Rostering can be bloody difficult. What makes it difficult? Well often it’s a few things, it’s staff telling you they can’t do the job unless they start prep at a certain time or finish at a certain time. It’s staff telling you how much they need the money and hours. It’s how many people you think you need to get a job done or how many people you think you need in order to be able to deliver the minimum standard of customer service you’ve idealised for your business. It’s hard.
Now that I’ve reaffirmed all you thought you knew about the painful process of organising your staff let me share with you how I simplified things.
Because rostering really is simple.
I roster by percentages, I feel confident in this process because I get results from it. In a nutshell I choose what percentage of turnover I’d like my daily employment costs to be and I don’t exceed this.
To do this you need to be able to estimate your daily turnover to begin with. We can do this by looking over historical turnover figures. If you’re not already keeping track of these by way of a spreadsheet you probably should. These historical numbers can tell us what to expect or assist us to predict turnover from day to day, week to week, month to month and even year to year.
Once we know what to expect by way of turnover we then need to calculate what a staff member costs us by the hour. Make sure to include all the hidden costs, not just their hourly rate. In Australia you should be including Superannuation, sick and annual leave allowance, workcover and payroll tax.
Now where was I? Yep… Ok we know our turnover and we know how much a staff member will really cost on an hourly rate.
Now start your roster as you normally would but this time add up all the hours you’ve allocated to that particular day. Then multiply this by the cost per employee each hour.
This is your staff cost for the day.
Total Payable Hours For The day x Total Labour Cost Per Hour = Staff Costs For The Day
Now divide your predicted turnover for that day by your total staff costs to get the percentage of staff costs.
Staff Costs for the Day / Estimated Turnover =
Percentage of Staff Costs against Predicted Turnover
Refer to my article on Benchmarks and the Australian Taxation Office’s Benchmarks to get an indication of the percentage you need to strive towards and better. Let’s call this your KPI for wages.
Here are 6 more tips which will make your rostering easier:
- Less is more, Roster less people and observe the increased productivity and efficiency.
- You’re not doing staff a favour by giving them extra hours where they’re not required. If your business fails, it will be your fault they’ll be unemployed.
- Give the hours to your best staff, hour distribution doesn’t need to be equitable.
- Tighten the bolts on your rostering regularly especially if you’re not the one setting the roster. You may set a KPI of 28% of turnover this month and may find it is actually 40% at the end of the month.
- Cut back the amount of staff you have. I insist on only hiring staff that can work everyday all day. This saves me a massive headache when it comes to rostering because everybody is available on any day at any hour required.
- Give your best staff the most consistent hours and shifts, this allows them to organise their finances and life, and will most likely mean they’ll be pleased working for you.