Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Labor Percentage

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Posted by Blake Zaugg (Member # 1455) on 12-06-2003, 06:41 PM:

What is a realistic goal for labor? and is it (or should it) be computed only from ticket & concession sales? (or include GC's, Slide Ads, etc....)

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 12-06-2003, 08:35 PM:

A goal for labor? What do you mean? Like to make as much money as possible by doing as little as possible? Satisfaction of a job well done? Please clarify.

Posted by Dennis M Dow Jr (Member # 1970) on 12-06-2003, 09:18 PM:

I think most chains shoot for a 8-10pct vs admissions. Concessions and intheater advertising are not a factor in figuring this out

Posted by Mike Spaeth (Member # 524) on 12-06-2003, 09:24 PM:

I'm more used to a "cost per customer" ... for most places ... $0.75 per ticket sold is a realistic and easy goal to make.

Posted by Blake Zaugg (Member # 1455) on 12-08-2003, 02:14 AM:

Sorry Steve, I did't explain myself well.

My question had to do with staffing levels. Obviously not enough staff and your service and revenue go down and too many staff breaks the bank.

I was curious how other theatres tell if they are over staffed or not. At what percentage is optimal? And how they calculate it...ie only on admissions (bums in seats, or ticket revenue) Do they go by customers per employee, or per employee hour?

I'm trying to make a grid so my less experienced managers will know when to send staff home. Not sure whether it should go by attendance, percentage of income, etc...

Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 12-08-2003, 05:24 AM:

i don't really like the practice of sending employees home. you pay them peanuts, they commit part of their day to work for you, and you deny them that. if someone wants to go home, great. but otherwise, how about setting surplus staff to work doing some maintenance, cleaning a hard-to-reach area, organizing storage, or training. it'll pay off later. i'm not a manager, but that's my take.

carl

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-08-2003, 07:09 AM:

Agreed with Carl. It's completely unethical to schedule staff for a day and then send them home in order to "cut the payroll." If an employer schedules an employee to work, then he has an ethical obligation to compenstate that employee for the time scheduled.

And, anyway, I'm not sure how basing staffing levels on a per centage of customers or ticket revenue makes sense. It's not a linear relationship at all. Any theatre--even a small single screen on an "off" night--needs at least three staff members (concession, tickets, projection; one of these can also be the manager, and the ticket seller can usually leave soon after the final show starts). Above that, as customers and screen counts increase, staffing levels depend on many factors, including the layout of the theatre, the types of films playing (kids' films need more concession staff and usher/cleaning staff than art/foreign films), the quality/experience of the staff, etc. Instead of using ticket numbers to dictate staffing requirements, wouldn't it make more sense for the manager to actually _look_ at what is happening in his theatre? Are ticket and concession lines reasonable? Are auditoria (yes, with an _a_) being kept clean between shows? Are the restrooms clean, with good stock of paper towels
and toilet paper? Are trash cans emptied before they overflow?

If the above-mentioned conditions (and plenty of others not mentioned) are being met consistently without either having employees sitting around doing nothing or running completely ragged throughout the day/evening, then the theatre is adequately staffed.

Posted by John Scott (Member # 520) on 12-08-2003, 09:44 AM:

Blake> Percentages of labor depend on the size of your complex and how busy it is. 15-20% might be acceptable one location, but 5-6 would be acceptable at another location.

What might work for you is something that I do weekly. Create a payroll report using a spreadsheet program that includes formulas that calculate the labor percentages (I like Regular Payroll vs Box Office, Concessions Payroll vs Concessions, and Total vs Total). Go through your last 52 weeks and see where you are. By looking at that you can get a good idea of where you want to be and where you can cut based on the percentages, and what goals might be good for your location.

This is definitely a good process to share with assistant managers you want to mold into being cost effective managers. I've found that if they see how the numbers look and trend and how this effect's the theatre's bottom line they are more apt to cut that extra person or two when business is slow and staffing levels allow.

Trend the vending per-cap into that as well and you can also show what happens when too many staff are cut and your location is caught by suprise.

Posted by Jason Black (Member # 684) on 12-08-2003, 10:31 AM:

John,

You don't, by chance, work for Carmike do you?

Bill Enos:

The same applies here. I've never asked if anyone wanted to go home and had everyone decide to stay. N-E-V-E-R.

[ 12-08-2003, 07:27 PM: Message edited by: Jason Black ]

Posted by Bill Enos (Member # 440) on 12-08-2003, 05:52 PM:

Where I work, if we are over staffed on what turns out to be a slow night, asking " anybody want the evening off?' usually results in too many volunteers. However, if nobody wants off, everybody stays, that has never happened though.

