RosterLab Blog

Guest Blog - A study about self-rostering

Kait O’Callahan, Clinical Coordinator at Unitec, is our guest author. She, along with Sharon Sitters, Lecturer at Unitec, and Mike Peterson, Clinical Tutor at Whanganui Hospital, have done a study through Unitec into the perceptions around self-rostering in radiographers. Rosterlab was fortunate enough to support their research with our AI rostering platform. This was something Sharon and I were cognisant of when we approached Whanganui’s radiography department about self-rostering. However, it wasn’t until we finished our project that we realised just how many assumptions we had made and how naïve we had initially been. It was Mike, clinical tutor at Whanganui and co-researcher in this project, that approached us with the idea of bringing self-rostering to the department. Mike’s motivation was admittedly self-centred – he wants to improve his work/life balance by jiggling his schedule such that whether he plays rugby or not is no longer determined by his roster. Sharon and I could see the potential benefits of self-rostering almost immediately; unlike Mike, as lecturers we both have flexible working practices that allow us to easily fit in our lives around work. This level of autonomy is something both Sharon and I value, and the lack of autonomy is what inhibits us from returning to radiography full-time. But, what if a self-rostering system could fit the needs of both the staff and the department? By having staff working shifts they predominantly want to work, and having service needs still met, our research team envisioned a radiology utopia, where happy radiographers come to work feeling fulfilled professionally and personally. We greatly underestimated how entrenched traditional rostering practices were in radiology. How we underestimated something that obvious seems embarrassing, but I think we were so sold on our vision for a future that we forgot to ask syoutaff exactly what was and wasn’t working for them. It’s a learning we will take to our future research – first, suss out what is going well and isn’t going well with the roster, THEN try and help them solve their problems. Don’t assume problems and don’t assume you have the solutions. There were staff that were very happy with their current roster; part of this was because they had created ways over time of getting the roster to work for them. A staff member aptly called it ‘customs and practices’, and it was our first sign that some of Whanganui’s staff were self-rostering already. Naturally, these people had an aversion to self-rostering as they were already getting what they wanted; they already had the autonomy we thought we were bringing. Self-rostering would level the playing field, and, as Sharon said, ‘make unseen things seen’. Of course, there were plenty of staff who were unhappy with their current roster, although they were at pains to clarify that it wasn’t the fault of the person running the roster, who was universally liked. And this brings me to the next obstacle… Manual rostering might be an exhausting, thankless task, but behind each roster is a person who has dedicated time and energy to creating the best roster they can. For Whanganui, this was the job of the rostering manager (and radiographer) Melanie*. By bringing in Rosterlab’s AI, we could have been interpreted as saying to Melanie, ‘hey thanks for your time, but this can do your job better and faster’. I can see how staff felt they didn’t want to offend Melanie by ditching them for an AI based system. It’s also not hard to see how a staff member might see Melanie’s job being automated, and wonder if theirs is next. While we saw Rosterlab’s software as a way to free up Melanie’s valuable time, in hindsight it could be seen as a ‘the robots are coming’ move, and that fear is one almost as old as manual rostering itself. Sharon, Mike, and I are no AI experts, but without preconceived ideas of Whanganui’s rostering practices (and in Mike’s case, extensive training on Rosterlab’s system), we could get our head around how to self-roster effectively in a relatively short amount of time. What we underestimated (drastically, may I add) was the amount of training required to help the staff to self-roster using Rosterlab’s technology. The main issue we had were that Whanganui’s staff were so used to their manual roster that they made assumptions that the AI would think just like Melanie. A classic example of this was when a staff member commented that they were unhappy the AI had put them on call the night before annual leave. From the AI’s perspective, that is efficient rostering as any call-break would run into the next day, (and the staff member’s leave – not costing the department anything), but from the staff member’s perspective it’s a disaster. When we explained to the staff member that she would have had to tell the AI to roster that night as ‘no-call’, she exclaimed, “I just thought it would think like Melanie.” Thankfully, this obstacle is a fairly easy one to overcome, it just requires more training. It’s a cliché, but it’s true. For a self-rostering system to be effective, education needs to be prioritised. It needs to be bi-directional; learn first from the department, and then let them learn about the system from you. Work with staff to solve their problems, and don’t assume people hold the same values as you. Our research team did attempt this with our community-based participatory approach; we held training days and we listened to hours worth of informal discussions. But still, we could have done more. And we will, because our next step is to pilot this programme in another radiology department. Watch this space. *names have been changed Subscribe for more insights and product updates

