For industries that rely heavily on rotating shifts, the employees are the blood or life force that drives the business and the rostering system is the heartbeat of your operations.
Just like the heartbeat, effective and efficient scheduling ensures that everything is up and running smoothly and that the workforce is achieving what needs to be done.
If something goes wrong with your rostering and shift management, it not only affects your operations and productivity but also costs your business time, effort, and resources.
The challenges of shift and rostering management
Managers understand the different challenges that come with building rosters and overseeing shifts of the workforce. It’s no easy task to coordinate a significant number of employees without a few hurdles here and there.
Here are some common problems that shift managers face:
1. Time-consuming manual processes
Unfortunately, there are many businesses that have not adopted the latest rostering technologies. Some even still use manual methods such as paper-based time sheets.
While others may have some sort of digital process in place, it often involves disparate systems and separate documents that need to be manually consolidated, resulting in inefficient double-data entry and even errors.
2. Lack of visibility and communication gaps regarding rostering
To effectively coordinate the preferences and schedules of your employees for shifting, clear communication is a must. However, this is not often the case.
Many times, there are communication gaps between managers and employees or delays in relaying shift schedules which leads to other problems such as overlapping shifts or overscheduling.
3. Added complexity because of industry awards
According to a blog post from MYOB, “Identifying, understanding and complying with the more than 100 industry and occupation awards that cover workers in Australia, plus individual agreements, can be near impossible using manual processes.”
A smarter way to build rosters
Luckily, MYOB recently developed a special Workforce Management Solution, that addresses each of these common pain points. We’re going to break down how:
1. Digital and seamless cloud-based processes
A fully-digital and integrated process can cut down the time it takes to build rosters to just a couple of minutes. Through its “Smart Roster” capabilities, you can set rules and save templates for repetitive rosters and the calendar will automatically populate the calendar based on these conditions.
MYOB’s workforce management system is also integrated with its payroll module which streamlines the consolidation of attendance for your next pay run.
2.Complete visibility and built-in communication tools
You won’t have to worry about overlapping shifts or overscheduling with this new solution because of its intuitive and configurable calendar that is accessible to the entire workforce.
Because of this complete visibility, both managers and employees can correct any inconsistencies or errors in the roster. And if something is amiss, the system’s “Rules and Alerts” feature will automatically notify managers if there’s an error in the shift.
Communication with employees is also improved thanks to its integration with the MYOB mobile app. They receive automatic notifications whenever a shift is assigned or if there are any requests for schedule changes.
They also gain better control because they’re able to view their upcoming shifts and take on open shifts from other employees through the “Shift Swap” function.
3.Automated compliance
To stay compliant with agreements and awards for employees, managers can now save rules that will automatically be applied when building rosters and scheduling shifts.
As mentioned before, if there are breaches to these rules while scheduling, the system automatically alerts managers before publishing the roster.
Because payroll and workforce management are integrated into one platform, managers reduce the risk of errors when it comes to compensation for shift-based employees.
MYOB Advanced Workforce Management rostering features
We’ve enumerated most of the rostering features of MYOB Advanced Workforce Management but we’ll list all of them down just one more time. There’s also a walkthrough of some of the functions within the system in the video below.
- Rosters can be grouped according to location or grouped according to employee
- The intuitive and customisable calendar can be color-coded and viewed by location group or by employee group
- Roster templates can be saved
- Rules that depend on the awards and agreements for different employees can be saved and applied when building the roster
- Rules and alerts functions will immediately notify managers for issues with shifts
- Workforce management is accessible through the MYOB mobile app, notifying employees of assigned shifts, requests for schedule changes, upcoming shifts, and shifts that are open for swapping on their phones
Excited to see just how simpler and smarter rostering can get with MYOB Advanced Workforce Management? Reach out to our team to www.alphabiz.com.au/contact/ or book a demo with us to discover more about the solution.
