Nov 10, 2024

How One Local Bakery Streamlined HR Operations and Retained 90% of Staff

Introduction

Founded in 2018, Maison Puget is a traditional French bakery in the heart of Notting Hill. Every day at 3 am, Jean-Christophe and his team start preparing pastries and bread for the day. They refuse to use non-natural ingredients or pre-made preparations. Maison Puget uses Moonworkers to streamline their nine staff’s night and day shifts, working as bakers or waiters. Since 2020, Maison Puget’s bread has been constantly awarded as the best bread in London.

The Story of Maison Puget

Amandine and Jean-Christophe Puget, a married couple from the Vosges, opened their first high-end bakery and Chocolate factory in France at the age of 24. Quickly successful, they opened a new outlet and hired 30 staff in three years. Nevertheless, managing a growing business comes at a cost. Jean-Christophe and Amandine realise that handling the admin and staff issues affect their enthusiasm and [work-life balance]. Moreover, they coveted to live in a more thriving environment than the countryside.

They moved to the UK after falling in love with London during a trip. However, they couldn’t imagine having the same bad experience as in France. This new venture required some changes. Therefore, the two top priorities were recruiting excellent and reliable staff and finding solutions to streamline their HR, rotas, and payroll.

After moving to London, they quickly heard about another London based French entrepreneur: Nicolas, the founder of Moonworkers. It was immediately a match. Both shared the same vision and wanted to solve the same challenges around staff management.

The challenge of managing teams of bakers/cooks and waiters before Moonworkers

The challenge of staff management was non-trivial. Amandine and Jean-Christophe used a paper-based system before moving to London, which caused a lot of conflict amongst the staff.

Team members were often overbooked or had overlapping shifts. Amandine needed to guess who to book for specific rotas without the proper information about availability and role. She relied on the staff to report their hours honestly, but that wasn’t always the case. Sometimes the team would cause a scheduling mistake intentionally, causing even more chaos. Micromanaging the staff was tiresome and time-consuming.

The inconsistency in the rotas caused additional headaches for Puget’s accountant. It took time to work through the information manually to determine the correct number of hours and how much to pay.

Manually managing work schedules and payroll took too much time and posed too much risk. They needed a better solution for their new Notting Hill venture.

Create your rota straight from your payroll app

Our intuitive and easy-to-use rota builder makes creating your rotas a breeze. Add, edit and publish shifts when you are ready to notify your staff. Single shifts or entire weeks can be copied and pasted saving hours of tedious planning. Synced with payroll.

Why did Maison Puget choose Moonworkers

Opening a business is scary, no less in a new country. Amandine and Jean-Christophe needed to remain compliant to avoid putting their business at risk. It didn’t make sense for them to spend time researching learning the process. Instead, they put their trust in Moonworkers.

Moonworkers is the only end-to-end automated HR solution that provides direct face-to-face support. Amandine didn’t need to look for separate scheduling, payroll, and tax filing software — Moonworkers covered everything she needed.

“I’m not tech-savvy. However, Moonworkers is easy enough to use because it replicates what I have always done with paper and pen, but now it’s automated.”

How Maison Puget Used Moonworkers

Employees start their shift at Maison Puget and clock in from the app on their phones. It’s easy to use for employees and provides accurate data for Amandine. She no longer spends time going through paper calendars to match start and end times to determine payroll. Instead, the schedule connects to payroll within Moonworkers. Her staff is paid automatically, and she remains compliant. Plus, her accountant has access to everything he needs, so he doesn’t need to chase Amandine for details.

Since the staff uses the application to clock in and out, it’s easy for them to request to go on leave or take a day off. They request time off directly in the app, and once it is approved, Moonworkers automatically updates the rota. As a result, Amandine no longer sifts through papers to look at her team’s availability to recreate rotas. Instead, everything lives in Moonworkers and automatically adjusts, saving Amandine essential time.

The Results

Since opening their London location in 2018 and using Moonworkers to automate the HR processes, Amandine and Jean-Christophe’s work-life balance has improved. Their staff is also happier with the streamlined processes. Since opening in 2018, Maison Puget has retained 90% of its staff.

“When we decided to move to a modern solution to streamline our HR and payroll, Moonworkers came up as the best option. It is cost-effective and easy to use even if we are not tech-savvy.” Jean-Christophe