Open shifts 101

When writing a roster, you can come across the problem that after putting in everyone’s regular shifts and regular hours, there are still shifts that need filling. Instead of figuring out who would be willing and able to take on extra shifts, Open Shifts addresses this problem by asking your staff if they would like to take on any of the unfilled shifts. Then you can select from the ones who are willing by any number of methods, where "first come, first served" is the most popular one. Open shifts are effectively used to fill last-minute gaps, such as when someone calls in sick. The same process can be done further in advance for known future gaps in coverage, for example, caused by staff being on leave or just increases in requirements that haven’t been filled by hiring yet. 1. Flexibility for Employees One of the most prominent advantages of the open shift model is the flexibility it offers to the workforce. By allowing employees to choose their shifts, they can balance their work with other commitments, be it family, education, or personal interests. This level of autonomy often leads to increased job satisfaction, as employees feel more in control of their work-life balance. Additionally, providing the freedom to select shifts can help in attracting talent, especially those who might be deterred by rigid scheduling systems. By fostering an environment that values flexibility, businesses can reduce turnover rates and enhance employee morale. 2. Meeting Unpredictable Demand Many industries face fluctuations in demand, be it due to seasonal changes, market dynamics, or unforeseen events. For instance, retail businesses may need extra hands during holiday seasons, while emergency services might require more staff during natural disasters or public events. With traditional fixed schedules, businesses often find themselves overstaffed during slow periods and understaffed during peak times. The open shift system can address this challenge. By not pre-assigning all shifts, organizations can release them as the demand rises, ensuring that they have adequate staff when needed without being burdened with excess labor costs during lulls. 3. Reducing Staffing Costs From a financial perspective, open shifts can result in significant savings. In a fixed scheduling system, businesses might hire temporary workers or pay overtime to meet sudden spikes in demand. Both these solutions can be expensive. On the other hand, with open shifts, employees who are willing and available can opt-in without the business incurring additional hiring or overtime costs. Furthermore, by aligning staff availability with operational needs, organizations can optimize their workforce, ensuring that they are neither overstaffed nor understaffed. This equilibrium not only saves on labor costs but also enhances operational efficiency. In conclusion, as the business landscape continues to evolve, so must the strategies that organizations employ to manage their workforce. Open shifts offer a flexible, demand-driven, and cost-effective solution that caters to the needs of both employees and employers. While it might not be suitable for every industry or organization, those who have adopted it have found a beneficial tool in navigating the challenges of modern workforce management. Open shifts, though beneficial in many ways, come with potential downsides that organizations should carefully consider before implementation. 1. Uncertainty for Employees One of the primary concerns with open shifts is the uncertainty it might introduce for employees. Without a fixed schedule, employees may find it challenging to predict their income, especially if they rely heavily on a certain number of hours per week. This unpredictability can lead to financial instability, causing stress and dissatisfaction. Moreover, the lack of a regular pattern can make it hard for employees to establish a consistent work-life balance, potentially impacting their mental and physical well-being. 2. Potential for Understaffing While open shifts can address issues of overstaffing, they can inadvertently swing the pendulum to the other extreme: understaffing. Staff are not going to not make plans on a day for a chance at an open shift. Being too reliant on open shifts can mean that if there's a sudden spike in demand, businesses can find themselves ill-prepared to handle the workload as staff aren’t available to accept the open shifts. This can lead to poor customer service, overburdened employees, and even lost revenue. 3. Ineffective Staffing Sometimes, there will be someone available to pick up the open shift, but they wouldn’t be your first, second or even third choice. The available person isn’t always the person who is trained on the duties of the open shift. They might not be familiar with the equipment or the infrastructure. They might also be tired from an earlier shift or another job. Given these challenges, how can businesses implement open shifts effectively? By employing smart strategies and clear guidelines, it's possible to harness the benefits of this flexible system while minimizing its drawbacks. 1. Communication Strategies Clear, consistent, and transparent communication is paramount when managing open shifts. This means regularly updating employees about available shifts and any changes in demand or business needs. By using modern communication tools and platforms, businesses can send real-time notifications to staff, ensuring they are always in the loop. Employers should also encourage feedback, creating a two-way communication channel. This way, they can gauge employee sentiments and adjust strategies accordingly. 2. Setting Clear Guidelines While flexibility is the essence of open shifts, a complete laissez-faire approach can lead to chaos. It's crucial to set clear guidelines about how and when shifts can be chosen. For instance, there might be a cutoff time for selecting shifts or a maximum number of shifts one can opt for in a week. Such rules ensure that the process remains orderly and that all employees get a fair shot at their preferred hours. 3. Prioritizing Shifts Not all shifts are created equal. Some might be busier than others or require specialized skills. Recognizing this, businesses should establish a system of prioritizing shifts. This could be based on seniority, skill set, or even on a rotational basis. When there's a high-demand shift, businesses can give first dibs to employees who haven't had a chance to work that shift in a while, ensuring fairness in the system. In conclusion, while open shifts present certain challenges, they are not insurmountable. With proactive management, open communication, and fair guidelines, businesses can make the most of this flexible system. It's all about striking the right balance, ensuring that the organization's needs are met without compromising employee satisfaction and well-being. In the vast landscape of workforce management, there's no one-size-fits-all solution. Organizations have traditionally depended on fixed schedules, allotting employees specific hours and days to work. Yet, with the rise of the gig economy and an increasing emphasis on flexibility, open shifts are becoming an appealing alternative. But must companies choose one over the other? The answer is no. A harmonious blend of traditional scheduling and open shifts can offer a tailored solution, drawing on the strengths of both systems. Open shifts can be interspersed with fixed schedules to ensure a core group of employees is always present, guaranteeing stability. Meanwhile, the flexibility of open shifts can address unpredictable spikes in demand. By integrating the two, companies can attain an equilibrium between consistency and flexibility. With this hybrid model, management becomes a central concern. This is where technology steps in as a pivotal player. Modern workforce management software, equipped with AI capabilities, can predict demand fluctuations and suggest optimal scheduling solutions. These platforms allow employees to pick shifts, trade hours with colleagues, or even offer their shifts up for bidding. Mobile applications provide real-time notifications to staff about available shifts, ensuring immediate response to emerging business needs. Additionally, cloud-based platforms allow managers to have an overview of staffing, even if they are not on-site. Through data analytics, these tools can even provide insights into peak demand times, frequent no-shows, or identify patterns that human managers might overlook. While technology plays a significant role, the human touch cannot be discounted. To maximize the efficiency of open shifts, here are some actionable tips: Open Dialogue: Regularly solicit feedback from employees. Understand their preferences, pain points, and any challenges they face in using the open shift system.Training: Ensure that all employees are trained to use the scheduling software. Periodic refresher courses can also be beneficial.Fair Play: Put systems in place that prevent the monopolization of the most preferred shifts by a few employees. This could be achieved through a rotational system or setting limits on consecutive shifts.Transparency: Always keep employees informed about business needs. If there's an upcoming event or anticipated spike in demand, let them know ahead of time.Backup Plans: Always have a contingency in place. This could be in the form of on-call employees or a reserve workforce ready to step in during emergencies.Incentives: Consider offering incentives for less popular or last-minute shifts. This could be in the form of higher pay, additional perks, or even non-monetary rewards like extended breaks. In today's dynamic business environment, flexibility is not just an advantage—it's a necessity. Open shifts cater to this demand for flexibility, offering a responsive approach to workforce management. Yet, it's essential to remember the roots of traditional scheduling, which offers consistency and predictability. The future lies not in choosing one over the other but in integrating the two, ensuring businesses have both the stability of a committed workforce and the flexibility to adapt to changing demands. With the aid of technology and by adhering to best practices, organizations can seamlessly integrate open shifts into their scheduling repertoire, ensuring a balanced, efficient, and contented workplace. If you'd like us to help you improve your rostering system and start implementing open shifts, reach out today! Open shifts Shift vacancies Floating shifts Subscribe for more insights and product updates

