Key trends to look for in your rota
We live in a data-driven world, and our rotas are no exception.
Most businesses have moved on from the days of pen and paper schedules.
Even complex spreadsheets have been left behind.
If your business is still using either of these methods, it’s time to upgrade.
A digital employee scheduling system like Findmyshift can save you time and money while contributing to a happier and healthier workforce.
There’s no excuse to still be scheduling in the dark ages!
And with a digital solution, you have access to a lot more data about your rota and your timesheets as well.
This is even more relevant if you use a time clock system to allow employees to sign in and out, as well as track their time on different roles.
Check out this post for how a time clock can help your business. It can be a particular advantage in shift-based industries where hours fluctuate regularly.
Greater oversight of your business, more accurate costs, and ensuring fair rewards to those working hardest are just some of the benefits.
So what can you do with all the data produced by these solutions?
This post will be looking at the key ways to use rota and time clock data to drive smarter decisions in your own business.
There’s a lot more you can learn by diving into your own data. And with Findmyshift offering over 40 interactive charts and visualisations, you have all that power at your fingertips.
Identify scheduling errors
Under or over staffing certain areas of your business can be equally detrimental.
If you don’t have enough employees in a certain department, you run the risk of employee burnout, lower quality service, or increased overtime costs.
Employees will be working too hard, have to stay later, or just be unable to deliver the standards you expect.
Overstaff areas mean that you’re either wasting money on employee hours you don’t need, or you’re regularly having to send staff home early, so they’re not getting the hours they hoped to have. Do that too regularly and morale could take a hit.
By looking at what areas regular incur overtime costs, and equally where the logged hours are lower than the scheduled shifts, you can spot these discrepancies and address them.
Fine tune your project pitches
If your business works on a per-project basis regularly, then you may have to estimate costs when bidding for contracts. This is far easier to do when you have the data to back up your predictions!
If you can look at the hours billed to previous similar endeavours, it will inform your bid accordingly. This ensures you make accurate bids for profitable projects and grow your business as a result.
Potential clients will be impressed if you can back up your pitches with real data and examples from your past work to show your understanding of the task at hand.
Keep projects profitable
In the same vein, understanding your costs in real-time as you schedule helps you stay within your profit margins. Findmyshift shows you your projected costs based on the upcoming shifts, the scheduled employees, and their pay rates.
If your labour costs are getting too high for a project with a set budget, you can adjust things ahead of time, before those hours are worked.
Understand strengths and weaknesses
The ability to track hours across different areas and roles give you the opportunity to dive into the data of individual employees. Looking at the time they spend on certain tasks can be enlightening.
For instance, let’s say you have a regular administrative task that several employee take turns to complete. If you can see that one employee usually manages the job faster than the others, that may indicate a strength in that area.
Keeping them on that task in the future could save your business time and ensure that all your employees work on roles that suit their skills.
Tracking your own time as an owner or manager can also have significant benefits. If you dive into which tasks take up the most of your time, you can look at ways to improve efficiency there.
Whatever you have on, scheduling will at least be a breeze with Findmyshift! And we hope this tips help you use your rota data to improve the rest of your business as well.