Article
6 min read
How Planday helped DiningSix Group make The Single Biggest Shift
Alice Leach
Mar 25, 2024
Chapters
Meet the team
- Who: Jeppe Bjerre
- Role: Country manager
- Business: DiningSix Group
- Where: Denmark, Norway and the UK
That serves up
- Schedules up to two months ahead
- Data-driven business plans
- A culture of kindness, across its entire business
Who is DiningSix Group?
DiningSix Group is a Danish multi-concept hospitality business, started by six friends over 10 years ago.
And it’s thriving.
Starting out with one restaurant café, the group quickly expanded by opening a steakhouse. Within a year, it had its third Copenhagen venue. Now, eight years on, it has seven restaurants in Copenhagen, five in Aarhus, seven in Norway and one in London.
Today, the DiningSix Group manages 650-700 staff across three countries and is launching its 20th venue in 2024.
The challenge
Scheduling a multinational team
The UK and Norway have very different laws and staffing practices to Denmark. So when opening in a new country, getting staffing consistent can be hard.
London poses a big challenge for Jeppe Bjerre, DiningSix Group’s country manager. Because the staff in the restaurant there are typically younger and/or students. And they don’t live nearby. So planning shifts, especially last-minute fills, is tough.
The solution
The DiningSix team started scheduling with Planday 2-3 years ago.
“When we first started, Google Sheets was being used. And it was horrible.”
Having a built-for-purpose tool has streamlined the way they work.
It’s led to teams feeling calmer, because they can track their work plans easily and let managers know when they can and can’t work, helping with shift planning. This means there are less last-minute changes, making it easier to plan social lives.
From an operational perspective, centralising shift planning has been positive. Both managers and operations can see how to best plan, compare venues and staffing hours, look at salaries and see if anything is ‘off’.
“We use Planday weekly to assess business operations – which has really helped. And we’ve seen a financial benefit to planning.“
Last-minute shift fills and sick days remain situational. Planning this far ahead with Planday has reduced sick days: "I can't say for sure, but I suspect that some sick days were a result of our employees not being able to plan social activities ahead. The number of sick days has dropped significantly."
Planning pioneers
These days, the DiningSix Group leads the way in forward planning. Jeppe’s team plans rotas ahead by one month during low seasons and two months at peak times. Across all sites. How? By using data.
“We have implemented the additional lead time for high seasons for the last couple of years as a result of looking at our data.”
Planday’s multi-site data, enables Jeppe’s operations team to look at trends and staffing needs, which site managers put into action.
“We look at the past year’s data and trends to assess how many staff we’ll need. [And] we have a great team who are able and willing to add extra hours when we see unexpected surges.”
This data-driven approach does more than just benefit the business.
“We’re looking at the data to try and make sure we can implement consistent planning and ensure that all our staff get at least one cohesive weekend off a month.”
The importance of schedule visibility
Planning ahead was a culture shift – but Jeppe believes the benefits have filtered through every area of the company.
Planday’s multi-site data, enables Jeppe’s operations team to look at trends and staffing needs, which site managers put into action.
“We have implemented the additional lead time for high seasons for the last couple of years as a result of looking at our data.
We look at the past year’s data and trends to assess how many staff we’ll need. [And] we have a great team who are able and willing to add extra hours when we see unexpected surges.”
Improving lives, one shift at a time
Jeppe’s teams have benefitted from the increased planning, but the changes in team morale are perhaps best noticed by management.
“We’ve noticed that they have more personal organisation – they can better plan their social lives, hobbies, and their studies around their work.”
Turning the tables on staff turnover
DiningSix’s enviable retention rates come from fostering an environment that allows better work/life balance and a calmer working environment that keeps staff with them for longer.
“We have a large percentage of staff who stay with us 2-3 years. And we celebrate their tenure – at five years we give them something special to thank them for their service.”
Just this week, Jeppe’s been out buying five special gifts for five team members who’ve hit their five-year anniversary with the group.
Creating a new hospitality culture
DiningSix is creating a new culture in hospitality. A new approach to the restaurant business.
“When we started there was a feeling that hospitality was strict, inflexible and it had a bit of a bad reputation. We feel like we’ve made a great change already. We focus on making it friendly and an environment that works for everyone.”
The company’s ethos is clear:
“We all have to be nice to each other, to the guests, to the team. We know that creating a calm, friendly environment is key to making DiningSix a place people want to work. And we see that this has translated into our teams forming real friendships. This means that we have fewer sick days, happier teams, happier staff who want to stay with us for longer.”
The focus on creating a calmer and happier business is what DiningSix thrives on. And having a solid plan helps the business respond to change and be a more responsive and flexible workplace.
