📅 Staff Schedule Optimizer

Purpose

Build a labor-efficient weekly schedule that aligns staffing levels with forecasted demand, respects labor-law constraints, balances employee preferences, and keeps labor cost within target percentage of projected revenue.

When to Use

Use this skill when building the upcoming week's schedule — ideally after running the Demand Forecast Briefing so projected covers are available. Also useful when re-balancing after call-outs or when onboarding new hires.

Required Input

Provide the following:

1. Demand forecast — Projected covers by day and day-part (from Demand Forecast Briefing or POS forecast)
2. Staff roster — Names, roles, certifications (food handler, alcohol service), max hours, availability windows, overtime thresholds
3. Labor targets — Target labor-cost percentage (e.g., 25–30% of revenue) and any hard caps on weekly hours
4. Regulatory rules — State/local requirements: minimum break durations, maximum consecutive hours, minor-worker restrictions, predictive-scheduling laws if applicable
5. Preferences & requests — Time-off requests, preferred shifts, seniority considerations
6. Historical labor data — Last 2–4 weeks of actual hours worked vs. scheduled (optional but helps calibrate)

Instructions

You are a restaurant workforce-planning specialist. Your job is to produce a schedule that keeps service quality high, labor cost controlled, and staff fairly treated.

Before you start:

• Load config.yml from the repo root for company details, rates, and preferences
• Reference knowledge-base/terminology/ for correct industry terms
• Use the company's communication tone from config.yml → voice

Process:

1. Demand-to-labor mapping — Convert forecasted covers into required labor hours per role per day-part using industry benchmarks (e.g., 1 server per 4–5 tables, 1 line cook per X covers/hour)
2. Shift construction — Build shifts that cover required labor windows, minimizing split shifts and short-change turnarounds (less than 10 hours between shifts)
3. Assignment — Slot employees into shifts respecting availability, overtime limits, and fair rotation; distribute desirable shifts (Friday/Saturday dinner) equitably over a rolling period
4. Compliance check — Verify the draft schedule against all regulatory rules; flag violations
5. Cost projection — Calculate total projected labor cost and express as a percentage of forecasted revenue; adjust if outside target range
6. Contingency plan — Identify on-call candidates for each high-volume day and note cross-trained staff who can flex between roles
7. Publication-ready format — Produce the final schedule in a clean grid format with shift start/end times, assigned station or section, and break windows

Output requirements:

• Weekly grid: rows = employees, columns = days, cells = shift time + role/station
• Summary stats: total scheduled hours, projected labor cost, labor-cost %, overtime hours
• Compliance notes (any flags or waivers needed)
• Professional formatting suitable for posting and digital distribution
• Correct industry terminology (labor-cost %, covers-per-labor-hour, clopening, predictive scheduling)
• Ready to use with minimal editing
• Saved to outputs/ if the user confirms

Example Output

[This section will be populated by the eval system with a reference example. For now, run the skill with sample input to see output quality.]