Rostering 101: Understanding the Basics of Rostering

What exactly is a roster? At its core, a roster (also referred to as a rota, staff schedule or personnel planner depending on where you are from) is a plan that outlines the shifts and duties assigned to workers over a given period. Even jobs with a fixed schedule, like a typical 9-to-5, Monday-to-Friday role, follow a kind of roster - it’s just often assumed rather than explicitly written down (also known as an implied roster). It is an essential tool used by organizations from all sorts of industries to ensure that there are enough staff at all critical times. Rosters are especially important in sectors like healthcare, retail, and hospitality, where continuous coverage is vital. Why should you use a roster? Imagine managing a call centre that operates 24/7 or a hospital that needs medical and nursing staff present round-the-clock. If you were to assign shifts to each employee individually, it would not only be chaotic but also prone to errors and conflicts. This is where a roster is useful. If your business requires more than a standard 8-hour workday from Monday to Friday, or if you manage a substantial number of employees, rosters become essential. They help ensure that all required time slots have adequate coverage and that employees are assigned to work their shifts efficiently. Key components of a good roster 1. Employee contractual details One of the key components of a good roster is that it helps ensure an employer is meeting their employee’s contractual obligations. Before you can create a roster, it's crucial to understand what each of your employee’s contractual obligations are. For example: How many hours per week are they allocated? Do they have certain days they cannot work? What is your organisation's policy on overtime? Are there restrictions on how many days in a row they can work? Are there restrictions on how many hours they should work in a given shift? Understanding these details is the foundation of a successful roster. Without this, you could potentially breach contracts, leading to unintended costs, unhappy staff and possibly even legal issues. 2. Shift timings The core of any roster is the shift timings. These are the periods during which employees are scheduled to work. For a 24/7 company, it is very common to have A.M, P.M and night shifts, each of which is 8.5 hours to cover the entire 24 hours of the workday. The extra half an hour is to have a small overlap for handover. For example: AM shift: 7 a.m - 3.30 p.m PM shift: 3 p.m - 11.30 p.m Night shift: 11 p.m - 7.30 a.m However, additional types of shifts may be needed so you can better meet workload requirements or meet the needs of your staff. Working parents often appreciate 10 am starts so they can drop their kids off before starting a shift, while younger staff may want 12-hour shifts so they can have three day weekends. You can begin to see the social challenges and complexity when you want to try and accommodate your team's preferences too. More shifts can also mean better adherence to the demands of your business. If you have a morning shift that starts at 7 a.m, but there isn’t much demand until 9 a.m, you might want to have a 9 a.m shift as well. Rosters should clearly define these shifts to avoid ambiguity. Too much variety will feel inconsistent to your staff and create confusion. 3. Responsibilities and tasks Planning ahead by assigning specific tasks and responsibilities to each employee in the roster helps avoid confusion and ensures you have the right people with the right skills on each shift. For example, defining a shift coordinator ensures you have at least one capable senior staff member to lead the shift each day. In a medical context, there might be many different subspecialties within your workforce, and you need at least one member of staff to fulfil each role during different periods of the day. This makes it especially important to match the correct staff to the correct role, as each staff member can only perform a subset of the potential roles. It may even be important to have people performing different roles for different parts of their day, but rostering more than two roles or tasks per day significantly increases the complexity of rostering and is not something we recommend. 4. Staffing requirements Depending on the nature of your business, different times and days might require varying numbers of staff. A bar needs more bartenders on a Friday night compared to a Tuesday afternoon. Rosters need to account for these staffing requirements to ensure there are always enough employees available. Staffing requirements should be correlated with the workload as best as possible. In a supermarket context, rostering numbers might be best correlated with known data such as revenue per hour; in an emergency department at a hospital, expected patients per hour. Make sure these are regularly updated to reflect your actual workload. 5. Staff preferences and fairness While business needs are important, a good roster also considers the preferences of staff. Maybe Sarah prefers morning shifts, while Tom would rather work in the evenings. While it's not always possible to accommodate everyone's preferences, a good roster aims to strike a balance to keep morale high. Additionally, fairness in distributing shifts like weekends, holidays, and unpopular hours ensures that no employee feels overlooked and overworked. Keep in mind that these preferences may change regularly, and it is good to check in with your employees. 6. Safety requirements Keeping your staff safe, especially in sectors like healthcare, manufacturing, or transportation . Rosters must ensure that there are enough experienced personnel during every shift and that no employee is working beyond safe limits. Overworking staff can lead to fatigue, burnout, errors, and accidents leading to increased absenteeism. Considerations when deciding how to make your roster Designing how your organisation should make rosters is not a mere administrative task; it's the art of balancing business goals with employee needs. Organisations must consider various factors to ensure that the roster serves its primary function while being adaptable and sustainable. Here are some key concerns when shaping your roster: Customer and patient satisfaction The end goal of any business is to satisfy its customers, and the roster plays a pivotal role in this: Peak hours: certain hours may experience higher demand than others. Whether you're running a retail business that sees a rush during evenings or a hospital where certain times experience higher patient inflow, the roster should be equipped to handle peak times. Rest periods: employees should have sufficient breaks between shifts. This ensures they are rested and effective and adhere to labour laws that might prescribe minimum rest periods. In childcare and call centres, breaks may need to be rostered so that always a certain number of employees are available. Skill matching: especially relevant in sectors like healthcare, it's vital to match the employee's skill set with the demand. A specialised task requires someone trained and qualified for that task. Efficiency Efficiency in a roster means utilising your existing resources to meet customer demand as precisely as possible: Balanced staffing: by refining shift timings and roster patterns, you can reduce overstaffing and understaffing, ensuring optimal workforce deployment. Having a more flexible roster pattern where employees can be redeployed to times that better match customer demands often allows for more optimisation of staffing. Avoiding staff burnout: overworking staff in the name of efficiency will only lead to burnout, errors, and increased turnover. Consider implementing some standardised rules that will reduce burnout and stick to them. Rules such as: a maximum number of days worked in a row, a maximum number of hours per fortnight, a minimum number of weekends, and a maximum number of night shifts. Skill-based allocation: assign tasks based on expertise. Someone great at customer interaction might be less effective in backend operations, and vice versa. Staff Engagement An effective roster isn't just about business; it's about people. Unhappy staff leads to higher turnover and less productivity: Preference considerations: while it's not always feasible to cater to everyone's preferences, taking them into account when possible can boost morale and reduce absenteeism. Fair distribution: ensure that the team distributes unpopular shifts, weekends, or holiday duties fairly. Feedback: regularly take feedback from staff regarding the roster. The staff might provide insights or face challenges that take time to be apparent to the management. Difficulty of change A good roster is not set in stone; it evolves. But changes should be manageable: Flexibility vs Stability: while it's crucial to be adaptable, constant changes can disrupt operations and disorient staff. Try and get your rosters out at least two weeks ahead of time. By preemptively asking staff for preferences, you remove the need for shift swaps. Communication: any changes should be communicated clearly and well in advance, barring emergencies. This reduces confusion and gives employees time to adjust to the new schedule. Leveraging rostering software can improve communications from the roster maker to employees and between employees. How employees are scheduled in the workforce can impact productivity, work-life balance, and overall job satisfaction. Different types of rosters cater to various business needs and employee preferences. 1. Fixed Rosters Fixed rosters are the most straightforward type of roster. With this system, employees work the same shifts or hours every week. For instance, an individual might consistently work from 9 a.m to 5 p.m, Monday to Friday. The key advantage of fixed rosters is their predictability. Employees always know when they'll be working, making planning personal activities and commitments around their work schedule easier. However, this inflexibility can also be a downside. Businesses that experience fluctuations in demand might find that they're overstaffed during quiet periods and understaffed during peak times. Employees seeking a change in their routine or those who want to engage in personal commitments at varying times find fixed rosters restrictive. It is also challenging to meet staffing requirements when critical employees are away on leave or sick. There are also hiring challenges to finding someone willing to work the weekend night shift every week for their contractual employment. If the more challenging shifts aren't shared around it can foster resentment amongst your staff. 2. Rotating rosters As the name suggests, rotating rosters involve pattern shifts that rotate on a set schedule. An employee might work the morning shift for one week, the afternoon shift the next week, and the night shift the week after. This rotation allows all staff to experience each shift over time. The advantage of rotating rosters is that it distributes the more "undesirable" shifts (like late nights or early mornings) among all employees, ensuring no one is stuck permanently with an inconvenient shift. It also allows businesses to maintain consistent coverage, which is especially crucial in 24-hour operations. The changing nature of shifts can make it hard for some employees to establish a regular sleep pattern or routine. Plus, some people are different; others might like working in specific patterns that other employees find undesirable. The overall happiness of your staff might not be optimised. Another potential pitfall with rotating rosters is when people strategically take leave to avoid the "bad shifts". This can lead to persistent challenges in filling undesirable shifts, such as night shifts. 3. Flexible rosters Flexible rosters, sometimes linked with self-scheduling, are gaining traction in modern workplaces. They allow employees to have a say when they work, often within certain boundaries the employer sets. This might mean choosing specific days to work, adjusting start and finish times, or even working longer shifts in exchange for more consecutive days off. The main advantage of flexible rosters is the autonomy they grant employees, often leading to increased job satisfaction and better work-life balance. They can also be a benefit for businesses, as employees might willingly opt to work during peak periods. However, managing a flexible roster requires sophisticated scheduling tools and clear communication to ensure that all shifts are covered, and business needs are met. There are a range of other techniques to ensure that the right people are working at the correct times. While some methods aim for predictability and structure, others are designed for flexibility and adaptability. Organisations tend to employ three notable strategies to accommodate varying needs: Open shifts, shift swaps and on-call shifts. Open Shifts Open shifts refer to additional shifts that employees can opt to take beyond their contracted hours, especially during heightened demand or staffing shortages. These can arise from sudden leaves, illnesses, or even unexpected resignations. These optional extra shifts are shared openly, allowing employees to choose shifts that align with their availability and preferences. This allows employees to earn more while also having the flexibility to manage their schedules. From the business perspective, open shifts offer a dynamic solution to fluctuating staffing needs. Whether it's a surge in demand or a sudden drop in available staff, this system allows businesses to adapt promptly. However, it's essential to maintain clear communication and foster a sense of responsibility among employees to ensure these shifts are adequately covered. Shift swaps Shift swaps offer employees the flexibility to exchange shifts among themselves. If an employee cannot work their scheduled shift for any reason, they can arrange with a colleague to swap shifts. This technique provides personal flexibility and can enhance job satisfaction, as employees have more control over their schedules. For employers, shift swaps can be a double-edged sword. While they may reduce absenteeism, if not monitored correctly, they can lead to consistency in staffing levels or skills available at any given time. On-call shifts On-call shifts are commonly found in industries like healthcare and IT, where immediate response might be needed unexpectedly. Employees on-call are not actively working but must be ready to work. This method provides businesses with a safety net, ensuring they have access to staffing during unforeseen peaks or emergencies. Being on-call can be taxing for employees, affecting work-life balance. It requires them to be always prepared to jump into work mode, often with little notice. In today's digital age, businesses constantly look for ways to streamline operations, enhance productivity, and improve communication. One of the tools that can achieve these objectives is an online rostering system. Here's why investing in such a system can be a game-changer for organisations: 1. Automatic rostering Automatic rostering is one of the standout features of online systems. It simplifies the traditionally administratively heavy task of manually plotting out shifts. By inputting their staffing requirements on a daily, or even hourly basis, the organisation's "rostering rules", and each employee's preferences, businesses can have optimal rosters generated automatically. This reduces human error and ensures optimal staff allocation based on factors like skill sets, availability, and workload. The convenience and accuracy brought about by this automation can lead to significant time and cost savings. 2. Efficient communication with staff and stakeholders Online rostering systems offer integrated communication tools that allow managers to instantly notify staff about their shifts, changes, or other vital information. Whether it's through email or in-app notifications, employees are kept in the loop, reducing confusion and potential scheduling conflicts. Managing open shifts, shift swaps, preferences, and roster changes requires quickly notifying many employees, which can be done efficiently with an online rostering system. Moreover, stakeholders and departments that rely on the rostering information can access it in real-time, ensuring everyone is on the same page. 3. Backups, consistency and accessibility Online systems can be accessed remotely, provide automated backups and ensure data is safe from accidental deletions or system failures. Furthermore, they maintain consistency and reliability of data, making it much easier to analyse rostering patterns and make more informed staffing decisions. 4. Detailed analytics With online rostering, organisations can tap into high level and granular analytics. The system can provide insights into crucial rostering considerations such as fairness, overtime, staffing coverage and leave. Such data can be pivotal in identifying areas of improvement, optimising workforce allocation, and even in strategic decision-making regarding hiring or training needs. 5. Better business outcomes Online rostering systems do more than save time - they improve staffing efficiency, reduce costly errors, and support better workforce planning. With accurate, real-time data and optimised shift allocation, organisations can reduce overtime spend, improve service delivery, and enhance staff satisfaction - all of which translate into stronger operational and financial performance. Creating an effective roster is a delicate balancing act. It involves ensuring business needs are met while also considering the well-being and satisfaction of employees. A well-planned roster can increase productivity, reduce absenteeism, and higher employee morale. Here are some best practices to ensure your rosters hit the mark: Use an effective online system In the modern world of digital, relying on manual or outdated methods to create rosters can lead to inefficiencies, errors and unhappy staff and customers. An online rostering system streamlines the process, making it faster, more accurate, and more adaptable to changes. Such systems can automatically generate rosters based on set parameters, reducing the risk of human error. Additionally, they provide centralised access, ensuring that managers, HR, and employees can access the schedule anytime, anywhere. This ensures that all stakeholders are always in sync, minimising the potential for miscommunication or oversight. Rosters as flexible as possible for employees Flexibility in rostering is not just a perk for employees but can be a strategic advantage for businesses. Employees who feel they have a say in their schedules will likely be more engaged and satisfied with their work. For instance, if an employee prefers morning shifts or needs specific days off for personal commitments, accommodating these preferences, where possible, can lead to increased loyalty, reduced turnover and increased retention. This approach fosters a sense of mutual respect between the employer and the employee, with both parties working collaboratively to meet organisational needs and personal preferences. Keep employees up-to-date and engaged in the process Transparency and communication are crucial when it comes to rostering. Changes in schedules can have a significant impact on an employee's personal life, so it's essential to keep them informed about any changes as soon as possible. Inviting feedback or allowing employees to voice their preferences or concerns can make them feel valued and involved. This ensures that the rostering process is more democratic but also aids in building trust and rapport between management and staff. Remember, rostering is not just a technical challenge it’s also a social one. All these considerations and techniques make building an effective rostering system incredibly complicated. If you'd like to discuss your current rostering processes or need help improving your existing systems we’d be happy to chat.

