In industries that rely on shift work, like healthcare, hospitality, retail, and public services, managing rosters and staffing is a complex task. From assigning the right staff to shifts to handling cover, holidays, absenteeism, and productivity, it’s challenging to strike the perfect balance. However, making mistakes in rostering can have significant financial implications for a company.
That’s where employee rostering comes in.
When done right, rostering improves efficiency across the board, reducing absenteeism, optimizing productivity, enhancing the customer experience, and saving on costs. In this comprehensive guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about effective rostering.
What is rota management?
Rota management, similar to rostering, involves planning shifts for your employees. This includes considering staff availability, holidays, cover and on-call shifts, skills, and costs to create a seamless rota that keeps your business running smoothly.
The pitfalls of traditional rostering
Traditionally, rostering was a manual process where HR teams and department managers used spreadsheets to plan shifts. However, with numerous variables to consider, manual rostering is prone to errors, resulting in various costly issues.
Here are some of the major problems associated with traditional rostering.
1. Increased fatigue and stress among staff
Staff wellbeing is crucial when planning shifts, which involves monitoring hours worked, tracking absences, and finding cover for breaks and holidays. However, with manual rostering, it’s difficult to keep track of this data, especially with a large number of employees. This often leads to employees working excessive overtime or not taking sufficient breaks, resulting in widespread fatigue and stress among staff.
2. Understaffing
Efficient business operations rely on well-planned rosters that are also adaptable to unforeseen circumstances like staff sickness or severe weather events. While an automatic rostering system can immediately identify resource and staffing issues, manual rostering requires constant monitoring and adjustments, leading to problems of understaffing or overstaffing. This not only affects immediate profits but also impacts the customer experience negatively.
Why should you consider auto-rostering?
Auto-rostering, also known as e-rostering, refers to software that automates rostering for businesses. Designed to simplify the shift planning process, auto-rostering platforms make it easy to create tailored rotas based on your company’s needs.
Here are some reasons why auto-rostering can benefit your business.
1. Save time and money
By automating time-consuming rostering tasks and reducing administrative work, auto-rostering allows for quicker and easier rota management. This frees up resources that can be allocated to other areas of your business. Additionally, it helps save money by minimizing the risk of understaffing or overstaffing, providing real-time visibility of any changes to ensure optimal resource allocation.
2. Enhance client experience and boost profits
Properly staffed shifts ensure a positive client experience, which in turn leads to more referrals and increased profits for your business.
3. Reduce absenteeism
E-rostering benefits both your business and your employees. By providing complete visibility over your staff’s working patterns and automatically identifying any issues, you can ensure that everyone is working the right hours with appropriate breaks. With fewer issues related to fatigue, burnout, and stress, there will be fewer absences to cover.
Discover industry-leading automatic rota management.
Managing rotas can be complex, but it doesn’t have to be. With Nextra’s rostering platform, you can quickly and easily configure rotas, utilize intelligent forecasting to meet projected demands, manage shift costs, track absences, and target areas that need improvement – all while remaining compliant with working time regulations. Experience rostering you can rely on.