eRostering or electronic rostering refers to the adoption of automated scheduling to generate workforce schedules. Primarily aimed at the healthcare industry it is also used by other industries including; hospitality, retail, logistics and services. Electronic rostering is extremely useful in organisations that have complicated scheduling patterns.
In service-based institutions such as hotels, airports, and hospitals, the importance of a vast and diverse workforce cannot be overstated. A huge problem associated with such enormous staffing is fairness and accuracy concerning rosters. Many of these organisations have been plagued by scheduling issues for generations leading to disputes and other problems.
There are many benefits to adopting eRostering and other employee management and scheduling tools. Some institutions have been early adopters while others still struggle with planning and coordination.
Why is eRostering important?
For essential service providers and large corporations scheduling staff, especially in complex workplaces, takes a tremendous amount of time, manpower and mental competence.
Hospitals with varying departments and overstretched workforces should not have to deal with administrative tasks when they could be putting their skills to use in more important areas. eRostering technology has been developed as a solution to these needs. An automated solution to staff scheduling frees up line managers and HR teams and enables organisations to implement a fair approach to staff scheduling and rostering.
This increased efficiency empowers staff and significantly improves their productivity.
What are the Top 5 Reasons for Adopting eRostering?
1. Improved Accountability
Accountability is a major problem in many large service-based organisations such as healthcare, hospitality and retail. When it comes to payroll, processing alone can be quite a time-consuming and complicated task. Businesses can face complaints and issues regarding payroll, overtime, sick leave etc.
Given that humans are prone to error, adopting eRostering technology removes many of the risks of such mishaps and ensures increased accountability. Such automated systems allocate employees to the correct departments at the right time and at the correct cost.
Erostering makes it easy to eliminate the need for massive amounts of paperwork and mishaps due to administration. All this data can be stored in a central location without much effort from an individual. eRostering technology ensures that if mistakes do occur, they can be traced and tackled immediately.
2. Enhanced Job Satisfaction
Flexibility in the workplace contributes massively towards job satisfaction. When employees get their roster ahead of time, it gives them enough flexibility to manage work-life balance.
Erostering makes it possible for employees to apply their work preferences automatically. If systems are in place that allows employees to schedule leave etc., it gives them more autonomy and improves their input into how businesses run.
Another big advantage of adopting eRostering software is that it eliminates last-minute gaps, which are often brought about by late roster alterations. Through emails or texts, available staff members can easily be informed about shifts that meet their shift requirements.
More managed time-off, holidays and better weekly work arrangement can do wonders for staff morale.
3. Improved coordination
When professionals focus more on administrative tasks, they inadvertently veer away from their main responsibility. Electronic rostering ensures that administrative tasks in many departments are taken care of. This allows professionals to get back to their primary function.
High burnout levels, low employee retention, and low morale have been associated with inefficient rostering. With eRostering software, fairness is developed in relation to work hours, and it is easier for managers to see problem areas. Do certain shifts require more staff? Have some staff been allocated far more hours than others?
Such problems when conducted manually may slip through the cracks and be hard to notice. With automated tools, it is far easier to improve and reduce such issues.
4. Enhanced Fairness in the Workplace
As opposed to a manual system, eRostering systems promote fairness as it removes the aspect of human-based preferential treatment.
Erostering ensures that annual leave is fairly administered to all workers and allows individual employees to log onto their portal and check out their holiday information. When employee holidays are evenly distributed, the aspect of fairness in an organisation is enhanced.
Erostering and scheduling software such as that provided by Softworks helps organisations ensure they remain compliant with any employee agreements.
Contract stipulations such as overtime, annual leave etc. can be automatically put into the system notifying employees and admin when certain milestones have been reached.
5. Improved Patient/Customer Care
With increased automation, professionals get more free time to spend with patients/customers. This additional time can be beneficial to relations between institutions and those who frequent them.
HR advisors, managers, rotation coordinators, and administration teams play an especially important role in hospitals and other service-based institutions. Apart from organising shifts, these professionals are tasked with a plethora of administration duties and patient/customer-facing roles.
With the adoption of eRostering, such tasks will be handled faster and more accurately so that more time can be dedicated to customer satisfaction. In hotels, rostering allows for the generation of schedules based on employees’ availability and responsibilities. This helps to ensure that the right people are situated in the right roles.
Conclusion:
Efficiency and accountability are always at the core of any results-driven organisation. Erostering when implemented correctly can be of huge advantage to the healthcare, retail, and hospitality industries, among others.
You only have to look at the NHS and other institutions for the advantages of what eRostering can do for morale and planning.