The 4 levels of staff schedule optimisation

An excellent roster is one that best meets and enables a unit’s staffing coverage requirements. Real life is complex and nuanced, so simple representations of which staff we need and when we need them can always be improved. In this article, we present four different levels of staffing optimisation. Each level represents a more complex rostering problem, allowing for more optimisation possibilities and considerably more effort and skill to construct. The consequences of neglecting critical staffing factors when creating a roster, can range from tears and distress to dangerous gaps in the workforce capabilities needed for the challenges of the day. Obviously, at the basic level you need to have the right number of staff working each day. However, there's so much more that can be delivered in a complex roster that can positively impact staff satisfaction, productivity, safety and customer satisfaction. The most basic coverage level to consider is having the correct number of people on hand each day. It can be tempting to think that getting your staffing right is a simple calculation based on having the right number of FTE available to you to cover your roster, and it would be if one could freely allocate shifts to each employee. In actuality, it can be hard to freely move people around for many organisations due to the constraints of individual staff members. People will have different availabilities on different days and may have contractually guaranteed work hours. You might also have the complication of guaranteed roster patterns, such as fixed days on into days off style rotating schedules. Even with these constraints, there is usually some wriggle room to change the days each person is allocated to work in a roster to optimise for better coverage. A day can have the right number of people working but still have an overstaffed morning shift and an understaffed afternoon shift. Getting a good balance of staff working each shift can be difficult due to minimum hours between shifts, fairness around shift distribution, and contractual shift assignments. Sometimes shifts can be moved around to cover different peaks and troughs of business, especially when there is 24-hour coverage and multiple different shift lengths within each day. Having the right number on hand for each time period or shift is essential. When we traditionally think of shifts, a lot of information is encoded in a very simple shorthand. The fundamentals are always there; when the shift is expected to start and end. Implicitly there is an associated location for the shift, usually as there is only one place of work for the shift to occur, but this is not always the case. Beyond just time and location, we can also assign a specific role to a staff member during the shift, e.g., designated team leader for the shift or a required specialist. As multiple shifts can have the same location or role, we usually represent these components of the shift as a "task". Optimising task coverage must be considered simultaneously with which employees work which shifts on which days. If you take a schedule which was made while only considering day and shift coverage, you will often find that many shifts lack employees who can perform certain tasks and it is impossible to cover all those tasks. It will take so many shift changes to make the original roster work that you may as well make the roster from scratch. This same difficulty also applies to our next level of optimisation, in skills mix. Separate from tasks is having the right skills available on every shift. The distinction between tasks and skills might be a little murky since they are both ways of checking that every shift has the correct people on. The way I think about it is that tasks are what people do during a shift, whereas skills are attached to the person. Skills can be formal, such as a certificate or license, the competency to use a specific machine, or informal, such as being a more senior team member. When writing a roster, we must acknowledge that there is a need to ensure each shift is adequately skilled, lest we create a time when only junior staff work. A roster that optimises for effort, skills, employment constraints and staff preferences will deliver the most benefit in terms of productivity, safety, legal compliance and staff satisfaction. Well worth the effort! We've peeled back the layers of complexity that exist for optimising a roster. Each optimisation level requires an increasing amount of time, effort, and resources. This is because the rosterer must consider not only the number of people needed but also the tasks and skills required for each shift. The additional effort and resources needed for higher levels of optimisation may include managing data on employee availability, skills, and contracts. A software tool such as Rosterlab AI can store all relevant data and automatically create rosters considering all four levels of staffing optimisation. Subscribe for more insights and product updates

