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Outsourcing to IBDC/Compass

Rostering is a term that has many different shades of meaning.

For every day of a roster period (usually at 28 day cycles), each member of staff is assigned to work or not work. For each day/shift that a member of staff is allocated to work, there are a large number of specific details that have to be decided. These details include the particular time, the particular role, the specific tasks, the particular service area/point, and the specific duration of the assignment.

Sometimes, staff prefer to work with one particular team leader or another. Who they work with, can also be an issue. Other work preferences include things like, when they are rostered to start or finish, how long they are assigned, where they are stationed, and what tasks they will be doing. A key factor in the level of their staff satisfaction is the degree to which their work preferences are understood by management and are perceived by the staff themselves to have been met.

The more those preferences are explicitly recorded and taken into consideration in the rostering process, the more satisfied the staff member will feel about their work.

All this makes rostering a difficult task, which requires a complex set of calculations to handle. To do so well is mind-bending and time-consuming. Then whenever there needs to be a change to the work schedule, possibly owing to changes in customer demand, the whole roster needs to be reviewed and effectively recalculated. If this is not done, inefficiency or rigidities can result. However, another complication is that, once a roster has been posted, (that is, a labour contract has been established), there are a number of constraints under the EBA or Award rules that apply.

Many enterprises do not have a rostering method or automated rostering system that can handle the above matters satisfactorily. Indeed, most businesses are not aware of how much better things could be, if their managers could tune their roster to all the competing demands and issues. CBS can help you deal with all these aspects of rostering, simply and quickly. The automated rostering engines that come as part of the supervisory management (SuperMan) application handle all rostering calculations and EBA rules at a touch of a button, and they substantially reduce or even eliminate overtime and penalty rates. CBS also allows staff to enter their own preferences and adjust them when needed. Management's job is made a whole lot easier.

And, more often than not, increases in efficiency, which are achieved by hard-working supervisors, are offset by a drop in output quality or a lack of customer service effectiveness.

Normally, the rostering process absorbs an enormous proportion of supervisor time, requiring them to know what staff are available, what their skills and fortés are, what their work preferences are, and figuring out in advance what work to assign to each team member. This has resulted in rigidities setting into: the work that the team can fruitfully accomplish; the team composition; the continual dependence on the supervisor and middle management roles; the boundaries and barriers between teams or organisational silos; the service delivery methods; and the ways customer needs can feasibly be met. For most businesses in this competitive world, the productivity/overtime ratio seems to become a fearsome hurdle.

Compass Business Suite (CBS) offers the choice of rostering manually, or using the sophisticated automated rostering engines to assign staff skills from across the enterprise, without breaking EBA rules or incurring costly overtime. These engines handle award, policy, and management requirements, as well as a very wide range of staff preferences, leave and unavailability.

CBS Productivity Rostering has been specifically designed to create flexibility in each of the above areas. The software allows management and staff to find new ways of changing old habits and of communicating across the psychological chasm or unintended organisational barriers. This flexibility provides the means to solve issues that supervisors previously had to handle on their own. CBS provides executive and senior management; middle management; supervisors; front-line staff; and unions with the freedom to be themselves, and feel involved in working out how best they can contribute to the enterprise as a whole.

CBS provides the strategic edge competitors have long wished for. The new approach to rostering can be adopted one step at a time, and allows the organisation as a whole, the opportunity to move forward at a pace of its own choosing. A two-hour demonstration is all it takes to show how easily and how well it can all be done.

As an outline of what's in store, we provide below, a list of the functions, outcomes and features that CBS includes and delivers:

Natural by-products of the rostering process when using CBS, include better handling of approved leave, unavailability, time and attendance, automated timesheets and shift-by-shift, on-the-job staff appraisal.

Productivity Rostering is an important step forward in tactical and operational business planning and supervisory management.

Want more information?
Call Lynn Parsons on 0418 616 665 or e-mail lparsons@ibdc.com.au [pre-written], so we can send you more details or arrange a personal demonstration.

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