Streamlining Shift Work: The Key to Effective Rostering

In industries like healthcare, hospitality, retail, and public services, successfully managing rostering and staffing is crucial. Alongside assigning the right employees to the right shifts, businesses must handle cover, holiday schedules, absenteeism, morale, costs, and productivity. However, finding the balance can be challenging, and even the smallest mistake can have significant consequences for a company.

Enter employee rostering.

When executed properly, rostering can enhance a company’s overall efficiency, minimizing absenteeism, maximizing productivity, improving the customer experience, and saving costs. This comprehensive guide provides everything you need to know about effective rostering.

What is rota management?

Rota management is similar to rostering and involves planning employee shifts. It entails considering factors such as staff availability, holidays, well-being, cover and on-call shifts, skills, and costs in order to create a schedule that keeps the business running smoothly.

The downsides of traditional rostering

Traditionally, rostering was done manually, with HR teams and department managers using spreadsheets to plan shifts. However, manual rostering is prone to errors due to the numerous variables involved, which can lead to various costly issues.

Here are some of the major problems associated with traditional rostering.

Increased fatigue and stress among staff

When planning shifts, staff well-being is of utmost importance. This means monitoring working hours, tracking absences, and finding cover for breaks and holidays. However, with manual rostering, it becomes challenging to track all this data, especially with a large workforce. Consequently, employees may end up working excessive overtime or being unable to take breaks, leading to widespread fatigue and stress among the staff.

Understaffing

Efficient business operations require effective and agile rosters. Whether due to employee illness or external factors like severe weather, schedules will always need adjustments. While an automated rostering system can quickly identify resource and staffing issues, manual rosters require constant monitoring and updating, which can result in problems with understaffing or overstaffing. This not only affects the company’s immediate profits but also negatively impacts the customer experience.

Why should you consider auto-rostering?

Auto-rostering, also known as e-rostering, refers to software that manages rostering for your company. These platforms automate the shift planning process, allowing you to configure schedules that align with your shifting needs.

Here are some of the ways auto-rostering can benefit your business.

Save time and money

By automating time-consuming rostering tasks and reducing administrative work, auto-rostering streamlines schedule management, freeing up resources for other areas of your business. It also helps save money by minimizing the risks of understaffing or overstaffing, providing real-time visibility of any changes, and ensuring you have the necessary resources.

Additionally, e-rostering doesn’t just save money; it can also boost profits. With appropriately staffed shifts, you can provide a positive customer experience, increasing the likelihood of customer referrals.

Reduce absenteeism

E-rostering is not only advantageous for your business but also beneficial for your employees. By providing complete visibility over working patterns and automatically flagging issues, you can ensure everyone is working the right hours with adequate breaks. This leads to fewer problems related to fatigue, burnout, and stress, resulting in reduced absenteeism and less need for cover.

Experience industry-leading automatic rota management.

Managing rotas may be complex, but it doesn’t have to be. With Nextra’s rostering platform, you can easily configure schedules with intelligent forecasting to meet projected demands. Effectively manage shift costs, track absences, and address problem areas while remaining compliant with working time regulations. This is rostering you can rely on.