Rosterlab: our official guide to rostering

Staff are the key Rostering starts and ends with your staff. The most expensive part of a roster is staff retention. Staff take a long time to train and a long time to hire; staff leaving interrupts business and revenue streams, and staff leaving can often lead to a skills shortage. To retain your staff, start by asking, what shifts do your staff actually want to work? This is key to staff happiness. Allowing them to have a sense of flexibility in their life. For staff with very stable lives, an unchanging roster is best, one that stays familiar from week to week. For working parents and young people, lives can often change rapidly. Young people start a new hobby; soccer moves from Wednesdays to Tuesdays; if they have too fixed a schedule, they'll have to quit. What if a parent needs every Tuesday afternoon off to care for a child or other family member? Some parents would love to take off from 3:00 p.m. until after dinner. Reaffirm your staff's choice to work for you by giving them the work-life balance they deserve. People also have their own preferences about working styles. Most staff like longer shifts. 3 twelve-hour shifts in a row, and you can get all your working hours out of the way for the week. But for some, the idea of this is exhausting. Giving your staff a choice of shift length can be another way to tailor rosters to each individual staff member. Flexible rostering To accommodate everyone's situation, we recommend a flexible roster be adopted. It should be open to changes on a month-by-month basis and accommodate all of your staff's individual needs and specific rostering requests as best as possible. 4-6 week rosters allow for flexibility but also give predictability in people's schedules. We recommend that your staff enter their requests for the next roster each month. Firstly, they should enter their red requests which are requests that are critically important to them. A medical appointment, a three-day weekend holiday with friends, an important exam. Then they should enter requests for the rest of their rostered days. They shouldn't be forced to enter a request for every day, as often, it just doesn't matter, and flexibility is important when you're creating a roster in the next step. The culture also must be instilled that most requests will be granted only if reasonable. If everyone requests every weekend off, no one will be available to cover the ward. Give visibility to your staff about what requests other staff are making. Trust that they will cater to some extent to the organisation's needs, if only that it makes it more likely that their requests will be granted. With a reasoned approach, all red requests and 90% of total requests can often be granted. It's also important to ask your staff how they would like to be rostered when they haven't filled in requests, or you can't grant their request because of a shortage somewhere in the organisation. Ask them whether they like longer or shorter shifts, whether they like weekends, nights, how many shifts they prefer to work in a row and other niche rostering aspects specific to your organisation. This will give your organisation a huge strategic advantage; if your staff leave for another organisation, their requests will not be considered as precisely, and they will not have the same degree of flexibility towards the needs of a changing busy life. Also, instead of taking “sick leave” or making constant shift swaps because your staff are not happy with the shifts they are receiving, they will be much more satisfied with their requested roster. How Rosterlab helps We have an app tailor-made for allowing employees to make red requests and regular requests for their next roster. They can also input what they like in a roster and see what requests other nurses are making for maximally effective self-rostering. How to do it in a spreadsheet instead Start an Excel online workbook or Google sheet and let your staff fill it out online. Make it clear which cells can be filled out and how many red requests the staff are allowed. Add formulas to calculate the number of staff working at each shift and potentially skill mix to show your staff where they should be placing shifts. Now you know what all your staff want to work for the next roster period. It's time to make the roster. This is the most challenging part of the whole process, and if you get it right, it will save you many hours down the line. If people get what they want, there will be fewer "sick days", shift swaps, and roster management tasks. This part is like a sudoku, except all the numbers have their own feelings and personality. Firstly, the more you can automate checking your roster while you are constructing it, the better. Ideally, you want an application or formulas that check that you're meeting staff requests, skill mix, staffing matrix, contractual regulations and roster construction preferences. All these features are included in RosterLab free. Some of these can be done by someone with moderate excel experience, and some will require an excel expert. Start building the roster by copying in all the staff requests. From here, there are two key strategies for rostering, the first is to start off by filling up difficult-to-fill or critical shifts. Often, night shifts or out-of-ward shifts are the most restricted contractually, so these need to be filled first, followed by morning and afternoon shifts. The second strategy is to start by filling up the most highly skilled staff. These staff are often critical to spread around shifts to ensure there are always highly skilled and senior staff available to guide the other staff in the ward. Once all shifts and staff have been filled up, there is a last-minute adjustment phase. Look for stretches of shifts that end right before a shortage or start directly after it. Breaking the middle of a stretch of shifts is particularly challenging. When balancing your employee requests and ward requirements, this part of the process can take hours on a spreadsheet or manual rostering application, but it is: 100% fully automated by RosterLab. We analyse billions of combinations and show you rosters that a human could never think of. We automatically maximise your employee's happiness while staying within the resource requirements of the organisation. Now that you've created your roster, it's time to send it off to your staff! If you've made a good roster and have empathy for your staff's lives, preferences and requests, then this should be a joyful moment! Now you've got your roster, how are you going to send it out to your staff and manage it for the next roster period? Regardless of how you publish it, recognize that your roster is a living document and is bound to change substantially over time. People's lives are ever-changing. Even within the month or so of a roster. Staff will get sick, and staff will want to swap shifts as new priorities come up in their life, but you still need the right staff showing up at the right time. Also, although you've filled out the roster as best you can, you may still be a little short. Often you will need to ask your most understanding employees: who is willing to pick up an extra shift. The better you've made your roster; the fewer changes are required. So putting a little effort upfront to ensure your staff are happy will go a long way in decreasing the amount of management your roster will require. How Rosterlab helps Our app distributes a live version of the roster to all staff that they can view on their phones/tablets/computers. We also allow open shifts to be automatically posted to fill gaps or make up for staff who are sick. How to do it manually instead How to publish the roster via a spreadsheet instead: start an Excel online workbook or Google sheet which shows the roster and ideally nothing else. This roster should not be able to be changed by staff and will reflect the latest version of the roster. How to manage changes with emails/messaging service: This part gets a little tricky if you're still doing things manually. It often involves messaging or calling a bunch of staff who have days off to see if they will come in. Considering you can't do this in parallel, as you're not sure who will accept what, making sure all your staff are picking up the shifts that they want most involves both empathy and tact. Rostering guide Scheduling guide Subscribe for more insights and product updates

