How good HR policy leads to higher productivity

The right person in the right place. It sounds easier than it is, especially when finding and keeping staff is a challenge. On top of that, bakers see the cost of making bread skyrocket. For the sake of productivity, it's becoming more and more important to be able to steer on this. Discover how Bakkerij Swaanen and Van Dijk Banket improve their productivity through good HR policy.

Mapping hidden costs

You need to keep a close eye on staff costs. Especially when production costs rise, as a business owner you want to avoid unnecessary costs elsewhere. When creating the schedule, though, often only availability is taken into account. But what about overtime? Who has which skills, and what is my budget actually? Am I scheduling efficiently? In other words, do I have hidden costs?

To create the schedule, Van Dijk Banket gets a lot of useful data from the Dyflexis staff scheduling and time tracking software. Among other things, Dyflexis shows which people are best to schedule: "In the past, an operator was sometimes put on the line as a packer, but now people say: 'You shouldn't put those expensive people on the line.'" With this insight, Van Dijk Banket adjusts its budgets in Dyflexis and avoids high costs.

With a close-knit team of 90 employees, Van Dijk Banket supplies many large supermarket chains in the Netherlands and abroad with first-class pastries, and is very positive about using Dyflexis.

"It's click, click, click and you see it. It's set up very logically!"

By investing in workforce management now, you put money into optimizing your HR policy, but you earn it back through the time and costs it saves.

Save costs with the same number of staff

As a baker, there's little you can do about raw material prices. What you can do something about is productivity. Smart software and handy machines help you produce more with fewer resources. That way, you kill two birds with one stone. You save on costs and deploy your staff as efficiently as possible. And with these kinds of modern tools, you're also more future-proof.

Deploy staff more efficiently with smart staff scheduling software

About 6 years ago, Bakkerij Swaanen decided to switch to Dyflexis software for their scheduling and time tracking. Before that, they did this in Excel. Bakkerij Swaanen is part of De Echte Bakker and has 60 employees across 3 locations.

How can staff scheduling software improve your productivity? Bakkerij Swaanen answers: "I wanted to spend less time on things like making schedules and processing hours. With Dyflexis, I can now leave this to the store managers. I still have insight into what happens in my business, but I have more time for strategic work and coaching employees. That has definitely made us more productive."

Van Dijk Banket hears the same signals. Finding a balance between the right staffing and staff costs is therefore essential for Van Dijk Banket.

"We used to spend at least a day and a half on the schedule. Now it takes us no more than 6 hours a week"

Here, too, the schedule for production staff used to be made in Excel: "We used to spend at least a day and a half on the schedule." This was mainly because everything had to be entered manually. "In Excel, you make mistakes quite often: you can very easily schedule someone twice or forget them," says Van Dijk Banket.

Set budgets based on expected revenue

Good forecasting prevents confusion and unnecessary costs. You can forecast on all kinds of things. For example, based on historical data or on the number of items to produce. Based on that, you then determine your staff budgets. You can set these budgets per day, month or quarter. By distinguishing between departments and/or locations, you know exactly how the organization is doing and always keep a good balance between revenue and staff costs.

Save time and money with accurate time records

Does your staff schedule deliver the right staffing level? Then it's time to record and process hours accurately. Accurate time records create clarity within the organization. You want to avoid discussions about hours worked.

With a time clock, hours worked are recorded automatically. Time-for-time hours, overtime, sick hours and leave hours also end up in a system like Dyflexis automatically. Bakkerij Swaanen: "We used to make Excel sheets with the schedule, and employees wrote down their actual start and end times with a pen. Now we have a time clock everywhere. That saves a lot of discussions, and it can't be used for fraud."

Van Dijk Banket sees the planned and worked hours per production line. Team leaders then approve the hours worked, after which the administrator only has to give the final check. That way, Van Dijk Banket's management delegates certain tasks from the top down, but keeps an overview of time tracking.

A complex bakers' CAO

The bakers' CAO contains all kinds of complex allowance rules. If you still work with Excel lists, processing them takes a lot of time and you easily make mistakes. A system that processes these allowance rules automatically is therefore a must-have. Especially with the most complex allowances, you want them processed correctly so the data for your payroll is always right. That way, you never pay out too much or too little.

Steering on productivity

When you choose an automated solution like Dyflexis, a POS integration lets you compare realized revenue with the number of hours worked. Dyflexis then calculates productivity automatically. You can view this per period (hour, day, week, month), per department or per location. That way, you quickly see which departments or locations perform well or less well. That's a great starting point for improving productivity.

Bakkerij Swaanen: "Because the managers of our stores can arrange a lot themselves in Dyflexis, I have time left over. I can use that time to coach people. A great Dyflexis feature is the Management Dashboard. It shows me exactly what productivity was at a certain moment, so I can steer on it. I notice that the managers feel much more involved now that they also have insight into these kinds of numbers. I'm less of the nagging boss, and they really think along with me."

Invest in smart software, save costs and increase productivity

Whether it's staff scheduling or time tracking software, this is the moment to invest in workforce management, because investing in innovation pays off. Curious how Dyflexis can help you? Discover the Dyflexis solutions and request a free consultation.