Running your own startup is an exciting venture. Unsurprisingly, it can also be all-consuming and stressful. Finding ways to take some workload off yourself, reducing time spent on tasks that you’d rather not be putting hours of effort and valuable resources into is, therefore, a worthwhile endeavour.
Automating aspects of your business is an excellent way to start doing this and is often to the benefit of not just yourself but your customers and your colleagues or employees. One such aspect is your staff rota, a staple of the hospitality and retail world, which can be a complex and mind-twisting entity to organise.
What you could do, then, is automate it. A new shift is messaged out to your employees, who can accept or reject your offer. The system then schedules in the accepted shifts and issues a message with details, before allocating rejected shifts to other workers. Easy, but what are the benefits?
Keep your employees happy
Your employees want to know when they are working and how long for in advance. It’s only natural, and you have probably been there before yourself. In startups that work with shift-based rotas, working hours are often varied and change depending on people’s availability, so finding a rota that suits everybody goes a long way to keeping employees happy.
Promote flexibility
A survey examined by the Independent in 2019 showed that flexible working hours were among the top perks that British employees want, and can you blame them? Many people work multiple jobs, combine jobs with studying or work alongside looking after family members, young or old. Making sure the employees in your startup have a desired level of flexibility will help ensure a motivated team and a positive atmosphere.
Save time
Automating your rota with software like Boomerang Messaging will save you and your employee’s heaps of time. Slaving over a rota, trying to make it work, ringing up your employees individually, taking it to pieces and putting it back together again can feel like a never-ending jigsaw. With accepting and rejecting shifts so easy and automated, both you and your employees will have less stress and more time to get on with life and work.
Use it for annual leave
This automated way of working out your shift rota not only works for, “Yes, I can work Saturday,” but could also help with, “I’d like to book a holiday next month!” Shift work can so frequently be an insecure position, and as the leader of a friendly and welcoming startup, you want to help your staff feel at ease.
Giving them quick responses to annual leave requests will help both parties with planning and organising the future. This is also will come in handy if any of your staff have to take time off work unexpectantly. Those looking for overtime will see the shifts that need covering and be able to offer their services.
With increased automation, tricky tasks such as organising your staff rota and employees taking a holiday or unexpected time off, your startup will be more efficient, quicker, and simpler, helping workers feel secure and in control.