Labor often exceeds 50 percent of a typical healthcare foodservice department\u2019s budget. So the ability to manage labor costs through benchmarking is critical to controlling the departmental budget and maximizing the bottom line. Foodservice Directors should focus on ramping up productivity as a way to meet increasing demands for overall cost reduction.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I\u2019m an operator, I want to do everything I can to reduce labor while still maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction,\u201d says Dana Fillmore, RD, Gordon Food Service Healthcare Segment Manager. \u201cThat means employing the labor I have as efficiently as I can. A good way to accomplish that is by benchmarking productivity in my operation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Benchmarking is a tool for monitoring and improving your performance. It identifies strengths and weaknesses, and reveals opportunities for refinement. It can be used for virtually every aspect of your operation, including measuring productivity.<\/p>\n
\u201cBenchmarking gives you the data you need to make smart decisions<\/a>,\u201d says Gordon Food Service Noncommercial Business Solutions Specialist Maria Denicola, MS, RD, LDN. She helped develop an early healthcare foodservice benchmarking standard and implemented it with great success in a previous position with a Florida hospital. \u201cThe data tells you where you are right now and points you in the direction of where you want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n The most widely used form of benchmarking is internal. It involves collecting and analyzing information to compare an operation with itself over time. \u201cYou can\u2019t manage what you don\u2019t measure,\u201d Fillmore stresses. \u201cMeasuring your labor processes gives you a basis for determining what needs to be improved on and a baseline for tracking your progress.\u201d<\/p>\n Calculating common productivity measures like labor hours per meal or labor hours per patient\/resident is a numerical exercise using information you likely already collect. But what about all the individual labor processes that your staff engages in every day, from prepping vegetables to clearing plates? <\/p>\n Fillmore acknowledges that the prospect of measuring such tasks can seem overwhelming. She advises operators to perform operational audit workflows and time studies on just a few processes at a time.<\/p>\n \u201cStart with something simple, maybe a task you already suspect can be improved on,\u201d she suggests. Take rolling silverware, for example. \u201cI know an operator who watched different staffers rolling silverware across different shifts. She timed people and determined what method works best.\u201d <\/p>\n The operator then shared the results with staff and set a goal for everyone to meet\u2014you should roll 100 sets of silverware in x amount of time. She trained staff in the proper way to accomplish the task. And she continued to monitor staff performance to hold them accountable.<\/p>\n \u201cMonitoring productivity is an ongoing process,\u201d Denicola says. \u201cYou have to keep tracking processes to know whether you\u2019re better than last month, last quarter, last year.\u201d<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve measured your internal operations, you have a standard of reference for comparing yourself against others like you. This is known as industry benchmarking.<\/p>\n Industry benchmarking requires established sources that collect and publish industrywide operational data. Both the Association for Healthcare Foodservice (AHF) and the Association of Nutrition & Foodservice Professionals (ANFP) perform this function for healthcare foodservice. <\/p>\n AHF Benchmarking Express™ is an online tool that allows users to see how their own Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)\u2014such as labor hours per meal and total dietitian hours worked per patient or resident day\u2014stack up against those of similar organizations.<\/p>\n Elizabeth Boone, RD, LD, MBA, is a Project Manager for Corporate Dining, a consulting firm that administers and manages Benchmarking Express on behalf of AHF. \u201cThe program uses more than 55 KPIs, about 12 of them oriented around productivity and labor cost,\u201d she says. \u201cUsers can compare their KPIs to others of similar size, location and service style.\u201d<\/p>\n The system establishes percentile ratings\u201425, 50 and 75 percent\u2014and provides a visual interface to show users where they stand relative to these ratings. \u201cIf you\u2019re in the green, you\u2019re good, yellow is neutral and red means you\u2019re at risk,\u201d Boone explains.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say you\u2019re a 600-bed hospital whose labor hours per meal are in the 50th percentile\u201450 percent of your peers are spending more time on each meal and 50 percent are spending less. You\u2019ll likely want to take steps to get closer to the 25th percentile. <\/p>\n Then again, you might be satisfied with the 50th percentile. So says Margaret Kipe, MS Ed, RD, LDN, FABC, who is Director of Nutrition Services for Tower Health, a six-hospital Pennsylvania healthcare system. She was recognized with AHF\u2019s Benchmarking Award of Excellence in 2015.<\/p>\n \u201cHigher labor hours per meal doesn\u2019t necessarily mean you\u2019re doing something wrong, it might just mean you\u2019re different,\u201d Kipe says. \u201cAsk yourself, what is it about my operation that skews my numbers? It could be something out of your control\u2014like a mandate to keep your cafeteria open 24 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n If there is no reasonable explanation for your neutral or at-risk performance, \u201cyou\u2019ve got some work to do,\u201d Kipe says. \u201cThe benchmarking data leads you to question which processes or systems you could change to be more productive. It makes you an analytical decision-maker.\u201d<\/p>\n It also makes you better equipped to represent your department to senior administration. \u201cBenchmarking gives you the language to communicate your performance to the C-suite,\u201d Boone notes. \u201cThat\u2019s especially important when administration wants to cut staff or consider a contract provider. You can show them that you\u2019re already operating efficiently\u2014or that you continue to make progress\u2014while keeping customer satisfaction scores high.\u201d<\/p>\n You can also use benchmarking to justify staffing needs, as Kipe did when her administration decided to switch to room-service patient meals. She used data from other room-service providers to predict how many man hours she would need to deliver room service at the 50th percentile\u2014and made a winning case to hire 14 additional full-time equivalent staff.<\/p>\n While AHF Benchmarking Express is used primarily by hospitals, ANFP focuses on skilled nursing facilities. Its online benchmarking survey works in much the same way, allowing users to load and monitor their own data, compare their operations to similar peers and identify areas for improvement.<\/p>\n Maximizing productivity begins with measuring productivity. The data you collect will enable you to benchmark your performance against yourself and others, and drive process improvements. You can start small, but you should start today.<\/p>\n Both AHF\u2019s and ANFP\u2019s benchmarking programs are free to members. Sign up at: Consider the following when analyzing your productivity and strategizing process improvements:<\/p>\n Laboring Toward Success<\/strong><\/p>\n To make the most of labor, here are some valuable KPIs to watch:<\/p>\n Ask your Sales Representative for information on participating in AHF\u2019s Benchmarking Express or ANFP\u2019s benchmarking survey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With labor swallowing half or more of a healthcare foodservice budget, it\u2019s time to look at improving productivity with the manpower that you have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":4809,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-healthcare","category-running-your-business"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nInternal benchmarking<\/h3>\n
Industry benchmarking<\/h3>\n
Acting on the data<\/h3>\n
Free and Easy<\/h3>\n
AHF: (best for hospitals)<\/a>
ANFP: (best for skilled nursing facilities)<\/a><\/p>\nProductivity Factors<\/h3>\n
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Staffing Smarts<\/h3>\n