This article is written for users with an access level of System Administrator or Advisor.
Use the labor model dashboard to help your business forecast requirements based on metrics. You can determine the number of required staff based on:
- sales data
- your own custom metrics that best suits your business
- planning for fixed tasks that need completing in your organisation
This will empower your business to stay on budget and forecast employees according to demand.
In this article, you will learn
- What is labour modeling?
- Who can access labor modeling?
- How to access labor modeling
- Definitions of terms used
- How to set operating hours and how to use them in labor modeling
- Ways to configure labor modeling settings
- Add new rules based on metrics
- Add new tasks based on planned jobs
- Run the labor model
- Create a Smart Schedule based on your labor model
- Bulk actions for labor modeling
What is labor modeling?
Labor Modeling is a useful tool to allow businesses to create rules that automate the scheduling process based on staff requirements and demand. You can now use Labor Modeling to save time on manually calculating the number of employees needed. All of this is done in Labor Modeling, as it’s calculated on various metrics set out for your business.
Who can access labor modeling?
By default, users with access permissions of Location Manager and System Administrator can view, run, edit and delete labor modeling rules.
System Administrators also have the option to set permissions for which roles in their organisation can view or run labor model rules and which roles can modify or delete them.
Read more about customising access to labor modeling in Customise your Deputy account across your whole organisation in Busines Settings.
How to access labor modeling
1. Go to the Schedule page and click on Insights.
2. On the left-hand side you’ll find Labor Modeling with the other metrics that can be used for business insights.
Definitions of terms used
- Labor Model - Enter rules to help determine your staffing requirements for each area based on your metrics
- Manager Forecast - Enter manual forecasted sales data based on the manager’s expertise and calculation. Note: Labor modeling will try to use this Manager Forecast data first, if there is no Manager Forecast data, Deputy Forecast data will be used instead (see below).
- Forecast/Deputy Forecast - An automatically calculated forecast based on past sales trends
- Actual/Actual Sales - are real business sales that have been entered manually or automatically through an integration
- Required Staff - Predicted number of staff required based on metrics and rules
- Rules - A set of minimum and maximum requirements for required staff for an area
- Linear - A simple type of rule that allows you to set up a minimum and maximum of required staff
- Range - A granular type of rule that allows you to set up a minimum and maximum of required staff
- Task - A specific job or assignment in your organisation that can be planned for a specific time and has a known requirement for how many people / hours it will take to complete. eg. unpacking a truck delivery at the same time each week.
- Operating Hours - Time range entered in location settings to determine your employee’s working hours
How to set operating hours and how to use them in labor modeling
Labor modeling takes into account the operating hours of your business when calculating the suggested labor requirements.
To set or edit your business's operating hours, go to Locations, then click on Edit Settings for the Location you wish to edit. Click on General on the left-hand side and you’ll be able to set up the operating hours for the location selected.
To mark a day as closed, unselect the checkbox and this will automatically mark the day as closed. Marking a day as closed doesn’t prevent you from scheduling employees or adding sales data.
Setting up operating hours for this location here will be reflected:
- when scheduling employees
- processing leave requests and
- within the labor model.
For each type of labor modeling rule you create, you also have the option to apply the rule:
- any time
- within operating hours
- within operating hours with a customised buffer to opening and closing times.
If you hover over the tooltip you can see what Operating Hours have been set in Location Settings.
Ways to configure labor modeling settings
Once you have accessed the Labor modeling page, there are two ways you can configure your labor model.
- Add > New rule - used where your labor demand will be relative to a dynamic metric you can define and measure as such sales (or any other metric you define)
- Add > New task - used where your organisation needs specific and planned tasks completed as a one-off or regularly and you already know how many hours of work this task will require to complete and when it needs to occur.
Add new rules based on metrics
You can create labor model rules where the number of staff you need in your business is relative to a dynamic metric you can measure, such as sales data. You can even add a custom metric that is relevant to your organisation and labor modeling will be based on that when selected.
The rules can be applied in a linear or range mode.
To create a new labor modeling rule:
- Access the Labor model page, then click on Add and select New Rule.
- The new labour model rule modal will appear and give you the option to select the Coverage as either Linear or Range.
- Select the Area, Metric and designate the details of the new rule.
- Click Save to ensure the new rule is saved.
To delete a rule you've created, just click on it and select Delete.
You can continue to create any other labor modeling rules you require by repeating the process with a new rule.
| Labor Model will use Manager Forecast data first. If there is no Manager Forecast data, Deputy Forecast Data will be used to calculate the required staff instead. |
Linear coverage explained
The linear rule is a simple way to set up the minimum and maximum amount of required staff for a location based on a metric.
In this example, we are using the 'Main Floor' area and 'Sales (Forecast)' Metric.
An example you may want to use is, for every $x of sales per hour, add 1 required staff (this example is to the area 'Main floor') with a maximum of 3 employees and a minimum of 1 employee to the 'Main floor' area.
