Staff Rostering & Labour Planning
Staff Rostering and Labour Planning
This use case explains how to model staff rostering, labour planning and cost across multiple hospitality venues in Model Reef.
You will:
Represent roles and teams at venue and group level.
Build drivers for staffing by day part, day of week and season.
Convert rosters into FTE and labour cost with on costs and timing.
Use scenarios to test labour models, opening hours and wage changes.
When to use this pattern
Use this pattern when:
Labour is one of your biggest controllable costs.
You need to align staffing with sales and service expectations.
You operate multiple venues with different demand profiles.
You want to test labour strategies before implementing them operationally.
It integrates with:
Venue Level Forecasting Pack
Group Level Consolidated Reporting
Build a Staffing Cost Model
Build a Cashflow Early Warning System
Architecture overview
Labour planning for hospitality uses:
Role structure
Front of house, back of house, bar, management and other roles.
Separate roles where pay rates and responsibilities differ.
Roster drivers
Hours per role by day part and day of week.
Seasonality and event adjustments.
Minimum staffing levels per venue.
Cost and timing
Hourly rates, salaries and on costs.
Weekend, evening or public holiday loadings.
Payment frequency and delay.
Scenario analysis
Different opening hours, service models and wage assumptions.
Volume driven labour models versus more fixed staffing models.
Step 1: Define roles and staff variables per venue
For each venue, list key roles, such as:
Venue Manager
Assistant Manager
Front of House team
Bar staff
Kitchen team
Cleaning or support staff
Create Staff variables for each role and venue, for example:
Staff - Venue 001 - Front of House
Staff - Venue 001 - Kitchen
Staff - Venue 001 - Manager
These variables will hold FTE or headcount assumptions and drive labour cost.
Step 2: Build roster and workload drivers
In the Data Library, create drivers for each role that express:
Hours per day part (breakfast, lunch, dinner, late) by day of week.
Number of staff per role in each slot.
Event or holiday adjustments per role and venue.
Seasonality factors where demand differs by month or season.
From these, derive total weekly or period labour hours, for example:
Weekly Hours per Role = sum of hours across all day parts and days.
Period Hours = Weekly Hours × weeks in period adjusted for seasonality and events.
You can differentiate between base staffing and incremental staffing driven by forecast volume where desired.
Step 3: Convert roster hours into labour cost
For each Staff variable, attach cost drivers:
Base hourly rate or salary.
Weekend, evening and public holiday loadings where applicable.
On cost percentage for tax, pension and other contributions.
Overtime rules if you want an approximate uplift for extended hours.
Compute labour cost as:
Wage Cost = Hours × Effective Hourly Rate.
Total Staff Cost = Wage Cost × (1 plus On Cost Percentage).
Enter timing settings to reflect pay cycles, typically weekly or fortnightly, with short payment delays.
Step 4: Link labour plans to sales and service expectations
Where appropriate, link roster drivers to revenue and capacity assumptions. For example:
Express required FTE per cover or per sales amount.
Define minimum staffing levels for opening hours.
Add additional staffing for events or high demand periods.
This helps ensure that labour planning is aligned with forecast sales and service requirements and avoids static, unresponsive staffing patterns.
Step 5: Use scenarios for labour strategy and wage changes
Clone the base model into scenario models to test variations such as:
Shorter or longer opening hours.
Different service models (for example table service versus counter service).
Increased or decreased staffing levels per cover.
Wage rate changes due to awards, inflation or negotiation.
Shifts between permanent and casual staff mix.
In each scenario, adjust:
Roster and staffing drivers.
Hourly rates, salaries and loadings.
On cost percentages.
Links to sales and capacity assumptions.
Compare scenarios using:
Labour cost as a percentage of sales by venue and group.
Total labour cost and changes over time.
Venue level EBITDA and margin after labour.
Cashflow patterns including payroll timing.
Step 6: Build group level labour views
Use group level reporting and dashboards to:
Compare labour cost percentages across venues and regions.
Track labour cost versus sales for different segments and day parts.
Identify venues that are over or under staffed relative to peers.
Monitor the impact of wage changes and labour strategies at group level.
Drill from group or region level charts down to venue and role level views to support targeted interventions.
Check your work
Roster based hours align with actual staffing patterns for sample venues.
Labour cost outputs reconcile with historical payroll totals when using past data.
Scenario changes produce realistic outcomes in both cost and staffing levels.
The model reflects strategic choices rather than operational scheduling detail that is better handled in rostering systems.
Troubleshooting
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