Shift work calendars

The right roster calendar brings calm to the chaos of organising your daily operations.

Matching business needs with your employees’ preferred ways of working is a balancing act. But you can bridge this gap by planning in advance.

We’re here to talk you through how that’ll work for your business.

Getting started with a shift planner calendar

Once you’re setup with the technology, online staff roster software enables you to:

• Match workloads to staff

• Help manage staff costs

• Manage to help flexible working and employee retention

• Keep employees happy and informed

• Comply with legal requirements

Ensure you measure your work volume by hours, days or seasons to collect information about busy periods then use the information you’ve gathered to decide shift lengths and allocate staff cover.

The different types of shift roster calendars

You can choose from a variety of tools when using a work roster calendar to manage employee schedules:

Pen and paper — This traditional approach is about simplicity. All that’s needed is a physical diary and a pen or a pencil.

Whiteboard — Another old school way of producing employee shift templates is to use a whiteboard, markers, and erasers. Manual updates are time-consuming and can cause confusion, especially when managing erratic employee shifts. They can also cause headaches when carrying out everyday tasks such as allocating overtime and managing split shifts.

Spreadsheets — Excel templates are still a step up over manual calendars, but there are drawbacks. You’ll need to allocate plenty of admin time to manage your employee schedule using it and there can be complex formulas not everyone understands. It’s easy to make mistakes and these can disrupt your shifts.

Roster planner software — It forms part of shift scheduling software reduces the time spent on making updates.

Every part of managing staff rosters, including absence management is simpler because:

• It flags up scheduling issues automatically

• Employees receive notifications about changes in real-time

• Your business has the right amount of cover, at the right time

While there may be some early integration training necessary when beginning your journey with employee calendar software, if you choose a software provider like BrightHR, you’ll receive 24/7 assistance to help you get the ball rolling.

How your shift roster calendar helps you meet legal requirements

Whether it’s faulty formulae or manual data input that causes blunders in shift planning, your business is always at risk of receiving prohibition notices or fines. Shift roster planners often include automatic notifications, to help you comply with legal requirements with ease.

The alerts may arrive, for example, when your employees are nearing the NES work limit of an average of:

• 38 hours per week (unless additional hours are reasonable)

• 8 hours during a 24-hour period for night workers

In Australia, the National Minimum Wage applies to employees aged 21 and over, while employees under 21 are paid a percentage of the National Minimum Wage.

Shift planning calendar software can also trigger a birthday notification when an employee can claim a change in pay rates.

Joined-up calendar shift planners

Managing shifts with roster planning software helps you make informed decisions without the inconvenience of shuffling paper or jumping between different systems.

Learn more about using a shift and roster planner with BrightHR’s shift planning software and streamline your operations today.

Book a demo or call 1 300 029 198