A Chick-fil-A franchise in suburban Miami allowed employees to opt-in to a three-day work week earlier this year, and ever since it’s seen a 100% retention rate for managers and a surge of applicants for open positions.
Justin Lindsey introduced the option to employees at his Kendall, Florida, location in hopes that it would make their schedules more predictable, according to Business Insider.
“My idea was to provide staff with this gift of time by creating a scheduling system where they would know exactly what days they worked for as long as they work here,” he told the outlet.
The tradeoff is that employees work 13 to 14-hour days when they are scheduled. It also took a little convincing to assure staffers that they wouldn’t be “on call” to fill a shift during one of their days off. But once those hurdles were cleared, the approach became a hit.
Mr. Lindsey said that about a quarter of the fast-casual restaurant’s 160-person staff has switched over to the three-day schedule. An open position at the restaurant also received over 400 applications during its hiring period.
And on the business side of things, restaurant trade magazine QSR reported last month that the Kendall location is on pace to produce more than $17 million in sales, which is near the top of Chick-fil-A’s average unit volume.
“We have a manager who’s from Scotland — he’s taken two trips back to Scotland this year and he still has [vacation time] available,” Mr. Lindsey told CBS News.
He also told the network that the three-day schedule gave another manager the ability to graduate from the University of Central Florida.
No other restaurant in the franchise has attempted to use a three-day week, Chick-fil-A officials said, but Mr. Lindsey said that other franchise owners have since contacted him for help about how to implement the schedule.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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