Posted by Scott D. Neff (Member # 185) on 12-08-2003, 08:04 PM:

When I ran theatres I came across similar instances. If you needed to send somebody home, eventually the staff would work it out amongst themselves as to who got to go.

Of course I never ran theatres in an area where everybody needed to work.

I too am curious as to what a realistic percentage is. At Cinema West the owner would always claim we had too many people working if we had more than Manager +1. I was always trying to convince him that we were making good use of the people and that it was helping our bottom line. I've never actually seen what various chains considered healthy, but I would be interested in learning payroll analysis someday.

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 12-08-2003, 09:39 PM:

I agree with those who say it's unethical. It's fine to ask for volunteers though since often someone will be glad to get out early. But asking someone to work and then sending them home to save a couple bucks is wrong.

Posted by John Scott (Member # 520) on 12-08-2003, 11:36 PM:

Jason -- No I don't work for Carmike.

Posted by Jason Black (Member # 684) on 12-09-2003, 06:51 AM:

John,
OK, I thought we had a 20 in Oakdale but I've been known to have been wrong before.. [Smile]

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 12-09-2003, 10:14 AM:

We do have a 20 in Oakdale. John probably works for the Marcus just down the road.

Posted by Blake Zaugg (Member # 1455) on 12-09-2003, 01:57 PM:

Sorry, I was being unclear again. Just like Scott D Neffwe get volunteers to go home. There is always someone. We try as I'm sure everyone does to guess proper staffing levels, but some of the time it is just too slow on a Friday night to have all the staff on.

I realize that there are minimum staffing levels on slow nights to the theatre that will throw everything out of whack, but over a pay period, or month the busy times should level off with the slow times to get an average.

I'm sure at corporate office of some big theatre chains if the percentage hit a certain level, they would show alot of concern. Our months have ranged from 17% all the way up to 30%. The latter being way too high.

Some theatres have a schedule budget to use x number of hours in a week. How do they know how many hours they should use.

We have a Little Caesars at the entrance to the theatre and they have a grid they use to do the schedule. The grid has expected sales, man hours to use. So if they expect $4000 in sales on a day they have x number of man hours. The gap or ratio between man hours and sales widens the higher the expected sales is.

The manager should always have they ability or "override" the chart, but for the less experience manager it would be nice to give them a guideline to go by.

Posted by John Scott (Member # 520) on 12-09-2003, 10:48 PM:

Dustin,

You are correct, I am the Associate Manager at the Marcus Oakdale 16.

Posted by R. Andrew Diercks (Member # 1725) on 01-08-2004, 09:41 AM:

My company takes a percentage of total theatre deposits vs. payroll. We like it to be 12-18%. Under is great but usually only happens during holiday weeks. I have seen some theatres so worried about the percentage that they greatly under staff. I feel when you get your small rush on slow night, having one staff sell tickets and concessions from two counters looks incredibly unorganized and poorly managed, so I take the higher percentage. Most of our locations are in smaller communities under 30,000 people. The individual theatre does not deposit income from 3rd party ads so those are not taken into account. I ask for volunteers when we need to cut and if there are several, we draw straws or roll dice to see who wins. I have had everyone choose to stay before, but always had a project lined up for them. Very occasionally if I see someone that appears a little ill, or if I know they had something going on but had to work, I will send them home.

Posted by Nick Engstrom (Member # 2100) on 01-08-2004, 04:49 PM:

Got a fax on tuesday from my district manager, had all of yesterdays numbers for staff and in giant letter, CUT STAFF NOW.

So I proceeded to walk out to the lobby and said 'Who wants to go home', and had 4 out of 5 people that said yes.

Easy Greasy [Smile]

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 01-08-2004, 09:38 PM:

You should have smeared blood all over the fax, wrote "two didn't make it" and faxed it back.

Posted by Nick Engstrom (Member # 2100) on 01-08-2004, 11:22 PM:

nothing like a nice black smear all over a fax, trying to figure out what the hell that is, lol.

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 01-08-2004, 11:36 PM:

Oh yeah...Kansas is in B&W...just like the M&M's.

Posted by Brent Mahaney (Member # 1090) on 01-10-2004, 08:12 PM:

If only it were as simple as saying, "During your busy times, staff more people. When it is slow, staff less people." And I think what frustrates a number of managers I talk to is the fact that the corporate people see it exactly this way.

