Many of our clients increasingly point to rostering as one of the management tasks that take up more time than they should. So many factors (such as sudden weather changes having an impact on foot traffic, or staff taking sick days) can’t be predicted in advance, so a duty manager has to effectively be on constant call to make changes. Then, making those changes provides a new set of challenges in itself; it’s short notice, so many of your staff have now made other plans, or your supervisor would now need to do a double-shift in order to get the mix of staff right.

Using automated planning and communication tools, a large portion of these headaches can be eliminated.

Imagine a scenario where a barista has called in sick using an app on their phone. Immediately, the software begins systematically sending text messages to other baristas in your staff pool, and waiting for a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response before either rostering the replacement or moving on to the next barista in the list. Within minutes, the sick member of staff has been de-rostered (and had their resultant timesheet automatically adjusted), and a replacement staff member with the right set of skills has confirmed that they will work the shift. And all before the duty manager has even noticed the notification.

Different rostering software solutions come with different features, as well as different levels of integration with other software (such as accounting). Choosing the right solution is more about your own needs than one option simply being better than others. Let’s look at a few of the options:

DEPUTY

Deputy is an undisputed world leader in the business of managing people. Since 1992, more than 30 000 companies in more than 70 countries have been using Deputy. Deputy has always taken pride in making it easier and more efficient to list, hence their intuitive drag-and-drop roster builders, auto-scheduling features and geo-located smartphone attendance. You can create smart rosters with Deputy based on sales data, so that you always have enough staff during your rush. You can also check your estimated costs before your listings are published to ensure that you stay on budget.

Once you’re ready to go, notify your employees via email or text so that everyone knows their next hours, another feature that helps you save time and money and takes the headache out of managing your staff.

• A drag-and-drop rostering interface makes life super easy.
• Staff cost forecasts mean you can reduce inflated hours.
• Auto-scheduling: input data points and Deputy will find the best employees based on your shift structure.
• A newsfeed and other employee communication tools that allow everyone to stay on top of availability, roster changes and shift swaps.
• A clock-in function with geolocation to see who’s working when and where.
• Give your staff more accountability. Deputy works offline, too, and saves up to 24 hours of activity until you’re back online.

Website: https://www.deputy.com/

TANDA

Let’s start with the timeclock feature of Tanda, which synchronizes with your POS to accurately record all the logged hours of your staff. Your employees benefit from clocking on and off at any POS terminal, making your employees more accountable and tracking who works when. But here’s where it’s really cool: the selfie clock feature means that your employees take a picture of themselves when they clock in, so that you get a picture of your employees at each shift.

Tanda uses innovative algorithms to predict schedules for its machine learning software. They also have seamless payroll integration, easy onboarding of employees and automated award interpreters, who automatically calculate the Fair Work Australia hospitality awards. All this is part of the visually attractive ‘Costed Rosters’, which includes views that let you know how much each list will cost. And finally, cached data means that even if your system falls, Tanda keeps tracking your staff hours, so you don’t lose anything.

• A drag-and-drop interface within an easy-to-use Roster view
• The ability to create roster templates
• Up-to-date, automatic award rate calculations for Sundays and public holidays
• Payroll platform integration
• A timeclock feature that sits within your Impos system

Website: https://www.tanda.co/

ZUUS

Zuus was founded in 2014 and is a relatively new player in the roster game, providing a modern approach to managing the workforce. One key aspect of Zuus Workforce is that it allows you to use your POS sales and customer data (seen above) to forecast the activities of your venue so that you can get the right number of employees at the right time. Zuus can tell you how many people every 15 minutes of the day you will need. Pretty clever!

A graphical display of customer demand versus your labour helps you to see where you are under or overstaffed. With the details of your personnel working in real time, you can adjust your schedules accordingly. The employee exchange system of Zuus allows you and your employees to interact with schedules for switching shifts and requesting changes in multiple locations. All these aspects are part of the myZUUS phone app, which provides managers and employees with powerful new ways of interacting with each other and their work.

• An employee communication tool for availability, roster changes and shift swaps.
• A clock-in function with geolocation to see who’s working when and where.
• Payroll platform integration.
• The powerful myZUUS phone app for staff and managers.
• Harvesting of POS data to ensure your schedule is as efficient and effective as possible.

Website: https://www.zuusworkforce.com/

WHICH TO CHOOSE?

FinancesOnline.com has a great breakdown of features:

If you don’t need your rostering software to link in with other apps or software, and you’re not interested in any of the funkier features such as the selfie clock-in, or AI predictive rostering, it might be that price is the biggest factor for you. We recommend always talking directly with any software service providers of this type, and trying to arrange a trial. You will only really know whether a service like this is right for you after using it for a little while.