Roster more effectively with Excel Ep2: Sleep Days after Night Shifts

For those of us writing rosters with 24-hour coverage, there is the necessity to account for sleep days for those that are transitioning from night shifts to day shifts. Sometimes in the deep roster writing state, we can lose track of these things in the struggle to fill every shift. Let's set up some Excel formulas to check this for us instead of seeing it ourselves much later. We can use the same setup as the last time in this series. The same 6 'people' (pets), and one week. Some of the Day and Night Shifts are denoted by their shift codes. In this scenario, our policy is to have two days off after the night shift before the next day. Lastly, we are marking our night shifts on the day they start, even though they would finish the next day. Our rule break is always from Wednesday to Friday, and we will cover different complications and how to have one comprehensive rule for them. const t="undefined"!=typeof HTMLImageElement&&"loading"in HTMLImageElement.prototype;if(t){const t=document.querySelectorAll("img[data-main-image]");for(let e of t){e.dataset.src&&(e.setAttribute("src",e.dataset.src),e.removeAttribute("data-src")),e.dataset.srcset&&(e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset"));const t=e.parentNode.querySelectorAll("source[data-srcset]");for(let e of t)e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset");e.complete&&(e.style.opacity=1,e.parentNode.parentNode.querySelector("[data-placeholder-image]").style.opacity=0)}} The Manual Method const t="undefined"!=typeof HTMLImageElement&&"loading"in HTMLImageElement.prototype;if(t){const t=document.querySelectorAll("img[data-main-image]");for(let e of t){e.dataset.src&&(e.setAttribute("src",e.dataset.src),e.removeAttribute("data-src")),e.dataset.srcset&&(e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset"));const t=e.parentNode.querySelectorAll("source[data-srcset]");for(let e of t)e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset");e.complete&&(e.style.opacity=1,e.parentNode.parentNode.querySelector("[data-placeholder-image]").style.opacity=0)}} This tried-and-true method is to simply mark sleep days on your roster. In this example, we have used '~'. It's quick and easy to get started but does add to the work of rostering. When we only have one night shift, things are quite manageable. We will be using conditional formatting to highlight every night shift that doesn't have enough sleep days afterwards. Let's add a rule to the entire area where shifts are assigned, but instead of one of the standard options, we'll have to write our own formula. const t="undefined"!=typeof HTMLImageElement&&"loading"in HTMLImageElement.prototype;if(t){const t=document.querySelectorAll("img[data-main-image]");for(let e of t){e.dataset.src&&(e.setAttribute("src",e.dataset.src),e.removeAttribute("data-src")),e.dataset.srcset&&(e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset"));const t=e.parentNode.querySelectorAll("source[data-srcset]");for(let e of t)e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset");e.complete&&(e.style.opacity=1,e.parentNode.parentNode.querySelector("[data-placeholder-image]").style.opacity=0)}} The formula in this example is: =IF(C2="N",COUNTA(D2:E2) 0,FALSE) Let's break down how this works and how we can adapt it for different rosters. The first part, '=IF(C2= "N"' tells Excel that we are only running this on days where we have put in an "N" shift. This can be adapted by changing the part in "quotation marks" to whatever your night shift is called. The C2 reference should be on the first cell of the area in which we are checking. The ",FALSE)" at the end closes our IF statement because we aren't interested in checking when it's not a night shift. The COUNTA(D2:E2) 0 part is how we check that we haven't put in any shifts after our night shift or, in Excel terms, that the two cells after our night shift are empty. To adjust this to suit more or less sleep days, the range it checks needs to be enlarged or shrunk. The problem with the check we have set up, as you can see from the picture, is that it will throw us false positives. Ignoring false positives is easy if our night shifts have to be continuous; harder if there can be a day (night) off between them. We're using the same method but adapting our formula to be a bit smarter. const t="undefined"!=typeof HTMLImageElement&&"loading"in HTMLImageElement.prototype;if(t){const t=document.querySelectorAll("img[data-main-image]");for(let e of t){e.dataset.src&&(e.setAttribute("src",e.dataset.src),e.removeAttribute("data-src")),e.dataset.srcset&&(e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset"));const t=e.parentNode.querySelectorAll("source[data-srcset]");for(let e of t)e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset");e.complete&&(e.style.opacity=1,e.parentNode.parentNode.querySelector("[data-placeholder-image]").style.opacity=0)}} For continuous: =IF(AND(NOT(D2=“N”),C2="N"),COUNTA(D2:E2) 0,FALSE) The bold section has been added to our previous formula. We have added a condition to the day that we will not be checking if sleep days are given if the day after this shift is also a night shift. That way, the formula only checks on the last night shift of any given series of shifts. For not continuous: =IF(C2="N",SUM(COUNTIF(D2:E2,INDIRECT(“Table1[Day Shifts]”))) 0,FALSE) If we can have a day off between night shifts, it gets considerably more complicated. First, we have to prepare a list of non-night shifts. I've made it into a table so I can more easily remember what it is later on. We've replaced what we're counting with a bit more specificity. Where previously we were counting empty days, now we are counting all our different not night shifts and adding them together with the SUM function. As before, we should see 0, so if it's greater than 0, we haven't been given enough sleep days. The last thing to note is we need to throw an INDIRECT function in there to make conditional formatting work. const t="undefined"!=typeof HTMLImageElement&&"loading"in HTMLImageElement.prototype;if(t){const t=document.querySelectorAll("img[data-main-image]");for(let e of t){e.dataset.src&&(e.setAttribute("src",e.dataset.src),e.removeAttribute("data-src")),e.dataset.srcset&&(e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset"));const t=e.parentNode.querySelectorAll("source[data-srcset]");for(let e of t)e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset");e.complete&&(e.style.opacity=1,e.parentNode.parentNode.querySelector("[data-placeholder-image]").style.opacity=0)}} =IF(ISNUMBER(MATCH(C2,INDIRECT("Table1[Night Shifts]"),0)),SUM(COUNTIF(D2:E2,INDIRECT("Table1[Day Shifts]"))) 0,FALSE) Since we've accounted for many different types of not-night shifts, let's also add that in for night shifts as well. As you can see, I've expanded my table to have a night shifts category, and as before, we're only checking if the day we're on is one of our night shifts before we start counting if there have been enough sleep days. This time we've done it a slightly different way, with a MATCH function to tell us if the day we're on is on our list of night shifts. const t="undefined"!=typeof HTMLImageElement&&"loading"in HTMLImageElement.prototype;if(t){const t=document.querySelectorAll("img[data-main-image]");for(let e of t){e.dataset.src&&(e.setAttribute("src",e.dataset.src),e.removeAttribute("data-src")),e.dataset.srcset&&(e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset"));const t=e.parentNode.querySelectorAll("source[data-srcset]");for(let e of t)e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset");e.complete&&(e.style.opacity=1,e.parentNode.parentNode.querySelector("[data-placeholder-image]").style.opacity=0)}} I find that highlighting just the night shift isn't enough information, especially since I often put in other checks and may be highlighting a cell for many reasons. For more clarity, I like to highlight the night shift and all mandated sleep days when they've been forgotten. It's a little tedious, but we can simply add multiple conditional formatting rules and offset the starting point of each one. With more mandatory sleep days, we'll just copy and modify our formula more times. This has been a thorough run down on how to have automatic highlighting for missing sleep days in Excel. If you'd like to implement these but are short on time or just don't want to put in the not-insignificant effort, try out Rosterlab Free. With Rosterlab Free, not only are all these features available but also features that help you check how fair your rosters are and if you're breaking any of your contractual, union, or workplace rostering guidelines.

