Cornell University’s Centre for Hospitality research has launched a new tool designed to help managers achieve the best possible staffing mix, especially in seasonal operations.
Developer Gary Thomson says the goal of the tool is to help managers find the mix of employees that will give the best possible service at the least cost, including guidance about when, how many and who to hire.
“In developing this tool, I particularly addressed the challenges faced by managers of steeply seasonal operations, where the mix of full- and part-time employees makes it especially hard to optimise staffing levels,” Thompson says.
Managers specify the number of full-time-equivalent employees needed to meet forecast customer demand, then the user inputs such information as employee types, full- and part-time or contract workers, productivity, attrition rates and hiring and termination costs.
The optimiser then allows the user to create, evaluate and save different scenarios of various employee mixes.
The Workforce Staffing Optimiser is available online at no cost from the centre’s website:
http://hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/tools/.
By staff writer