Example: Based on forecasted sales not actual sales
8am - $0 - Deputy will recommend 1 required staff
9am - $80 - Deputy will recommend 1 required staff
10am - $125 - Deputy will recommend 2 required staff
11am - $220 - Deputy will recommend 3 required staff
12pm - $400 - Deputy will recommend 3 required staff. This is the case because we set up a maximum of 3 employees in this area.
Range coverage explained
Range is great for more complex metrics or requirements, where your business would require granular and more precise required staff with a range of data.
In this example, we have used the range of $0 - $50 of 'Sales' per hour must have 1 employee (similar to the Linear’s minimum required staff) to work in the area 'Main floor'.
Range is great for more complex metrics or requirements, where your business would require granular and more precise required staff with a range of data. An example of this could be for the range of $0 - $50 of sales per hour must have 1 employee (similar to linear’s minimum required staff) to work in the area Main Floor.
Example: Based on forecasted sales, not actual sales
8am - $0 - Deputy will recommend 1 required staff
9am - $80 - Deputy will recommend 2 required staff
10am - $125 - Deputy will recommend 2 required staff
11am - $220 - Deputy will recommend 3 required staff
12pm - $410 - Deputy will recommend 4 required staff
1pm - $475 - Deputy will recommend 4 required staff. This is the case because we set up any forecasted sales of $401 or above will have a maximum of 4 required staff in this area.
Range allows you to add as many steps as needed to accomplish your staffing requirements based on sales or any custom metrics.
Add new tasks based on planned jobs
When you know that you have specific or regular tasks that need to be performed in your organisation and you know how many hours or staff they will require to complete them you can add a task into your labor modeling settings. This will ensure that your schedule will have the staff on hand to cover these specific events.
An example of when you might use fixed task based labor demand planning is when a truck needs to be unloaded at a regular time each week or perhaps an annual stocktake that takes a specific amount of time on top of your usual schedule.
To create a new labor modeling task:
1. Access the Labor model page, then click on Add and select New Task.
2. The new labour model task modal will appear.
3. You can complete the fields to add:
- the Task Name
- any subtasks (optional - with a breakdown of duration to complete each subtask)
- the total time you will plan to complete the task (this is automatically totalled if you complete the subtasks
- the Area of your Location in which the person completing the task will be scheduled
- What time the task starts and finishes
- Whether it repeats periodically and when
4. Click Done when you have configured the task.
If you have a task that needs to be completed within a limited amount of time and will need more than one person to complete the task in that amount of time then labor modeling will account for this when calculating required staff.
An example:
Stocktake needs to be completed between the hours of 9pm and midnight but you know it takes 12 hours of total labour to complete a stocktake.
Labor modeling will calculate that 4 team members are required to be scheduled between the hours of 9pm and midnight to complete the stocktake task.
Run the labor model
Once you have configured all the settings you require, such as labor modeling rules or tasks, for each area in your organisation then you are ready to run the labor model.
1. Click on Run labor model
2. Select the time period you wish to calculate the required staff for.
3. Once the calculation has run you will see the total hours of required staff that have been calculated for each Area you set up a labor modeling rule or task in
4. If you click on Go to required staff you can see an hourly/daily/weekly breakdown of where the labor hours have been allocated as required. You can manually edit this data if needed as well, or adjust your configured labor rules and tasks and run the labor modeling tool again until you are happy with it.
Auto-run when forecasts are updated
Managers can run the labor model as often as they need, especially if they are aware that the sales data for their business changes. However, sometimes forecasts may change and managers forget that they need to run the labor model again, meaning the required staff numbers are no longer up to date according to the current sales or other metric input data.
The forecast data will be changed when:
- Managers update their Manager Forecast data manually OR
- Deputy forecast data for the next 7 days is automatically updated due to recent actual sales or other metric data is added in via POS integration or manual updates
To avoid the labour model becoming outdated after these forecast changes, there is the option to enable a setting to allow Deputy to automatically run the labour model whenever your forecast data (Manager forecast data or Deputy forecast data) is updated.
To enable this auto-run setting:
1. Select the Required staff tab from the left-hand menu in Business Insights and then click on the cog icon on the top right-hand side of the page to edit the settings.
2. Select the Auto-run Labor Model setting and click On then Save.
Once this setting is enabled, whenever any manager forecast data or Deputy forecast data is updated, the relevant labor model will automatically run within the next 5 minutes and the required staff number will be updated.
Managers will know that a labor model update is due to run when they see a label on the Required staff page as shown below.
The label will then be removed from this page once the labor model auto-run update is complete and the required staff numbers are updated.
Create a smart schedule based on your labor model
Once you are happy with the labor modeling rules you have set up, it's time to create your schedule based on the required staff you've calculated.
Jump over to our article on Auto-scheduling to learn how to build and then fill a schedule with the best shifts for your business based on the labor model you have created.
Bulk actions in labor modeling
Copy labor modeling rules to other locations
Bulk delete labor modeling rules
Read more about our other Smart Scheduling features.
Otherwise for help with Smart Scheduling please get in touch with our 24/7 support team.