the day to gather the information and print the report?
Why does my Supervisor need to sign a hard copy of the report?
Why does the Finance Manager need it?
Why can’t the report be run in pdf format and stored electronically?

The Manager of the department would also start to ask:

How long is it taking my team to run this report, check it, sign it, file it?
What value does it add to the customer or the business?
Is there another way that the same information can be gathered if needed without my team doing it?
What would happen if we stop running the report?
What else could we do with that 15 mins per team-member per day? Could we use the time to add value to the customer Journey, conduct team member training?

Once the curiosity of the team has been stirred then the continuous improvement process begins. Very quickly several steps are put into place:

A Full list of all of the administration tasks completed by the Front desk team are created.
Data is collected to calculate the frequency of the activity and the amount of time each activity takes to complete.
Each item is then interrogated using the 5 why’s method to get to the bottom line of why the activity is completed.
Each stakeholder assumed to be a dependency in the process is asked if they really need this information or if there is another way it can be accessed.
The full list of all of the administration tasks are then sorted into 3 buckets;

Remove: These are tasks that are not required by any stakeholder and can be removed immediately.
Reduce: These are tasks that are still required but perhaps there is an opportunity to streamline the process (use Process Mapping), reduce the frequency or automate the process.
Re-Allocate: These tasks are also required but perhaps they don’t need to be completed by the Guest facing Reception team, there may be an opportunity to re-allocate them to another department or to a different shift (e.g. Switchboard, Nightshift etc…)

This is a great way to reduce “non-value adding” time for your staff and increase the important “Value Adding” time to your guests. I have seen Administration time at the front desk reduce by over 60% using this method.

Now your team have a lot more time to do what they do best and come out from behind the reception desks and engage with your customers.

How fast are your horses?

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 13:41:16 GMT

With hotels re-opening coming up on the rails, are you ready to look at your hotel business differently?

“If I had asked what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” This is one of my favorite quotes and it comes from Henry Ford. Can you imagine if pioneers like him did not dream and have the crazy ideas what our world would be like? He was a true Innovator!

Innovation and continuous improvement are fundamental to our very existence as human beings. We are blessed with the ability to challenge convention and consider newer and better ways to do things however, very often “we do what we have always done” and it’s not until someone, or something challenges us that we start to think differently.

COVID-19 has challenged the Hospitality business like it has never been challenged before. Thousands of dedicated and highly skilled people have lost their livelihoods and some businesses may never re-open. What we regarded previously as “normal” may have disappeared forever and we need to plan for the “new normal”, but what does that mean?

To consider this we need to place ourselves in Henry Ford’s mindset; do we want to continue doing what we have always done and just produce faster horses, or do we need to re-consider how we operate our hospitality businesses to sustain us in the post COVID-19 world?

For example, the increased focus today on cleanliness when we travel, stay in a hotel, or eat out is probably not going away but can your business sustain that cost indefinitely? Will there be a change in demand for our F&B services in hotels? Will guests feel safe and comfortable eating in the restaurant and bar, or will we need to provide an enhanced room service product? Are our menus optimised to provide the best selection of quality food to the customer without requiring an excessive list of ingredients and a large team of chefs to produce the dishes? Should bedrooms be serviced every day or every 2/3 days? Can we consolidate roles and contract types to improve flexibility and efficiency in the workforce?

Of course, driving revenues and lowering costs will continue to be a priority but how has this changed with COVID-19? Will your regular customers return to you when you re-open or has that nice new hotel up the street offered them a better product for a lower cost? This works both ways of course, can you now win business that you did not attract in the past and steal it from a competitor?

This is also a perfect opportunity to review your suppliers, do you need to buy the same items from them that you have always used or is there a better, cheaper option with better terms? Can you join a purchasing group to consolidate your procurement and lower your costs?

COVID-19 has been a disaster for Hospitality however, it provides us with a unique opportunity to start over with a clean sheet of paper. Very often we have been running so fast to keep up with the demands of the business we have not had the opportunity pause and review our offering. COVID-19 has forced us to slow down, let us take the time to review, re-think, and re-energise our businesses for the demands of the “new normal”. For sure we will make mistakes on this journey and that is ok, at least that will give us a better idea of what does not work, and we will learn, adapt, and start again.

Henry Ford had an amazing idea, he showed enormous courage to develop his plan, he had the foresight to know that his motor car was not perfect, but it was a good start. Thankfully, Henrys successors have continually improved his original idea to this day, but I can’t help wondering how fast horses could run if we didn’t have cars…

Bin the Bins

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 13:45:09 GMT

Why is there a bin outside every hotel elevator?

Before you re-open consider removing processes that add no value but consume the valuable time of your staff.

Top of my list is “bins outside elevators”.

These bins can be found outside elevators on every floor of most hotels.

Every day someone needs to check them, empty them, replace the little plastic bag inside them, clean up the rubbish around them that missed the bin etc…

When you consider why these bins are there in the first place, they seem to originate from the time that people used to smoke cigarettes indoors. They were originally ashtrays, then someone had the bright idea to use the lower portion of the ashtray as a bin. Now that we don’t smoke indoors anymore, the ashtray is no longer required, in some cases the ashtray is covered over with a lid but the bin is still there!

Why? What would happen if the bin was removed?

Would your customers start emptying their pockets and throw the litter on the floor outside the elevators instead? More than likely, there are more suitable disposal areas already provided elsewhere. If in doubt, check the trash!

Go on - remove them. Bin your bins. More than likely, nothing will happen!

Except... you can use the time saved for more value adding customer service activities and save money while helping the environment by removing all those little plastic bags from your waste.