In industries such as healthcare, hospitality, retail, and public services, managing shifts and staff can be complicated. Apart from assigning the right employees to the right shifts, businesses also need to handle cover, holidays, absenteeism, morale, costs, and productivity. However, balancing these conflicting elements can be difficult, and even the smallest mistake can have significant consequences for a company.
This is where employee rostering comes in.
When done correctly, rostering can enhance a company’s efficiency in various ways – reducing absenteeism, maximizing efficiency, improving the customer experience, and saving on costs. In this comprehensive guide, you will find all the information you need to effectively roster your employees.
Understanding Rota Management
Similarly to rostering, rota management involves planning shifts for your employees. This includes considering staff availability, holidays, well-being, cover and on-call shifts, skills, and costs to create a rota that ensures smooth operations for your business.
Challenges of Traditional Rostering
Traditionally, rostering was a manual process that relied on HR teams and department managers using spreadsheets to plan shifts. However, due to the multitude of factors to consider, manual rostering is prone to errors, which can lead to various costly issues.
Here are some of the main problems associated with traditional rostering:
1. Higher levels of fatigue and stress among staff
Tracking working hours, absences, and cover for breaks and holidays is vital for staff well-being. However, manual rostering makes it difficult to keep track of all this data, especially as the number of employees increases. This can result in staff members working excessive overtime or being unable to take proper breaks, leading to widespread fatigue and stress among your workforce.
2. Understaffing
Efficient business operations require effective roster planning that can adapt to unexpected changes. Whether it’s due to staff sickness or external circumstances like severe weather, rosters will always need adjustments. Automatic rostering systems immediately highlight resource and staffing issues, while manual rosters require constant monitoring and amending, often leading to understaffing or overstaffing problems. These issues not only impact immediate profits but can also negatively affect the customer experience.
Why Choose Auto-Rostering?
Auto-rostering (also known as e-rostering) is software designed to manage your company’s rostering for you. By automating the shift planning process, these platforms make it easy to create rotas that align with your business’s shifting needs.
Here are some reasons why auto-rostering can benefit your business:
1. Save time and money
Automating time-consuming rostering tasks and reducing administrative efforts makes roster management quicker and more efficient. This frees up resources for other areas of your business. Auto-rostering also helps save money by reducing the risk of understaffing or overstaffing, providing real-time visibility of any changes to ensure you have the necessary resources. Additionally, properly staffed shifts result in a positive customer experience, increasing the likelihood of customer referrals.
2. Reduce absenteeism
Auto-rostering benefits both your business and your employees. By providing complete visibility over your staff’s working patterns and flagging any issues automatically, you can ensure that everyone is working the right amount of hours with appropriate breaks. This helps reduce issues related to fatigue, burnout, and stress, leading to fewer absences and the need to find cover.
Experience the Leading Automatic Rota Management Solution
Managing rotas can be a complex task, but it doesn’t have to be. With Nextra’s rostering platform, you can easily configure rotas, utilize intelligent forecasting to meet projected demands, manage shift costs, track absences, and address problem areas while complying with working time regulations. This is rostering you can rely on.
Get started with Nextra’s industry-leading automatic rota management solution today.