There are so many factors that go into determining a proper level of staffing. Those factors vary from town to town and market to market, and you cannot set a blanket policy for every theater in a chain. That is ignorant. The smart thing for a company to do is to set a payroll percentage goal for each particular location. So if your location's goal is 9%, you try to come as close to that number as you can on a weekly basis...WITH THE UNDERSTANDING (pay attention corporate lurkers) that some weeks you're going to have 12 or 13 percent, and other weeks you're going to have 5 or 6 percent. That's just the way it is. Period. Corporate doesn't need to blow a fuse every time they see high numbers as long as it balances out during busy times.

But the flip side is that there are a number of brain-deficient managers that ruin it for the good managers. Home offices feel the need to continuously harp on payroll because there are managers in this industry that need to be yelled at. We all know a few.

But what do I know? I'm just a lowly pawn...I mean, theater manager...

Posted by Chris Medley (Member # 2145) on 01-14-2004, 08:20 AM:

I have the same problems at my theater. We are in central texas were football is king and on friday nights or big NFL sundays it is a rollorcoaster ride of never knowing if we'll be dead or slammed. But I agree that the corp. offices never take into account things like kids shows needed more ushers or training hours. I have worked for places before(outside the theater industry) where you could be alotted so many "extra" hours per period as training. With Cinemark the corp. offices have done something that I love, they offer an extra day off with pay to workers at the corp. office (ie marketing, accounting..people like that), if they work two shifts over the holidays at a theater. I think this helps give them an idea of what it is truely like on the front lines.

Posted by JC Cowles (Member # 914) on 01-15-2004, 02:25 AM:

Labor is an extremely difficult balance in any business, not only theatres. The question, in my opinion, really boils down to what level of customer service that business wishes to provide. The idea of providing superior customer service without over-extending labor goals seems like a rock-and-a-hard-place predicament. Especially when those labor goals are unrealistic.

A corporate office will always and forever push for lower labor. If you have a banner year and maybe happen to have the lowest labor percentage in the company, you will likely get a grand pat on the back and a “job well done.” Yet, sure as the sun will rise, next year you will be asked to exceed those goals. The questions will arise, what else can you do? Where else can you cut to lower that labor percentage even more? Of course for this to work, eventually, in order to cut your labor even more, you’d need to call up the local humane society and see if they have a monkey willing to sell tickets and popcorn, while threading up a few projectors on the side (for free, naturally).

What gets me about corporate office is their unwillingness to see the human side of labor issues. When I worked for AMC, I was actually given the following instructions to meet their labor goals. It was recommended that employees be placed on an on-call status. Being a small theatre (a brother-sister theatre with 3 screens and 8 screens—providing a lot of down-time) employees should punch out between movie sets and be ready and available to punch back in before the next rush. It was also said we should schedule lighter than needed and if business was such that we needed more employees, we should call in additional employees from home at that time. Basically, schedule employees to sit at home between say 5pm and 10pm and wait by the phone…without pay for sitting and waiting, naturally.

Now if you’re like me, take some time to wipe the blood off your forehead from beating your head against the keyboard multiple times. Financially, yes, no one can argue that wouldn’t save labor. Realistically…I’m not even going to follow up on that. When the realistic augment was presented, the response was simply, “come up with something better, but still meet labor goals.”

Obviously no employee is going to work for $5.75/hr to work under those conditions. Their labor goals? I couldn’t reach labor goals if I had one box office, one concessionists and one usher every day of the week, for a theatre which could easily have 1400 people walk through in an hour. And yes, there wasn’t another movie at the 3-plex for 2 additional hours, but you cannot ask an employee to remain at the theatre for six hours and only pay them for two. $10.50 a day, minus taxes, is not going to keep an employee around for very long.

WARNING: Long winded run-on sentance

What gets me is a corporate office located in another state provides me labor expectations using statistical data and commentary from a 15 minute bi-monthly visit from a district manager dictates labor expectations and expects me to balance the customer service to match. In my opinion, when it came to AMC, the only way to provide the necessary levels of customer service was to use labor expectations as an example of what not to do. And I said many times working under them, “if they want to fire me for providing stellar customer service, then that’s something worth putting on my resume.”

As it turned out I quit AMC for this and many other reasons. Because in the end, at the theatre I worked at, Customer service was severely hindered, and I couldn’t work for a company that operated like that.

Posted by Chris Medley (Member # 2145) on 01-15-2004, 10:08 AM:

I totally agree...the corp. offices want us to provide 100% customer service will only using 25-50% of the needed labor.

Posted by Jim Ziegler (Member # 86) on 01-28-2004, 11:47 AM:

JC,

Thats odd.. The AMC's in Kansas City are always very well staffed, to the point of being totally overstaffed.

The payroll guidelines I have to work under right now are I am allowed, for each round, one in stand for every 100 people, one in the box for every 200 people and one on floor for every 200 people. The managers on duty figure into these totals as well.