Day 167 - 02 Oct 95 - Page 24
1 A. The Supervisors have to monitor all the costs within
2 their restaurants and their areas of responsibility and
3 there are all the other issues, personnel issues, as well
4 -- sales building. Their role is wide. Labour is one
5 area.
6
7 Q. But as well as monitoring they set targets?
8 A. They would work with the Manager to decide what was the
9 right amount of people on a shift on a weekly basis based
10 on projected sales. As I say, that is expressed as a
11 percentage figure.
12
13 Q. That would be called a target to aim for?
14 A. Well ......
15
16 Q. It would be a target to aim for?
17 A. It would be a target to aim for, because that would
18 have the right number of people on it to handle the
19 business that had been projected. If business then
20 increased, then they would have to get more people in.
21
22 Q. Yes, but if it is a percentage then that would not
23 necessarily change the ------
24 A. We do not start with percentages. We start with the
25 number of people we need for the business. The percentages
26 are only a figure expressed as a percentage. It is the
27 number of people that we deal with and need and then their
28 costs are expressed as a percentage.
29
30 MR. MORRIS: If you turn to page 596 in that bundle -- in fact,
31 it is 595.
32
33 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Tab 15, I think.
34
35 MR. MORRIS: Yes, sorry, tab 15. This is the part of the
36 Management Development Programme, yes, First Assistant
37 development?
38 A. That is right.
39
40 Q. You have to say "yes" because a nod does not come out on
41 the tape-recording. Then this is profit unit activity 3.
42 If we go over the page to page 596 under "labour cost
43 analysis", it says: "The first is to determine whether you
44 have a labour problem (high labour costs). In food costs
45 you compare the targeted profit and loss food cost
46 percentage to the actual. In labour you do the same
47 thing". Then there are various percentage figures here,
48 whether they have been achieved or not.
49
50 Then at the bottom of that page, it says: "By tracking
51 actual labour on a daily and weekly basis and by tracking
52 cumulative labour daily, you get a better managed labour by
53 being proactive rather than reactive", that is, "you can
54 make necessary adjustments before the end of the week or
55 month without sacrificing customers' satisfaction by trying
56 to cut a lot of hours on the last day".
57
58 When you are training Supervisors, yes, to monitor what is
59 happening in stores, is this one of the management
60 practices which they would be looking into, how to achieve
