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- Human resources management and the impact of the restaurant opening hours: an exploratory studyPublication . Azevedo, Daniel; Silva, SusanaThe hospitality sector is struggling with a generalized shortage of manpower to cope with the post-pandemic economic recovery. Furthermore, the work-life balance has become a very important issue when it comes to choose a place to work. This has been creating huge constraints in the hospitality industry in running and/or developing new businesses due to lack of qualified human resources. Considering the importance of this sector in the Portuguese economy, it is of paramount importance to better understand the origin of such constraints and how businesses can adapt to a new labour market reality. An exploratory study was conducted to understand how restaurant opening hours, as a top-level management decision, affects the work-life balance in the industry thus contributing to enrich the attractiveness of the jobs offered. To develop the study two groups of restaurants were studied. The first group is comprised of limited opening-hours restaurants, and the second group (as a control group), a non-limited opening hours restaurant. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with proprietors and/or top-level managers to ascertain how the decision on opening hours was weighed in the work-life balance concerns and what are the most important managerial implications, business profitability impacts, and staff retention indicators. Preliminary results seem to indicate that restaurant opening hours are one important top-level management decisions and the work-life balance has played a crucial role in the definition of the business model of the studied restaurants. By choosing limited opening hours, managers are able to schedule staff much easier and respect, as much as possible their work-life balance which then contributes to a more stable and motivated workforce. The results also show that this is only possible because restaurants manage to be profitable within the limited opening hours period. Further studies should be conducted to better understand how these new business model approaches could be used in larger-scale restaurants with non-limited opening hours.
- Digital technologies to minimize the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in restaurant sectorPublication . Brochado, Diana; Silva, Cândida; Silva, Susana; Azevedo, DanielAt the end of the first quarter of 2020, there were signs that the year would be with many difficult challenges. The emergence of a new pandemic, a coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), known as COVID-19, shivered the planet, in many ways, from personal to professional, economic and financial, affecting everything and everyone, causing a general quarantine around the world. The restaurant sector was no exception and following this unexpected situation, this study aims to understand how information and communication technology (ICT) is being used in the sector and how it can help to response to its current needs, without neglecting public health and avoiding insolvencies or dismissals, looking for digital solutions that can guarantee the efficiency of the sector, always respecting the costumer's experience. Therefore, a study is proposed to analyze how ICT can contribute to the recovery of the restaurant sector and how it can be incorporated, having as the main question ”How can technology be used to minimize the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the restaurant sector?”. A qualitative methodology was applied to the present study, having as sample several restaurants, in the north of Portugal of different types, to better understand how the introduction of technologies has been done, the impact of COVID-19 in ICT adoption and the actual needs on digitalization and technology, both in service and delivery and in internal and external communication. As preliminary results, we can identify some reluctance to introduce technologies and digitalization in the sector, with much to be explored in the sense of digitalization. We also verified that the biggest investments in this direction are on billing and on Enterprise Resource Planning systems. Furthermore, this study also presents some proposals for digital solutions that can assist this sector.