With operating costs rising and staff shortages continuing to blight the hospitality industry, it’s never been more important to provide your team with the best possible employee experience.
Pay rises and extra time off are always welcomed by staff, but research has also shown that what many hospitality workers desire most are things like transparency, fairness, and being able to strike a healthy work-life balance.
Here are five ways that staff scheduling software like RotaCloud can help hospitality managers provide exactly that.
1. Advance notice of shifts
Last-minute rotas aren’t unheard of in the hospitality industry. Most employees will appreciate that their managers have a lot of plates to keep spinning, and that creating an effective work rota takes time.
The problem from the employee’s side, however, is that not knowing your shifts until the very last minute makes organising things like childcare, study-time, even just socialising with friends almost impossible.
This is where staff scheduling platforms like RotaCloud can help.
RotaCloud’s simple, drag-and-drop rota builder makes creating schedules for restaurant teams quick and easy. Rotas are sent straight to employees’ phones, too, so there’s no need for chaotic WhatsApp groups or email attachments.
Your staff get advance notice of their shifts; you get to spend less time doing admin — win-win.
2. Shift changes are communicated automatically
Shift changes happen. In the current climate especially, restaurant operators have to be flexible to remain competitive — and that usually means adjusting the rota.
Communicating these shift changes, however, can be fiddly and time-consuming. It’s also easy for staff to miss the memo entirely, resulting in staff showing up late for work through no fault of their own — something that’s never good for morale.
RotaCloud solves this problem entirely by automatically alerting your staff the moment you make a change to their rota.
Employees are notified of shift changes via text message, email, or push notification, so they can be confident that they’re always working from the most up-to-date version of the rota.
3. Easy annual leave booking for better health
RotaCloud helps your staff take better care of both their mental and physical health by allowing them to check their remaining annual leave (including accrued leave) balance anytime they like via the RotaCloud mobile app.
They can also request time off straight through their mobile phones, providing a single, streamlined portal for booking leave — all you need to do is click ‘Approve’ and RotaCloud will take care of the rest.
4. Staff are more in control of their work-lives
When your shifts change from week to week or month to month, it’s easy to feel that your work dictates your entire life.
By contrast, hospitality workers whose managers use staff scheduling software often enjoy a greater degree of control over their working lives thanks to the self-service tools that come baked into the product.
With RotaCloud, for example, staff can use the RotaCloud mobile app to quickly arrange their own shift swaps and find cover if they’re unable to work. If their colleague agrees to cover, the proposal is then sent to their manager to review, who can then update the rota with a tap.
It’s a small compromise for managers to make, but by giving your staff the freedom to do things like swap shifts and organise their own cover, not only will they feel more in control of their working lives, but they’ll be less likely to come to you with a shift-related problem to solve.
5. Rotas are fairer for everyone
One of RotaCloud users’ most valued features is the ability for staff to communicate their working availability in advance via the RotaCloud mobile app.
When managers sit down to plan the next week’s schedule, their team members’ working availability is visible right there on the rota, making it easier to plan shifts that works for everyone — not to mention reducing the need for changes after the rota has been published.
Not every availability request can be granted, of course. But by inviting your staff to communicate their working availability in advance, you’re demonstrating that you want to help them strike a healthy work-life balance and will make an effort to accommodate their needs with your rota.
Try RotaCloud free today at rotacloud.com
