The Evolving Role of AI in Employee Scheduling, Retention

2024 has been a landmark year for artificial intelligence (AI) in the restaurant industry, as more establishments begin to explore and embrace this game-changing technology to transform their operations. However, AI’s most powerful impacts may come as a surprise. 

When people think of AI tools that help restaurant workers, things like chatbots and AI-powered drive-thrus. For one, AI is enabling one of employees’ most sought-after benefits: schedule flexibility. At the start of this year, 37% of restaurant operators planned to invest in automated recruitment and scheduling systems in 2024. Many others have already made this investment. But flexibility is more than just an attractive perk – it’s a competitive requirement. 

The Critical Connection

Restaurant labor costs continue to rise, making investments in the employee experience all the more
important. Maintaining a staff of seasoned, long-tenured employees reduces turnover costs and boosts
productivity; these employees know the business, customers, and culture, and they’ve likely gained a
sense of loyalty over time, making them more likely to stay on board.

Scheduling plays a major role in creating the conditions for high retention rates. According to Legion’s
2024 State of the Hourly Workforce Report, the inability to offer schedule flexibility was managers' biggest
challenge in retaining employees last year, outside of pay. Relatedly, hourly employees rated having
schedule flexibility as one of the top three factors they valued most about their current role.

There is a reason “schedule flexibility” is often listed as the primary perk on an hourly job description, and it’s because flexible scheduling gives restaurant employees more autonomy over their lives. When they have the freedom to control their work schedules, they also have the freedom to handle personal matters, pursue other interests and skills outside of work, and even take on additional employment if they want. Recent research shows that a sense of autonomy is linked to healthy psychological well-being, which in turn makes workers more satisfied and productive in their roles. This is what has made flexible job arrangements and gig work so attractive to hourly workers, and restaurants will need to match it to keep their best employees on staff (and recruit talented new ones).

AI in the Scheduling Ecosystem

Scheduling isn’t just about who can work when. It can also mean who can work where, if a restaurant has multiple locations locally, and who has the right skills and experience levels to accommodate the demands of a shift. On top of juggling the logistics, restaurants must also navigate advanced compliance challenges, especially if they employ workers under the age of eighteen. And that’s just on the employee side. Other factors like projected demand, disruptions to that projected demand, and additional businesds needs can all influence employee schedules. These various factors are borderline impossible for managers to keep up with using outdated manual or semi-automated scheduling methods. AI alleviates the burden and makes the process far less complicated.

Manual and outdated processes pose a significant challenge for managers. According to Legion’s 2024 State of the Hourly Workforce Report, more than 29% of managers don’t feel their employer has set them up for success and 53% of managers don’t feel they have the time to focus on the parts of their job they enjoy. The top thing managers said employers could do to make their lives easier is to reduce the amount of time spent on administrative tasks like creating and maintaining schedules.

How does it work? AI optimization techniques can create the best possible decision with constrained options. For example with AI, an optimized schedule that factors in staffing policies, budget constraints, compliance requirements, and employee skills and preferences could be instantly created. 

AI can streamline and facilitate nearly every major factor that goes into scheduling, including:

• Demand Projections: AI-driven demand forecasting arms leaders with precise, accurate insights that update regularly, ensuring the application is creating schedules that are designed to meet the expected volume.
• Employee Preferences and Skills: With intelligently automated scheduling, employers can empower their teams with easy-to-use, self-service tools that let them enter their availability and schedule preferences and update them at any time. Those preferences are automatically integrated into the scheduling optimizer that then matches business needs, staffing rules, budget constraints and compliance requirements with employee skills and preferences to ensure schedules meet both business and employee needs.
• Long-Term Labor Planning: Hiring extra hands for a busy season, identifying labor needs for franchise growth, adjusting for changes in business hours or services – AI allows restaurant operators to address these challenges with data-backed strategies. To this end, leaders should see workforce management as a platform for labor planning. 

The effects extend beyond the scheduling software itself. AI analytics can also help leaders measure the impact of flexible scheduling on the workforce and identify areas for improvement. Machine learning models can map trends in large amounts of unstructured human capital data and then synthesize actionable insights. Additionally, generative AI programs – can help execute specific tasks such as analyzing and updating schedules, automating key time and attendance tasks and improving communication.