Roster more effectively with Excel Ep1: Staffing level counts

Have you ever wondered how to set up your rostering spreadsheet to quickly check if you have the right number of people on every day? Maybe you already have, but you would like some colour coding or even a quick check that every day is staffed correctly. In this post, I will go over some easy-to-implement excel formulas to do just that. Let's imagine an oversimplified roster. Six people (though in this example, I've just chosen my friends' pets), and one week. Two shift types, "D" and "N". This pictured example has that as well as some leave (AL) and the counts we intend to achieve in place already. const t="undefined"!=typeof HTMLImageElement&&"loading"in HTMLImageElement.prototype;if(t){const t=document.querySelectorAll("img[data-main-image]");for(let e of t){e.dataset.src&&(e.setAttribute("src",e.dataset.src),e.removeAttribute("data-src")),e.dataset.srcset&&(e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset"));const t=e.parentNode.querySelectorAll("source[data-srcset]");for(let e of t)e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset");e.complete&&(e.style.opacity=1,e.parentNode.parentNode.querySelector("[data-placeholder-image]").style.opacity=0)}} To put it simply, we want Excel to give us a count of all the D shifts on a given day. The COUNTIF formula will do this for us. COUNTIF counts all the instances of the text you're looking for within a range. const t="undefined"!=typeof HTMLImageElement&&"loading"in HTMLImageElement.prototype;if(t){const t=document.querySelectorAll("img[data-main-image]");for(let e of t){e.dataset.src&&(e.setAttribute("src",e.dataset.src),e.removeAttribute("data-src")),e.dataset.srcset&&(e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset"));const t=e.parentNode.querySelectorAll("source[data-srcset]");for(let e of t)e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset");e.complete&&(e.style.opacity=1,e.parentNode.parentNode.querySelector("[data-placeholder-image]").style.opacity=0)}} The basic version looks like this: =COUNTIF(B2:B57," D") But it comes with a lot of extra work. Ideally, we want to write the formula once and be able to copy it while having it just work. For that, we'll need some relative references. To do that, we use something like this: =COUNTIF(B2:B57,A9) Now, instead of always looking for "D", when I copy my formula down a row, the formula will adjust and count the "N" s instead. However, I have introduced a pitfall for myself here. The correct advanced version looks like this: =COUNTIF(B$2:B$57,A$9) The '$' tells Excel that the part after '$' doesn't change when I copy this formula elsewhere. Without it, when I copied my formula down, it would have stopped counting Sam for the "N" shifts. The same thing applies when we move to the right, it would no longer be counting my "D" or "N" shifts. Once you've got those numbers in place, you might find as I did, that reading many numbers is a bit of a pain. I just want to see problem areas where there is something to address. To do this, let's add some coloured highlighting with conditional formatting to the range of numbers. I have a formatting rule set up to warn me if I don't have 2 people on "D" for every day and 1 for every "N", as well as green to let me feel good that I got it right when I did. I'll just explain the process for the first warning. The process is the same, just with different configurations. Just select the range you want the highlighting to be on and then search for conditional formatting in the help bar. Of course, this can get quite repetitive. We could set up a table of ideal numbers and use conditional formatting to check against those instead. Or you could try Rosterlab Free, which gives all this functionality and more out of all this hassle. const t="undefined"!=typeof HTMLImageElement&&"loading"in HTMLImageElement.prototype;if(t){const t=document.querySelectorAll("img[data-main-image]");for(let e of t){e.dataset.src&&(e.setAttribute("src",e.dataset.src),e.removeAttribute("data-src")),e.dataset.srcset&&(e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset"));const t=e.parentNode.querySelectorAll("source[data-srcset]");for(let e of t)e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset");e.complete&&(e.style.opacity=1,e.parentNode.parentNode.querySelector("[data-placeholder-image]").style.opacity=0)}} We may also want to count how many people in each shift are in a given role. This is useful for ensuring that shifts are covered by a diverse mix of seniority levels. One common way of handling this is to cluster all the people of a role together, but this will lead to problems with your formulas when you try to add or remove people. With a COUNTIFS formula like in the image below, we can use the same formula and copy that across all our skill checks as well. const t="undefined"!=typeof HTMLImageElement&&"loading"in HTMLImageElement.prototype;if(t){const t=document.querySelectorAll("img[data-main-image]");for(let e of t){e.dataset.src&&(e.setAttribute("src",e.dataset.src),e.removeAttribute("data-src")),e.dataset.srcset&&(e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset"));const t=e.parentNode.querySelectorAll("source[data-srcset]");for(let e of t)e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset");e.complete&&(e.style.opacity=1,e.parentNode.parentNode.querySelector("[data-placeholder-image]").style.opacity=0)}} Hopefully, this has shown you how to up your rostering game within Excel. If these seem like good features you'd like to implement but are short on time or just don't want to put in the effort, try out Rosterlab Free. With Rosterlab Free, not only are all these features available but also features that help you check how fair your rosters are and if you're breaking any of your contractual, union, or workplace rostering guidelines.

Rosterlab’s New Rostering Assistant Tier - The What’s and the Why’s.

When we set out to make an AI rostering platform, the team at Rosterlab encountered many, many Excel spreadsheets. We’ve also wound up making innumerable spreadsheets ourselves. It's part of the territory of rostering and also part of the territory of testing a rostering AI. In this post, we go into the how, what, and why of the new Rosterlab Free Tier (the who is us, and when is sign up here now). With Rosterlab Free, we are offering a rostering platform that does everything you wish your current Rostering spreadsheet did (except actually make the roster). Quickly start using it by copying over your current excel template Count shifts and hours rostered by person and day Colour-coded warnings for over and understaffing by day and by shift Warnings when the rostered shifts violate the rostering practices that you determine. Colour-coded highlighting for when a person’s request is granted or not Add additional info to shifts, such as a task being performed at that time We based it on the columns and rows you’re used to using. Except we’ve combined all the best features we’ve seen so far from all the rostering templates we’ve seen, whether it was on Excel or Google Sheets, and put it into an app. We’ve also sprinkled in some functionality that we came up with in-house to check the quality of the rosters our in-house AI makes. Things such as checking if a sleep day has been given after a night shift, which I imagine the Excel formula that could check would resemble an Eldritch ritual. Here are another two blogs on some of the Excel functions we used before this came about. One highlighted how to count staffing levels in Excel; and the other highlighted how to deal with sleep days after night shifts. const t="undefined"!=typeof HTMLImageElement&&"loading"in HTMLImageElement.prototype;if(t){const t=document.querySelectorAll("img[data-main-image]");for(let e of t){e.dataset.src&&(e.setAttribute("src",e.dataset.src),e.removeAttribute("data-src")),e.dataset.srcset&&(e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset"));const t=e.parentNode.querySelectorAll("source[data-srcset]");for(let e of t)e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset");e.complete&&(e.style.opacity=1,e.parentNode.parentNode.querySelector("[data-placeholder-image]").style.opacity=0)}} Well, almost all the rosterers we’ve met use a spreadsheet. Sometimes they made it themselves; most of the time, it’s been made for them by a helpful colleague or their predecessor. Many have a platform for creating rosters and managing their staffing connected to their payroll system. And yet they still turn to their spreadsheet. There are many reasons for this. Most find that they need the ability to visualise large swathes of information at once, to see a macroscopic view of what shifts have been assigned and to whom. Many roster makers know what information is helpful to them, and it’s not the same as the options presented to them by their rostering platform. The rostering templates that have been shared with us are specialised to the needs of the unit. They are lean and efficient with space and summarise the essential data points so that managers can make high-quality, fair, and safe rosters. If these individual spreadsheets are so good, though, why did we make this? It’s about providing more information, seeing what else others have but not having to have an in-depth knowledge of formulas and spreadsheet techniques to adapt a good idea to your roster. If you’re wondering about a particular thing, perhaps weekend days worked by each person, there’s no need to google how to implement it or worse, count them yourself. Have all of this information at your fingertips as your roster, instead of having to scroll left to right, back and forth to check the reference data against what you’re in the process of scheduling. Lastly, there’s long-term ease of use. What happens when the team has expanded, and you want to add a new person to your roster? Are you confident that all your checks still work and count the new person correctly? We’ve seen many spreadsheets where one or two people are no longer properly accounted for in their rostering stats. That’s what’s in it for our users. What’s in it for us? On the one hand, we are satisfied with providing better manual rostering experience. The not altruistic side of me thinks of this as a wager that even the best manual rostering experience will be inferior to our automatic solution. We are confident we can show you a better and more efficient way to schedule your staff, and if we’re wrong, you can still use Rosterlab Free to level up your rostering process. Sign up for a free account here today! Subscribe for more insights and product updates

