5 Things You Should Know About Staff Rostering

by alex. (follow)

Staff (2)      Human Resources (1)     

Any team-driven business needs to have a firm understanding of rostering.

A team is only managed well with an effective leader, who understands how to assign people to a task.



Rostering is an essential cornerstone to any thriving business, and though it seems like a simple task, designing and maintaining a thorough, accurate and most importantly fair roster is in itself a challenge for which there are many approaches.

However, these five tips are all essential to the framework of drafting, editing and maintaining a roster that works for both employers, and their employees.

1) Know the Laws
Before you start a roster you need to know the laws surrounding your particular business or industry.

There are different pay rates, regulations and working hours for just about every industry that thrives on a team-based operation.

Before you do anything else, familiarise yourself with how long you can keep employees working per day, how many breaks they get and how long these breaks need to be, and what kind of employees you have (casual, part or full time), and how much notice employees require for changes to the roster.

These laws are found in the workplace bargaining agreement, and the award they are paid under.

2) Know Your Employees
Having a grasp of who your team consists of is fundamental.

If you know for instance that employee A has great time management skills while employee B produces quality work over a long period of time, pairing them together on the same task may be beneficial as A's skills would serve to manage B's work habits, producing good work quickly.

Of course this is a very basic example, but you've got to have the right tool for the job. Know what your team is good at, make sure you know what shifts they need, and roster accordingly. Always let them know you're doing your best to cater for everyone, but it's not always possible.



3) Break it Down
In order to roster effectively you need to have an in-depth understanding of what the job entails. Take a hard look at the task(s) you're rostering for, and ask yourself these questions:

How high a priority is this task?
Are there any jobs that need to be done first so that this task can be completed?
Is there anyone on the team that specialises in a job like this?
How many people will this job entail?
How long will they need to work on it for?

Once you've broken down the job into manageable criteria with the questions above, your roster will become a web of efficiency, with multiple people working on multiple tasks gaining optimum results.

4) Draft and Revise
Draft up your roster in a visual form. There are multiple avenues for this, such as our workforce management software to streamline this process.such as Ento. Once the initial draft is drawn up, talk to your team or other managers and see what input they can offer, then revise the draft accordingly. Continue the process until you have a single, working roster, that will enable you and your team to tackle any and all tasks you may have to handle with optimal efficiency.

5) Plan for Failure
There needs to be a contingency plan. You need to be able to roster for an eventuality where everything doesn't go according to plan. There should always be team members that can be pulled from one job to another, should it need to happen. At the same time, you can't roster your contingency in a way that it means if something does go wrong, you will have 20 people scrambling to get the work of 40 people done. Roster as perfectly as you can, while also allowing some wriggle room should things go astray.

While this article doesn't entail everything about drawing up an effective roster, these five steps are the basic minimum you need to ensure that you roster your staff effectively and fairly to complete any given task.

#Human Resources
#Staff

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