The 4 Main Scheduling Mistakes That Cause Staff Burnout In The Food Industry

Management of staff is one of the big challenges of running a restaurant. You may think, for example, that a scheduling task is simple, yet even minor mistakes can affect employees – and their productivity – more than you mau imagine.  This commonly leads to burnout, which often occurs during the kind of busy periods when you can least afford it.  So let’s take a look at the kind of errors that cause burnout so we can see how to develop (and maintain) a stable and productive work environment.

And if you're not in the food industry?  Read on, and you'll see how these mistakes - or variations of them - can be made in any business!

The Dangers of Burnout

Burnout isn’t just being “a bit tired.” In the food industry, especially, it can creep up quietly -  like a slow boiling pot you don’t notice until it overflows … or worse. One week your team is swapping jokes over prep, the next they’re running on caffeine fumes, snapping at each other.  Maybe wondering why the passion they once had for the job has disappeared.

The danger is that burnout doesn’t announce itself. It shows up disguised as "little things".  Maybe someone develops a short fuse, or makes sloppy mistakes.  They may take more sick days, or show that glazed-over stare that says, “I’m here … but not really.”  And as you can imagine, if it’s left unchecked, it spreads through the workplace. Morale drops, staff turnover climbs, and suddenly your staffing headaches are multiplying.

And let’s not forget the personal toll. People don’t just leave their stress in the kitchen or behind the counter: it follows them home. Sleepless nights, strained relationships, and poor health can all stem from a schedule that simply doesn’t give people the space they need.



The good news? Burnout isn’t inevitable. With smarter scheduling, respect for rest days, and a culture that places value on people as much as their hard work, you can keep your team energized rather than exhausted.  That’s because at the end of the day, you need happy staff!  They deliver better service, make fewer mistakes, and stick around longer. And anyway, wouldn’t you rather run a business where people want to come to work, instead of one they’re watching the clock all day?

Disregarding Staff Needs

If your don’t take into consideration the availability of your staff, and their own preferences, you’re committing one of the most common scheduling mistakes.  If you allocate shifts without keeping everyone informed, you;ll likely create a conflict between the hours that an employee works and the time they spend with their family. Over time, this will lead to frustration, resentment and more. When employees are faced with inflexible working hours, their motivation – and commitment – will fade away.

And manager should therefore build their schedules around a general commitment to recognizing the personal commitments of their team members.  And before you think this is a one-way ticket to anarchy, this doesn’t need to compromise the needs of the business: you’re simply taking a bit of time to understand people’s needs. And this process can be made much easier with the help of modern tools, including a restaurant POS system, which enables employees to report availability in a digital format. Cloud based POS may help you to adjust schedules in real-time, so the workload of each employee is controlled, and burnout is never an issue.

Overworking Key Employees

Another common mistake is being too dependent on some members of staff.  Obviously, it’s often necessary to rely on high performing employees in busy periods, say when covering for shortages.  But although this might be effective in the short term, overworking key employees for longer periods of time is a crazy habit.  If you do this, burnout is pretty well unavoidable, and your could be faced with the unhappy situation where a kingpin of the kitchen suddenly resigns..

Rotating staff properly and providing equal distribution of shifts will sustain morale and productivity. What’s more, cross-training non-key workers will ease the burden on the high performers because you have more capacity to perform extra duties. And don’t forget that any failure to balance work loads will inevitably lead to a drop in the quality of service … and customer satisfaction.

Unpredictable and Inconsistent Scheduling

And of course it’s also possible to fall into the trap of irregular scheduling.  This means that giving little or no notice of shift changes – especially when they involve unsocial hours - creates uncertainty and stress among staff.  People need to be able to plan their own activities, or even to rest, so ignoring that will create problems. This kind of unpredictability is another factor that contributes to burnout, with all its knock-one effects.



Creating and operating a stable scheduling system will allow employees to plan their “down time”. And again, by using technology, like the cloud based POS we’ve mentioned, managers are able to actually predict their busiest times, and allocate shifts in a more controlled manner. And as you can imagine, employees with regular (or at least predictable) working hours feel safer and less stressed.

Ineffective Communication

Communication is a vital skill in every area of our lives. And when running a kitchen or restaurant, this is as important as anywhere else. So any manager needs to communicate schedules.  Staff get irritated enough when their shift changes, so any failure to communicate that in good time can only add to their annoyance.  And inevitably, a failure to communicate changes will lead to absenteeism, lateness and tardiness.  Think about it, would you blame any employee who feels “left out” or taken for granted, if they become demotivated, stressed and even burned out?



Timely, clear communication is the key to a healthy working environment. And technology gives a real boost to any manager’s ability to achieve it.  By employing a solution with inbuilt scheduling features, they’ll be able to share schedules in real-time with employees. Notifications of any changes can be sent directly to staff, eliminating the needless stress that arises from miscommunication.

The Route to a Happier Workplace

Errors in scheduling don’t just have a big impact on the welfare of employees.  They will also affect the success of the restaurant.  If you disregard availability, if you overwork key personnel, if you persist in unreliable scheduling and poor communication, you’re asking for trouble.  But making the decision to avoid these bad practices is only a start: you then need to put your plans into action.  Look into the resources that will help you, and you’ll see that technology-based systems abound.  You’ll not only throw away the notebooks – or ignore the spreadsheets – for an easier way of doing things, you’ll do a better job altogether.

Effective (dare we say considerate) scheduling doesn’t only mean filling the shifts: it’s a vital component in creating a sustainable, productive, and motivated team.