Rosterball - Looking into the statistics of good and bad rosters

Staff rostering has a tremendous amount in common with the ideas explored in one of my favourite movies, Moneyball. Like Brad Pitt, rosterers have to squeeze a winning amount of productivity out of their team, while staying within a limited budget. In this post, we explore, through the visual language of 4 charts, some of the statistical indicators that highlight what makes a good roster versus a bad one. These graphs are all based on different real-world rosters, that have been normalised for visual clarity. const t="undefined"!=typeof HTMLImageElement&&"loading"in HTMLImageElement.prototype;if(t){const t=document.querySelectorAll("img[data-main-image]");for(let e of t){e.dataset.src&&(e.setAttribute("src",e.dataset.src),e.removeAttribute("data-src")),e.dataset.srcset&&(e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset"));const t=e.parentNode.querySelectorAll("source[data-srcset]");for(let e of t)e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset");e.complete&&(e.style.opacity=1,e.parentNode.parentNode.querySelector("[data-placeholder-image]").style.opacity=0)}} Ever been to the local fast-food joint and seen the queue go from counter to door; wait times far in excess of what you should face for a hamburger? You may have also experienced the converse, where they are so overstaffed that each and every piece of fried chicken you ordered could have been packed by a different person. This graph shows just that, the stressful and potentially dangerous work environment of an understaffed shift and the wasteful excess of an overstaffed shift compared to the ideal staffing level. An understaffed shift is not just harmful to productivity, it is stressful for every single employee scheduled to work that day. This stress induces call outs, and even more understaffed shifts. It’s a vicious cycle. A well-made roster uses the same number of total work hours but creates much less variance between the number of staff scheduled and the number of staff required on each day. A well-made roster ensures everyone has a fair workload, but we’ll talk more about fairness later on. const t="undefined"!=typeof HTMLImageElement&&"loading"in HTMLImageElement.prototype;if(t){const t=document.querySelectorAll("img[data-main-image]");for(let e of t){e.dataset.src&&(e.setAttribute("src",e.dataset.src),e.removeAttribute("data-src")),e.dataset.srcset&&(e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset"));const t=e.parentNode.querySelectorAll("source[data-srcset]");for(let e of t)e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset");e.complete&&(e.style.opacity=1,e.parentNode.parentNode.querySelector("[data-placeholder-image]").style.opacity=0)}} A fixed number of work hours does not mean a fixed cost within a roster. Since individual employees sit at different parts of the pay scale, anytime one of them works a shift with a penalty rate, that penalty costs more. A fiscally bad roster will have these more expensive staff members over-represented for people doing the penalty shifts. Rosters that suffer from high deviation from ideal staffing numbers, as shown in the graph in the last section, can also be fiscally bad rosters. These rosters incur large amounts of overtime to cover all the understaffed shifts while seeing no monetary benefit from any overstaffed shifts. What we haven’t shown is the bad roster that costs less than the good roster. To attain that roster every after-hours shift is worked by only the most junior (cheapest) of staff. Common sense will tell you why that’s a bad idea. const t="undefined"!=typeof HTMLImageElement&&"loading"in HTMLImageElement.prototype;if(t){const t=document.querySelectorAll("img[data-main-image]");for(let e of t){e.dataset.src&&(e.setAttribute("src",e.dataset.src),e.removeAttribute("data-src")),e.dataset.srcset&&(e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset"));const t=e.parentNode.querySelectorAll("source[data-srcset]");for(let e of t)e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset");e.complete&&(e.style.opacity=1,e.parentNode.parentNode.querySelector("[data-placeholder-image]").style.opacity=0)}} As with actual pies, how satisfied a person is directly correlated with how much of the pie is theirs. In this case, we are looking at how many of the shifts and rostered day-offs that an individual staff member asks for are accommodated within the roster. We call each of these requests a preference. Staff members being happier with rosters that reflect their desires, and that fulfil more of their preferences, certainly pass the sniff test. A study from 2010 shows that good rosters are 3rd highest factor for increasing nurses' job satisfaction and the 4th most important factor for decreasing job satisfaction. Just having high preference fulfilment alone is not a sign the roster is good. Paradoxically, in fact, having too high amounts of preference fulfilment can mean that the staffing level of a roster is poor and highly variant. The sweet spot of how many preferences are fulfilled will vary from roster to roster. const t="undefined"!=typeof HTMLImageElement&&"loading"in HTMLImageElement.prototype;if(t){const t=document.querySelectorAll("img[data-main-image]");for(let e of t){e.dataset.src&&(e.setAttribute("src",e.dataset.src),e.removeAttribute("data-src")),e.dataset.srcset&&(e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset"));const t=e.parentNode.querySelectorAll("source[data-srcset]");for(let e of t)e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset");e.complete&&(e.style.opacity=1,e.parentNode.parentNode.querySelector("[data-placeholder-image]").style.opacity=0)}} Unfairness is hard to quantify. It is felt by individuals, their unmeasured perception of getting the short end of a metaphorical stick. In a fair roster, everyone gets the same end, and in a good roster that stick-end is long (and not overdone, unlike this metaphor). The stick shown by this graph is the ratio of bad shifts to good shifts. You may ask, what constitutes a bad shift? To a degree, it changes from person to person but there are some universal bad shifts, most commonly overnight shifts and weekend shifts. To hit a fairness home run, you want this graph to look like a very round and aerodynamic ball, soaring out of the park. This graph is equally as important with preferences fulfilled. A spiky graph represents the underlying conditions for thoughts of bias and mistreatment. It’s a real thorn to having workplace harmony. const t="undefined"!=typeof HTMLImageElement&&"loading"in HTMLImageElement.prototype;if(t){const t=document.querySelectorAll("img[data-main-image]");for(let e of t){e.dataset.src&&(e.setAttribute("src",e.dataset.src),e.removeAttribute("data-src")),e.dataset.srcset&&(e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset"));const t=e.parentNode.querySelectorAll("source[data-srcset]");for(let e of t)e.setAttribute("srcset",e.dataset.srcset),e.removeAttribute("data-srcset");e.complete&&(e.style.opacity=1,e.parentNode.parentNode.querySelector("[data-placeholder-image]").style.opacity=0)}} *Rosterlab makes no assurance that your boss won’t make you do other work in the time that you don’t have to spend rostering anymore. If you’d like to up your rostering game beyond human levels, consider adding AI to your process with Rosterlab. The good roster graphs from above will be what your rosters look like when you let our AI schedule your staff. If that’s not enough, here’s a bonus graph for the time savings from implementing AI rostering. Find out more www.rosterlab.com or get in touch with me directly; daniel@rosterlab.com.