The spreadsheet may be free, but is the start of a time-consuming process because it’s only the beginning of your workforce management tasks. Creating the rota is just a small part of your job - you will also have to deal with changes requested by your staff, as well as absence management, timesheets, payroll, and holiday pay and entitlement.
Even with a tiny team, it is going to take a fair amount of time to do manually. But as soon as you start to grow your business and take on new staff, it’s going to get a lot more complicated very quickly! Here we'll talk about the challenges of manual processes when it comes to workforce management, and show how Nextra's workforce management solutions can help you generate employee schedules at the same time as increasing operational efficiency.
Hiring casual staff results in more administrative headaches when it comes to workforce management. Often people do casual jobs in order to work around other things such as studies, families and different jobs. While it’s great to have a bank of people you can call on when you need them, they will all have different availability which will impact on you when you’re trying to work out who’s available when. It can take a lot of time to cross reference information from so many different people. There’s also a risk that they told you their availability but it’s not written down anywhere and you can’t remember what they said, meaning you’ll have to spend time chasing them up or have to change the schedule.
When you implement workforce management software, all your casual staff will have the app which they will use to enter the dates when they are available, and permanent staff can enter when they’re on leave. The software that creates the rotas will always take this information into account, which means you’ll never accidentally schedule someone who’s unavailable. Manual data entry errors will be a thing of the past!
And when someone’s off sick, it’s simple to check who is available, so you don’t waste time ringing people who were never free at that time.
People wanting to swap their shifts can be an annoying part of rostering. Changing things over on spreadsheets can lead to mistakes, with the potential to double book one person or overlook them completely.
It’s really easy to deal with shift swaps using Nextra’s rostering software. It’s a simple drag and drop function which enables you to slot a replacement in straight away and check you have filled all the staffing spaces you need.
When staff members are clocking in and out manually, there is a lot of room for error and misuse. This could lead to issues like time theft as people clock in for friends who are late. And without an accurate overall picture of staffing, you run the risk of over- or under-staffing at similar events, wasting money and upsetting your clients.
With the app, everyone can clock in and out at the touch of a button. This makes life convenient for your team members, and allows you to track attendance more accurately and makes clocking in for your friend a thing of the past. With the right workforce management software, the time tracking data can be used to calculate pay and holiday pay, integrating the data with your payroll system.
If you’re still using spreadsheets, you’ll have to manually keep track of holiday requests, sickness and absences, meaning you may miss where a shortfall in staffing might arise, as well as absences that could be harming your business.
Switching to the Nextra workforce management system will benefit the human resources aspect of scheduling. You can generate reports that will help you manage shortfalls and keep on top of absences, helping you to run a more efficient and cost-effective business.
Small businesses may initially be reluctant to pay for workforce management software because spreadsheets are free. But this is a false economy. You need to factor in the time it takes for a member of staff to create the rotas, keep up to date with everyone’s availability, make sure the right combination of people with the right skills and certifications are on each shift, and deal with all the requests to change shifts.
There is also the time it takes to go through the timesheets and calculate how much each staff member is going to be paid, and take into account the holiday pay owed to them. This is especially important in the case of hourly workers and staff on zero hours contracts.
On top of the cost savings in terms of the time it takes your office staff to manually schedule the rotas, there is also the hidden cost of time theft - with Nextra’s workforce software that requires everyone to clock in and out on their app, you will reduce the risk of accidental or deliberate time theft which will help your bottom line.
The affordability of implementing Nextra's workforce management software may surprise you and its implementation will help reduce costs. It will also help your staff save time (and avoid headaches!), giving your team the time and energy to concentrate on improving productivity on other aspects of your business.
We have been streamlining workforce management for the best part of 25 years. With the right workforce management software, automated scheduling will help you increase scheduling efficiency, employee time tracking will become easier and more precise, absence management will be more manageable, changes in personal details will be easy to make, and you will be able to link it to your payroll software, making life a lot easier.
Nextra rostering software is designed to provide all the data and information you need however large or small your company, and however complex your needs.
It’s time for you to ditch the spreadsheets and adopt a workforce management software solution that will make the task quicker and more accurately, with the knock on benefits of helping you manage payroll and HR functions.
Contact us to talk about how we can help you and book a free demo that shows how easy creating a rota can be.
In our second Ditch the Spreadsheet blog, we’ll take a look at the kind of training needed for our workforce software. Spoiler alert - we provide in depth training to some of your staff members so they can then train current and future staff members to use it successfully.
Spreadsheets slowing you down? Discover how Nextra’s workforce management software simplifies staff rotas, saves time, and boosts efficiency.
