How Smart Scheduling Transforms Your Shift-Based Business

Rostering is a key component of shift-based management. It’s also highly time-consuming. With the pace of business and the number of employees most companies have to manage today, traditional rostering methods aren’t enough. 

Learn how upgrading to smart, digital rostering can completely transform your shift-based business. 

Direct costs of manual rostering

Manual rostering relies on humans, who are prone to mistakes and inefficiencies. Both of these things cost companies time and money. 

Let’s break down the direct costs of manual rostering.

Time wasted

Manual rostering can take a great deal of time, from rostering itself to fixing the problems that arise from human error. This is especially true for businesses with many employees working different shifts — it’s a lot for a single person to track.  

Fines for noncompliance

Any business with multiple locations in different states has to consider break compliance, among other legal requirements. Manual rostering requires knowing and consistently following each state’s laws, which can be challenging. 

We created a handy guide to help address this problem. But even if you’re well-versed in state laws and have good processes in place, there’s always an element of human error in manual rostering. Mistakes can lead to fees or even legal issues if regulations are ignored too often. 

Going over budget

Manual rostering always involves guesswork and, more often than not, going over budget. Overtime or overstaffing during slow times can result in a business losing money due to breaking its labor budget. 

Depending on the business, you may also rely on temporary workers to help fill shifts, like in healthcare or home care. Allocating these resources wisely requires an accurate and efficient rostering system.

Understaffing

The guesswork in manual rostering can also cause understaffing. Because many multilocation businesses have to juggle different shifts and fluctuating staffing needs, gaps can easily appear. It could be an unexpectedly busy store during a usually slow time or simply understaffing due to absences. 

Understaffing causes a decrease in productivity and a lower customer service level for the day — not to mention the burnout experienced by the employees trying to fill in the gaps.

Indirect costs of manual rostering

The indirect costs of manual rostering are more subtle but still impact businesses. 

Stagnant process

The lack of automation and analytics in manual rostering makes it hard to track and build off past data. When you can’t improve the rostering process based on past data, you go in rostering circles. 

Limited scalability

When one or two people are responsible for rostering many, manual rostering limits scalability. Its inefficiency can become a significant hindrance for a rapidly growing business. 

Rostering biases

While often unintentional, human bias is always part of manual rostering, which can cause unfair rosters. This could be in the form of certain people getting the “good” shifts or always getting time off approved, even though others asked first. 

Sometimes, managers might forget employee preferences due to unreliable tracking, leading to unfavorable rosters. Whatever the reason, unfair rostering can create jealousy and resentment among employees. 

Employee dissatisfaction 

Between having to work overtime, coming in on expected days off, and the general unknown about their rosters, employees are going to be unhappy. This means lower morale and reduced productivity.

Eventually, unhappy employees will get fed up and leave, and businesses will have to spend time and money recruiting and training new employees. 

How smart rostering beats manual rostering 

How does smart rostering compare to manual rostering? Here’s a quick overview.

Let’s dive deeper into some of the advantages of smart rostering.

Reduces human error and bias

Since intelligent rostering uses automation and data, it automatically eliminates human error and bias from the rostering process. Deputy’s smart rostering software will create a shift roster based on various metrics to ensure the right people are working at the right times. 

These metrics include time off requests, so breaks are distributed fairly for all employees. At the same time, the software ensures that everyone gets a fair amount of shifts or overtime, so no one gets left out. 

Simplifies compliance 

Eliminating human error makes businesses more compliant with state laws as well. Deputy’s rostering software also makes it easy to automatically incorporate state laws and regulations into your rostering system, so you don’t have to worry about it. 

When generating a roster, our software will alert you of any potential compliance issues based on each state’s unique requirements. 

Uses data to improve rostering

Smart rostering improves current rostering and helps optimise future rostering. Using past data, intelligent rostering software learns from previous inputs to continually improve your rostering process.

For example, Deputy’s smart rostering software offers labor need tracking and forecasting — which can assist with preventing over- and understaffing. 

Helps prevent going over budget

Smart rostering allows businesses to input their labor budget for the program to track while creating roster. When generating a rosters, the software will automatically adjust to remain within your budget without your direct intervention.

For rosters in progress, the system can notify you when you’re getting too close to your budget so you can adjust either the roster or your budget. 

This is especially handy for multi-location businesses. 

Is accessible to employees

Rosters should always be easily accessible to employees. With Deputy’s smart rostering software, employees can see their roster anytime. Plus, it’s easier for employees to request time off or swap shifts since they can do it through the program instead of needing a paper trail. 

Using a smart rostering program also provides employees with additional transparency. They can see how rosters are created, when and why shifts change, and why their time-off requests are accepted or rejected. 

Transparency reduces misunderstandings and helps build trust. 

Intelligent rostering improvements you can see

Still unsure if Deputy’s smart rostering software is right for your business? Just see how it helped these businesses.

Juice Press

Juice Press struggled to balance rostering with scalability — they needed to roster over 350 workers at 85 different locations. It was simply too much for the company to handle, so they turned to Deputy.

Using Deputy for rostering, Juice Press saved 25 hours weekly on admin tasks and rostering while saving $200,000 per year on labor! 

The Spanish Table

With a new owner, The Spanish Table needed a rostering upgrade. Everything was manual, meaning there were many spreadsheets to sort through.

Deputy helped make the rostering process simple for both management and employees. Instead of using a wall-mounted time clock, employees could clock in and out on their phones. Instead of tracking data on spreadsheets, Deputy’s software tracked data in real-time. 

As a result of the change, The Spanish Table saved 312 hours on rostering, and employee morale improved. 

Mud Bay

Compliance problems, stores not opening, employee burnout — you name it, Mud Bay was dealing with it. Expanding their business and nearly tripling the staff put too much strain on their original Excel-based roster system. 

All 60 store managers would each spend two to three hours creating rosters — amounting to 120–180 hours weekly! 

That doesn’t even include tracking employee time, which is where compliance issues come in. Using separate systems for rostering and time tracking created problems with getting rosters to employees ahead of time, tracking breaks, and more, causing constant conflicts. 

In a single month in 2020, 72 stores opened late, closed early, or didn’t open at all because of staffing issues. 

With Deputy, Mud Bay reduced its rostering time by 25–50%, slashed its store closure issues by 85%, and made it easier to stay compliant with rostering laws.

Roster smartly with Deputy

If you’re tired of inefficient rostering, make the switch to Deputy’s smart rostering tool. Experience faster rostering, simplified compliance, and smoother daily operations for you and your employees.

We create all our tools specifically for shift-based businesses because we know how hard it is to spin multiple plates within a single shift. 

Get a free demo today!