QSR 3-4 Day Workweek

3 or 4-DAY QSR WORKWEEK? NO WAY! 6 REASONS WHY IT WON’T WORK AS YOU THINK

The discussion around the four-day work weeks continues to heat up and is being debated. A Chick-fill-A owner in Florida is pushing it even further by creating a program that switches to a three-day work week, 14-hour shifts.

Justin Lindsey, the Chick-fil-A operator, feels this three-day work week will reduce burnout, increase retention and give an employee a consistent work schedule. He wants people to be able to plan their lives outside of work in advance.

Read the article here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/11/08/chick-fil-operator-implements-3-day-work-week-help-burnout/8305497001/

I personally think Justin is a people-first thinker and is brilliant! He also has a unique situation. He operates an incredibly busy location according to the USA Today article, he’s on track to generate $17MM in sales this year. 

I am standing up clapping right now, I can’t even fathom those sales inside 4-walls. Rock on!

For the rest of us who have sales of $750k to $2MM per year, this concept is fantasy and will only work in certain situations with certain operators and only with very select employees. It will not work for 90+% of our employees, thought it sounds great on paper. 

Stick with me, I will explain further.

It’s pretty simple, most QSR workers are not disciplined enough or mature enough to run this way. People can picot labor signs, post craziness on social media and complain to whoever will listen. However, when it comes to consistency daily, most employees simple fall short. Many employees do things consistently for short periods of time before they slip up. It’s not good or bad, it just is. Management must pick up the pieces, connect the dots, forward think, communicate and hold the operation together. THE END.

Let’s talk about the 6 reasons I do not see this working for us all:

PEOPLE DON’T HAVE THE STAMINA

Our employees today come with many levels of education, work ethic and grit. The term “people aren’t built like they used to be” is true for many of the people on our teams. There is a percentage of workers who are the backbone of our restaurants or retail operations. These RockStars could handle 10+ or even 14-hour shifts and 3 or 4-Day work weeks, without a doubt, but they want to work and are hungry. These same people want OT and tips that only come from taking care of customers. This becomes a double-edged sword for management when going to a 3 or 4 day schedule, now there will be too many strength-gaps and the production suffers on the days the RockStars are off.

Many of our younger and adult workers simply can’t do the long hours. They like shorter bursts rather than the long stretches. They don’t have the stamina and once they begin to degrade, everything begins to decline including productivity, anxiousness, complaining, irritability, and effectiveness. If two-thirds of the way through the shift, you must send them home, what have we solved?

I think many people would find the schedule too grueling, while others embrace it and excel. 

WILL PEOPLE LIVE LIFE?

Will this effort drive people to live a better, happier life? I can see the marketing for the 3-to-4-day workweek effort now.  It will have ads depicting people fishing and walking in the park, taking classes at the local college, doing an art project with a little one, and lovely music in the background promoting the simple life. OK, sure thing. What a crock of s*** that is.

For some, great, I am happy for you. In reality, with those 3–4 days off, people will find a second job. Then they will take on too much and not be able to manage it, and something has to give. Will it be your 10-to-14-hour shift, or the other guys? Someone is going to have to take the hit caused by the employee taking on too much. Even worse now, the management, ownership, and the company washing the windows gets blamed because your employee couldn’t do what they signed up to do. They become a victim and blame everyone else but themselves.

I interviewed a very nice girl, she was very eager, talkative, and let slip the schedule she would be undertaking. “You will be my first job, I will keep the other job as my second job and I go to school these days…”, She was a single Mom and did not have a car. My inside voice said, “So, how long do you think it will take for her to start dropping some of the balls she is juggling?” Am I going to be surprised and frustrated when this plan blows up?

A voice said to me, “Alan, you need to take some time right now and give her some education”. So we talked, and I took her through a series of questions and exercises showing her, something would break. She needs to put her priorities first, her little one and school, and work backward starting with one job. “Don’t you think you should do one job correctly first before you bring on a second one?” Not only did she agree, her Dad was listening in the background and called me after to thank me. 

NOW WE NEED TO HIRE MORE PEOPLE

Interesting how we solve one problem but then create another. What happens when there are gaps now and there is no 7-day coverage on the schedule? You will be forced to hire a couple more people to cover the gaps.

Bringing in more staff can have a reverse effect. Now you have to “feed” everyone the hours they need, otherwise you can’t retain them. So, forward-thinking has caused a problem that will in fact push people to find another job, giving you the reverse effect.

 

TIME OFF REQUESTS

If you’re a QSR manager or leader and have EVER written a schedule, you are very familiar with the concept of “fitting a square peg into a round hole”. The majority, and by the majority, I mean 100% of your employees have requests for time off that are needed, the requests come and go and are never the same day and time. Every operator has come up with some type of system to collect requests, change behaviors and get people into a rhythm of collecting the information they must have to write a schedule.

But life is inconsistent, things happen, and appointment gets moved. If your employees have kids, there is uncertainty all the time. However, this is only one side of it. The other side is dishonesty, laziness, immaturity, irresponsibility, and habitual forgetfulness. How many times have you begun writing a schedule, collected all the requests, and reached out to your team multiple times asking for anything last minute? Then proceeded to work my magic, meandering through another schedule that in the beginning had holes in it like Swiss cheese. 

