Day 150 - 07 Jul 95 - Page 23
1 so, students who would come back at summer time, come back
2 at Christmas. So in that respect, my impression is that it
3 was relatively low.
4
5 I certainly -- I would think in terms of one of the things
6 that are taken into consideration when I got Store Manager
7 of the Year for my time at Leicester was not only financial
8 and profitable performances, but the individual performance
9 of the restaurant and the team at the restaurant. It is a
10 very, very good team; not just one person -- in this case
11 one person was recognised, but that one person cannot
12 operate a restaurant that is that busy on one's own. So,
13 it was a real team affair.
14
15 MR. ATKINSON: If we now go on to the question of hours of
16 work: As you have said already, you were involved with
17 scheduling hours of work. What is the aim of a Manager, in
18 your view, and when you were doing the scheduling, what is
19 the aim of scheduling? What would you consider to have
20 achieved the goal when it comes to scheduling?
21 A. The way I approached it then (and probably tell people
22 now) is to get a balance, a balance between the, I suppose,
23 the service requirements based on customers coming in, and
24 those availability or flexibility, whatever you would like
25 to call it, of the crew.
26
27 So that again we would be looking towards -- if we thought
28 we were getting busier on a Saturday, then I would need to
29 look towards more part-time people. It is balancing up
30 those requirements that people have as individuals; whether
31 they need time off to go to dentists' appointments, they
32 need to pick up the children earlier from school, the
33 beauty of the system is that we can balance it all out, so
34 that everyone feels like there is not just one rule and
35 that is it, come in, work -- so it is incredibly flexible.
36
37 So I would -- I just sort of teach people to get the
38 balance between anticipating business, business that is
39 already there that we know that is coming, if there is a
40 late night shopping during Christmas, for example,
41 carnivals would generate more business, and we would be
42 well prepared for those types of situations.
43
44 So, it is just achieving a balance on it; there is not one
45 skill that someone is going to have. It is a matter of
46 matching up one individual's requirements with those
47 requirements of the restaurant.
48
49 Q. Does it matter, broadly speaking, whether the crew are
50 happy with the scheduling then, the scheduling of the hours
51 they get?
52 A. Yes, because if they are not, I would presume they
53 would not turn up, because they would have other
54 commitments, or again it would result in higher turnover.
55 Again, working alongside people, I have got a certain
56 amount of pride to be able to look to people and be able to
57 give them the hours that we agreed upon and that they want
58 to work.
59
60 Q. So are their views, in practice, taken into account, in
