Minimising the Festive Frenzy with a Time Management System (Part 1)

With the festive season almost upon us, many organisations are beginning to feel the effects of increased pressure and activity. In addition, resourcing challenges, managing multiple requests for annual leave, and allowing for public holidays and penalty rates, can all contribute to high levels of stress within your Operations and HR department!  

Over our next three blog posts we will look at the different areas where an effective Employee Time ManagementSystem can help ensure that you have a hassle free run up to the holidays!

First up is employee scheduling and ensuring you have the staff on hand to meet customer or production demands.

An automated time and attendance system, with scheduling capabilities, enables you to roster staff to fixed and flexible shifts according to predefined budgets. Any subsequent roster changes will trigger a notification if the shift is in danger of exceeding budget. By looking back over previous year, you can also schedule staff numbers to mirror forecasted customer numbers over the holiday period, or ‘on-the-fly’ to meet emergency requirements.

A number of workforce management systems also allow you to create groups or pools of available employees to help with scheduling multiple departments or stores. Casuals or agency staff can nominate themselves as being available to work for certain times of the week, and can be rostered on by supervisors to assist with filling positions or vacant shifts. A notification is then sent direct to the employee so they are aware that they have been included in the shift.

With many organisations (particularly in Retail and Hospitability), relying on casuals to provide the extra manpower required to operate effectively over the holiday period, they will need to be closely monitored to ensure they are serving their purpose. If they are late, taking long breaks or chucking sickies, you run the risk of having to pay permanent employees overtime as they may be required to cover and work extra hours. An automated Time and Attendance system, provides supervisors with an insight into how their casuals are performing, enabling them to address any issues before it affects your bottom line.

If you’d like to find out more about how an automated Time and Attendance system can help contain your Festive stress levels  contact Mitrefinch Employee Management today on 1300 884 831 (Australia) or 09 363 9557 (NZ).

Our Free Guide to Choosing a Time and Attendance system is also available to download online.