It can be both tough and time-consuming to set up your employee’s weekly schedules. Some of the many challenges with this task include things like standard shift sizes, employee availability, how many workers you have, and much more. Plus, you also need to keep in mind that every one of your business’ departments has different needs, and there are UK labour laws that you need to follow.
Not only do you need to set up those schedules every week, but at the same time, your human resources and payroll departments have plenty of other things to deal with. When you add in the time needed to develop those schedules, it’s clear why the productivity levels in those departments are down. This is why you need to use rostering software. It will simplify this process and free up time.
Employee Rostering Software Features
Roster software is the best solution to your employee scheduling difficulties. It’s designed to handle everything from shift availability to the creation of detailed employee rosters, which is where the name comes from. It makes shift management much easier to do.
Roster software uses modules that allow you to build a roster of workers and their strengths and availability. The software can handle a number of important tasks, like shift management, time off requests, and, of course, roster building.
Roster Building
In order to have your employee rostering software work efficiently, you need to start with the roster building component. This involves entering all of your employees’ data in the system. The roster designates the employees into specific areas or departments, and you can even include information on their basic work functions and overall skill sets. Their pay rates must be entered also. On top of this, the software allows you to set specific rule definitions and a number of parameters that must be adhered to. If something goes wrong and those definitions or parameters aren’t met, then the system will give you a warning, so that you’re aware of the issue. Examples of this include meeting a specific budget for your payroll and making sure that each department has enough workers scheduled.
Automatic Rostering
On top of this, staff rostering software handles automatic rostering. This means that you can view all of the software’s functions and features and all of your rostered employees. From there, you can reassign your employees to different departments and move them around as needed. On top of that, rostering software has a special feature called “job solver.” This includes a list of employees who are available, all of whom can be assigned a specific job. The software will handle that for you.
Requesting Availability
Employee availability is another issue that many employers face. You need to schedule your employees for when they are able to work, otherwise, you’ll have to deal with shift changes. A roster management system makes this easier on your human resources department since your workers can input their availability (days and times) into the system. The automatic rostering program will handle the rest.
Managing Shifts
The workplace has expanded to include more than one type of shift. For example, there are alternate shifts, flexitime shifts, and a handful of rules that come with them. The modules within the roster planning software make this easier to manage. Your HR employees can go over the menus and many screen options within the program to ensure that they are scheduling these shifts as legally required.
Key Benefits of Using Rostering Software
There are many key benefits to roster management software. The automation is the largest one since it allows the system to handle these tasks, freeing up your HR employees for other ones. With it, you can give your staff member the ability to enter in their available hours, make sure that every department has enough employees, and stick to a payroll budget. You can even view the data in real-time.
Fast Solutions for the Unexpected
Of course, there are always unexpected staffing contingencies that you need to deal with when running a business. These include things like employees heading home because they are sick, or calling off for any reason. The staff roster software makes it very simple for you to slot a different employee into their place, in order to ensure that you have a full staff at all times. The program will make it easy for you to provide the level of customer service that your patrons or guests expect.
Fully Scalable Rostering System
Ideally, you want to implement rostering software while your company is still small, as the program is designed to grow with you. As it does, you’ll have many more employees and shifts to manage, and an automated program is ideal to help you manage them. It will also help you stay within the bounds of UK labor laws.
As you can see, there are many reasons why you need to use roster management software.