But you did it, you gave everyone what they needed, dotted every “I” and crossed every “t”. You post it, then almost minutes later you get the dreaded message, “I’m sorry I forgot……”. At that moment you dream of the movie Purge and only if it were real!

Why do people do this? Anything that we come up with is really an excuse, some justified others not, in the end, does it really matter? It now must be fixed, someone has to take ownership, and this is the transfer of stress and pressure onto the manager, who now has to manage the domino effect of changes that impact the entire team. If the “forgotten request is a 10 or 14-hour shift” you might need multiple people to cover that shift. 

In your employee’s mind, “what’s the big deal, I am off Tuesday so let’s just swap Tuesday for Friday”… Oh I see, because you created the mess, you have impacted others’ lives now. We are supposed to now run the operation short on Friday and have too much staff on Tuesday. So, you don’t lose any hours. This is the short-sighted mentality we deal with today. It makes sense in the mind of the person who doesn’t have to connect all the dots and takes no responsibility.

I know you’re saying right now, “I make my people cover themselves”, ok. But does it work every time? Do you get the call, “I’ve tried everything” (except the solution that was staring them in the face) and you still end up covering it and doing the work for them? That’s the reality, an employee covering themselves does happen, and these guys are unicorns. Many employees simply lack the skill set to be problem solvers and instead give up when the first attempt doesn’t work. You would think it’s only the kids on your schedule, but it’s not, it’s evenly dispersed amongst your entire team. If you’re a leader, and you claim this has never happened to you, then you’re going to need to see a Psychiatrist because you’re in denial. I have already made an appointment for you.

CALL-OUTS

The call-out is the bane of an operator’s existence. It is the roadblock around the corner that you don’t see coming until you are on top of it. The call-out has a domino effect that impacts your coworkers, the customers, and the management.

Everything that happens in the four walls of our restaurants always seems to happen in a sprint. Hurry up, do this before that, I need this, etc. The hours can be tough, early, late, and long. The work is demanding, and employees need to be firing on all cylinders all the time, don’t forget customers and co-workers always testing our patience.

Because of all these, employees require a break. If you’re really sick, then it’s warranted. But if you just aren’t feeling it today, then you’re a problem. You also now can’t have it both ways. You can’t have full-time hours and not show up for them. We have a business to run, and that behavior can only happen so many times. People want hours and push management to schedule the maximum amount of hours that management can. The employee looks at the schedule and feels confident that the bills will be getting paid, and they will have enough money to live, have fun and do whatever they do. 

Then life starts to get in the way, things get hard, and here is where the problem comes in. Now “their” problem becomes “our” problem. Because they asked and signed up for shifts they now can’t do, and the others we could have scheduled instead of you have made plans and will have to disrupt them.

So, you plan the week out (write a schedule) and you have multiple employees on 10 or 14-hour shifts depending on 3 or 4-day weeks. Now, right in the middle of your peak time, 2 people call out. This happens to operators all the time, except now they were both 10 or 14-hour shifts. The stress to react to this and start taking action is the equivalence to planning a wedding in a week. You make uncomfortable calls to ask people to stop what they are doing and now come to work.

You make every effort to handle these emergencies with compassion and understanding, but your human and frustration bubble as you become beaten down constantly.

So, you have a policy that people must cover themselves. That’s nice, it never works long-term, just in short bursts. I instead have tied this behavior to compensation.

OTHER DISADVANTAGES

How about daycare challenges? For employees with little ones that require daycare and daycare is only open until 6 pm and now, to make that 10- or 14-hour shift would end typically after most daycare facilities have closed for the day.

Working long shifts has been known to cause health problems. That’s the dumbest thing that I have ever heard. So does being home with your kids lead to mental health issues also? Sounds like a cop-out to me, you can now twist and blame everything on everything.

An employee requests (asks) to work longer hours and fewer days. If they have health issues, is it the manager, business owner, or company’s fault now?

This type of program is really built for an office-type setting and people on a salary that is not in an on-demand business like retail or restaurant. Customers come in when they come in, we have to be ready. If you worked in an office setting, and you are given tasks to complete, the 3 to 4-day week makes sense. Just get off your phone, stop surfing the internet, and focus on your work. You are probably wasting an entire day a week anyway.

The above problems are just scratching the surface of what restaurant and retail operators deal with on a daily basis. I have worked for 7 years creating SMART Systems and Processes that solve every single one of them. 

Our system:

• ATTRACTS better FITs that you need, 
• DEVELOPS your employees to be RockStars who care, 
• ENGAGES the culture, so they love coming to work every day and
• RETAINS them, so they never want to leave, shielding them from competition who’s constantly trying to poach them.

Today’s job landscape is tougher and more competitive than ever, employees want to work for employers who care, and employers want the same from their employees. The door has to swing both ways. The revolving door of liars consumes too much time and money. I have made it my mission to help retail and restaurant owners compete.

For more tips, connect with us and follow us on our social channels  @hirerockstartalent 

Our System helps with all of this! 

ABOUT THE SMART SYSTEM

SMART is a System that helps retail and restaurant owners, especially Quick Service Restaurant & Fast Casual ATTRACT, DEVELOP, ENGAGE & RETAIN RockStar Employees! Our system help’s business’s slow down the revolving door and create unpoachable, RockStar employees, who make businesses more money by delivering great customer experiences.

Learn more: www.hirerockstartalent.com