Case Study: UKHospitality addresses NLW wage pressure with Harri

UKHospitality tackles £1.4B labour costs with Harri

Facing an estimated £1.4 billion increase in labour costs due to a rise in the National Living Wage, UKHospitality, the trade body representing the sector, sought strategies to mitigate the associated operational risks for its operators. These risks included pay compression for experienced staff, a shrinking talent pipeline, and the need for precise scheduling. To address this challenge, they partnered with Harri and its workforce operating system to transform these wage pressures into an opportunity for optimisation.

Harri provided a multi-faceted solution to help operators navigate the increased costs. They introduced a skills-based progression framework to combat pay compression, deployed advanced labour forecasting to ensure scheduling accuracy and protect margins, and implemented tools for de-risking the hiring of entry-level talent to maintain the talent pipeline. The vendor demonstrated the impact by stating that for a mid-sized restaurant group, even a modest 2% improvement in scheduling efficiency could yield annual savings of £50,000 to £80,000 under the new wage rates.

UKHospitality