Question:
It’s budget time. How can I find efficiencies without cutting staff?
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Answer:
When you’re faced with having to reduce your number of FTEs and figure out how you’re going to squeeze 10 pounds in a five-pound sack in terms of production, try to look at it differently. Think, “How can I maximize the productivity of my existing personnel, and then with attrition reduce the number of people working in the operation?”
Academically, it’s called job enlargement. What you’re doing is adding similar tasks horizontally throughout your operation.
Imagine you come into the kitchen and see the pastry chef with a 200-pound sack of carrots, shredding them for carrot cake. In another corner, a prep cook is making carrot coins for a side dish. A different line cook has another sack of carrots making soup, and a fourth has yet another sack of carrots out julienning them for the salad bar. Not only is it inefficient, but you have 800 pounds of carrots out at one time—which is the freshest and which is the oldest?
You want to ask people to do tasks that are relevant to their level on the org chart. So, get all of those carrots over to the prep cook to prepare and distribute to all of the different employees. It takes a little bit of planning, but it’s a lot more efficient, and you have great rotation [of product]. It’s a win-win situation. You cut down on labor costs, you control waste of time and you control waste of food.
—Lynne Eddy
Associate Professor, Business Management
The Culinary Institute of America