In today’s world, rolling rostering, a form of employee scheduling, is prevalent among industries that require shift work, like a security company. Within this industry, employees such as security guards are assigned jobs through rolling rostering. Below we examine what rolling rostering is and how this can impact your business.
What is a rolling roster?
A rolling roster is an employee scheduling process that aims to create a work schedule with rotating shifts. These shifts could include day shifts, night shifts, and overnight shifts. With this type of rostering system, each employee covers each type of shift throughout the week or month. These rotating shifts are generally eight to twelve hours long. The schedule for these shifts often varies relating on the employer and how the business operates. For example, within the security industry, a security company may look at crime trends to determine shift times.
You may be asking why this kind of rostering system is so important? The answer is that it increases productivity, improves employee morale, and enhances operational efficiency. We discuss these benefits in more detail below.
The benefits of rolling rosters for businesses
Rolling rosters play an essential role in ensuring that the right employees are at the right locations at the correct times. This is not only efficient but also improves the customer experience. The benefits don’t end there. With rolling rosters, you can benefit from:
- Enhanced performance – this kind of rotational shift schedule means that all employees are exposed to and gain experience across all activities during their operating hours. This experience and balancing of skillsets ensures that performance remains high and that employees are constantly improving their various skills.
- Employee satisfaction – with a rotating roster, there is more flexibility for accommodating staff requests. Employees can often choose the shifts they would like to work depending on their needs. This flexibility increases staff morale and productivity.
- Shift equality – all employees are exposed to all shifts with a rotating schedule. This ensures fairness in the workplace and helps build a positive team environment.
- Reduced absenteeism – rolling rosters reduce absenteeism specifically because the shifts are generally eight hours or longer and, if missed, would relate to a significant decrease in their wages or salaries.
- Minimise errors – rolling rosters make use of longer shifts which minimises the number of staff turnovers on the job site or location. This reduces the chance of miscommunication and mistakes while keeping performance productivity high.
How does Workforce Management Software assist with rostering to make it easier?
With rolling roistering playing such a significant role in a security business, it is essential to get it right. With so many moving parts, this is often easier said than done, or is it? Previously, companies were manually creating these schedules, but today many companies have turned to technology, like Adapt IT’s EasyRoster solution. This workforce management software enables you to schedule your guards quickly and efficiently across locations and jobs. The focus of this particular software is to improve labour efficiency, enhance productivity, and minimise labour costs. This workforce management solution facilitates rolling rostering through:
- Staff scheduling per location – Scheduling (rostering) of personnel shifts can be done per location and may be done manually or automatically. This will allow you to ensure that the right employees are at the right locations and will enable you to track and get overtime alerts, monitor non-productive time, and provides sales data that you can use to determine the profit per site/location.
- Time and attendance per location – The capturing of actual attendance details should be done per location and may be done manually or automatically. This will allow you to pull reports and make the necessary adjustments to attendance to ensure that sites are correctly covered, and that wage costs are kept to a minimum.
- Minimise wage costs through reporting – This software should provide reports highlighting incorrect rostering and attendance regarding the number and grades of personnel rostered or posted at a site, projected and actual wage costs, overtime, non-productive time, site profitability etc. This will enable an operations manager to keep daily real-time control of operations and ensure that costs are kept to a minimum and that personnel requirements are precisely met.
By using workforce scheduling software, you can avoid scheduling errors, provide employees with easy access to schedules, and allow them to communicate any problems or changes. This solution also provides employees with their schedules ahead of time to reduce absenteeism and improve operational efficiency.
Conclusion
Rolling rostering has a vital role to play in security businesses. This type of employee scheduling process improves profitability, enhances employee performance, and increases operational efficiency. If you are looking for a workforce management solution that will do the same for your business, book a demo today.
As a Senior Product Manager at Adapt IT, I lead the division responsible for one of our flagship products, EasyRoster. Our primary focus is to empower organisations with top-tier Workforce Management Software, enabling them to optimise operational efficiency and streamline processes.
With over 12 years of experience in the industry, I have collaborated with clients across 25+ countries, delivering training sessions and offering labor efficiency consultations to diverse groups of professionals.
In my capacity as Senior Product Manager, I oversee a multidisciplinary team that together, strive to create innovative solutions and maintain our commitment to excellence in the realm of workforce management.
