1/2................................................2/4
2/4................................................4/8
4/8................................................Hours per day GM is on MBUSA.com
F...................................................Full
T...................................................Time
E...................................................Equivalent
FTE...............................................I don’t get it
First 3 Weeks of Month..................Budget
Last Week of Month.......................Budget + Wild Guess
Last Day of Month..........................Vacation Day
More than 5%................................Understaffed
3% - 5%........................................Bad Overtime
1% -3%.........................................Good Overtime
0%................................................Overstaffed
First 9 Months................................Current Year
Last 3 Months................................Prior Year Budget
Current Year + Prior Year Budget.....Huge Presumption
Huge Presumption..........................Wild Guess
Wild Guess....................................Next Year’s Budget
4 Suggestions................................1 Comment
4 Comments..................................1 Rant
4 Rants.........................................1 Blog Post
4 Blog Posts..................................1 Blog
1 Blog............................................Too much time on hands
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Creating Actionable Labor Standards – Step by Step
Okay, so you’ve had enough of wasting everyone’s time with building up labor targets that your Operators don’t agree with, that your Finance Director doesn’t budget to, and that your GM won’t even bother to look at. Time to take a hard look at whether or not you have enough reality built in so that that your results are actually usable. Or, put another way, are your results actionable in terms of “can we actually scheduled like this?” Or, "could we have actually operated like that?” If the answer is no, it could be time to go back to the drawing board.
So, how do you do it? Like any other analytical problem, I believe the right approach is to take it step by step and to not cut corners. At the risk of losing all of the Strategic Analysts who read this (and most of the Financial Analysts as well, these folks usually like their labor served up a little more abstractly, like, say, in terms of FTEs or productivity calculations), the first step is to actually understand the work being performed by employees working in the Job Class you are modeling. And this means you need to get a task list.
No, not a job description, I said a task list. Job descriptions are often too sanitized and too vague for analytical purposes and they do not have a listing of all the tasks associated with the performance of the work. Besides, in some cases if they actually put in a job description what the employee was expected to do while working then who would apply for the job in the first place? Seriously, take a look at what your Hotel Housekeeping staff has to deal with on a daily basis and then ask yourself if this is a gig you would be interested in. Here is the first thing Labor Analysts need to understand: there are people at your property who actually work for a living. You’re not one of them.
Building up labor standards without first understanding the actual work being performed is like dreaming of building up labor standards only to wake up finding yourself chewing on the corner of your pillow. So, while you are taking in knowledge of the actual work being performed you might as well understand what physical boundaries and timescales are in place which control (and sometimes limit), employees in their performance and delivery of the work. Put simply, here is the first step toward building actionable labor standards:
Identify all tasks associated with the Job Class and understand the physical plant that governs guest and employee interactions, including hours of operation.
A little reality never hurt anyone in analysis so step one should sound easy enough. Stay tuned for step two.
So, how do you do it? Like any other analytical problem, I believe the right approach is to take it step by step and to not cut corners. At the risk of losing all of the Strategic Analysts who read this (and most of the Financial Analysts as well, these folks usually like their labor served up a little more abstractly, like, say, in terms of FTEs or productivity calculations), the first step is to actually understand the work being performed by employees working in the Job Class you are modeling. And this means you need to get a task list.
No, not a job description, I said a task list. Job descriptions are often too sanitized and too vague for analytical purposes and they do not have a listing of all the tasks associated with the performance of the work. Besides, in some cases if they actually put in a job description what the employee was expected to do while working then who would apply for the job in the first place? Seriously, take a look at what your Hotel Housekeeping staff has to deal with on a daily basis and then ask yourself if this is a gig you would be interested in. Here is the first thing Labor Analysts need to understand: there are people at your property who actually work for a living. You’re not one of them.
Building up labor standards without first understanding the actual work being performed is like dreaming of building up labor standards only to wake up finding yourself chewing on the corner of your pillow. So, while you are taking in knowledge of the actual work being performed you might as well understand what physical boundaries and timescales are in place which control (and sometimes limit), employees in their performance and delivery of the work. Put simply, here is the first step toward building actionable labor standards:
Identify all tasks associated with the Job Class and understand the physical plant that governs guest and employee interactions, including hours of operation.
A little reality never hurt anyone in analysis so step one should sound easy enough. Stay tuned for step two.
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