ROSTERING (More Information)

Commonly there are two orientations of rostering. People based or Role based. With People based you generally have a fixed number of staff and the roles may vary. The idea here is that you need to find jobs for your staff. On the other hand there is Role based. This is where you have certain roles to fill and you can draw upon a pool of staff to fill these roles. An example may be a labour hire company. PSG Payroll™’s roster tools can cater for both of these orientations. [Top]

Q-Roster is a People orientated roster tool. If you are currently using Microsoft Excel as your rostering tool then Q-Roster has a similar look and feel. Users like Q-Roster because it is fast, has multiple weeks viewable on a single page, easily exported to Microsoft Excel, pending leave is highlighted in red, full shift information can be viewed by placing the mouse over the cells in the Q-Roster, approved leave is clearly marked, public holidays are highlighted in purple and much more. By default staff are sorted alphabetically but can easily be sorted to your requirements or split into mini-groups. Furthermore, modifying Q-Roster is simply a matter of clicking on the roster cell and then selecting a few parameters such as shift time, roles, work type and then clicking save. Verbose comments can also be simply added and shift swaps are highlighted with a green border along with a full audit history of who and when the shift was swapped. To manage leave in Q-Roster there are three header row counts that show how many staff are “Rostered On”, “Rostered Off” and are “On Leave”. Note: That when planning a roster it is not available to general staff until it has been published. [Top]

Smart Roster is also a People orientated roster tool that has a similar look and feel to Microsoft Excel. With many similarities to Q-Roster, Smart Roster has wider cells allowing for more verbose rostering information to be displayed. For example the name of the role, location, and shift times can be easily shown. Additionally, multiple weeks can be displayed on a single page, but unlike Q-Roster which shows multiple weeks to the right Smart Roster show multiple weeks going down the page.
Smart Roster is more popular with customers for printing and hanging on the wall than Q-Roster. This is mainly due to the wider cells which show more roster information than Q-Roster. Furthermore, Smart Roster shows roster costing, budget, and variance information which is great when building rosters to a specific percentage of a budget. Additionally, roster costing and budgets are only visible to managers and the roster administrator. Smart Roster is also used for “Skill Based Roster” building which is discussed later down this page. Assigning shifts to staff is easy wtih Smart Roster. Like Microsoft Excel, simply type the names of the shifts in the cells and click “Save”. In Smart Roster you can change multiple shifts for multiple staff in one go. Like Q-Roster the staff, by default, are sorted alphabetically but can easily be moved into desirable groups and filtered. [Top]

Roster Counters are a feature of the Smart Roster. Roster Counters have two core purposes. Firstly, Roster Counters are used to define the requirements for Skill Based Rostering. Secondly Roster Counters are used to “count” similar shifts. For example, when defining a roster counter the user specifies the name of the shift, the role, the desired amount of staff, the minimum staff required and the maximum staff required for that particular day. PSG Payroll™ will then automatically count the shifts and colour code them accordingly; Red = too many or too few staff on that shift, Pink = just below the minimum staffing level, Blue = just above the desired amount of staff, and White = the desired amount of staff. Additionally, counters can be set up to count shifts with similar “shift names” (i.e. N shift, NE shift, and NW shift can all be combined in the same counter). Using colour coded "Roster Counters" is popular with our customers as it visually assists roster administrators to ensure core roles are being fulfilled. [Top]

Skilled Base Rostering is a seamless and automated way of populating a roster based on the skill level and availability of the staff against the roles required. In short each staff member is ranked by the various skills as defined by your roster administrator (i.e. supervisor skills, first aid qualifications and so on). Then the roster administrator clicks the “magic wand” button and PSG Payroll™ then matches the staff skill sets against the required Roster Counters taking into account staff availability (i.e. staff on booked leave are ignored) and other factors (i.e. PSG Payroll™ can apply job rotation algorithms so staff don’t get stuck in the same job day after day) to automatically build the roster. If desired Roster Administrators can then manually tune the roster before publishing it. [Top]

Staff, via their Employee Kiosk can manage their availability (i.e. customers can enable or disable this function) or managers can do it on their behalf. By default PSG Payroll™ assumes staff are always available, however, by specifying an availability schedule staff can be excluded from automatic rostering tools such as skill based or demand based rostering. [Top]

All booked leave is clearly marked on the roster and is colour coded appropriately. Once leave is approved the roster is locked and cannot be changed unless the leave is cancelled via the “Leave Cancellation Process”. Additionally, booked leave is taken into account when "smart" rostering tools such as skill based or demand based rostering are used. [Top]

In conjunction with PSG Payroll™’s Advanced Award Interpretation engine, rosters are able to be costed in “real-time” Moreover, when budget information is entered variance percentages can then compare roster costs with budget information. This allows managers to build rosters to a certain percentage of budget and if combined with “smart” rostering tools such as skill and demand based rostering PSG Payroll™ can then automatically build “the cheapest roster” while maintaining appropriate skill levels. Additionally, PSG Payroll™ allows revenue information to be entered or imported. Combining these with actual payroll costs management can then produce meaningful reports that compare budgets against rosters against actual payroll costs against actual revenue. This is one of the key advantages of having an “integrated” People Management Solution. [Top]

A common option with customers who do not use time clocks is to default timesheets to use the rostered times. This means that only actual working time changes that differ from the roster need to be entered into the timesheet. [Top]

Like its name suggests Role Roster is a role oriented roster. Users enter the roles they require and the number of staff for each role. PSG Payroll™ then automatically finds available staff who have the appropriate skill set and assigns them to the roster. For example, PSG Payroll™ can be set up for Labour Hire companies so that more than the required amount of staff is selected for the desired roles. PSG Payroll™ can then automatically SMS these staff asking if they are available to work on the specified days. Employees can then simply SMS back “Yes” or “No” which will then confirm the position in roster. Staff who SMS back too late will be automatically notified that the position has been filled. Additionally, PSG Payroll™ can include preference parameters where preferred staff are SMS'd before 2nd tier and 3rd tier staff. Note: There are additional charges for using the SMS Role Roster facility. [Top]

In addtion to using industry standard Secure Full Strength SSL encryption, unpublished rosters, budgets and roster costings can only be seen and accessed by roster administrators and management staff. Also general staff have the option to just view their roster or the whole departments rosters. Booked leave and approved timesheet related rosters are locked and cannot be modified unless the leave is cancelled or the timesheet reviewed. Rosters that are in closed payroll periods are marked as read-only and cannot be modifed at all. [Top]

PSG Payroll™ offers two methods for automatically communicating roster changes to staff; SMS and Email. Note: this feature can be easily turned off if required. Aside from the SMS communication performed by the Role Roster, PSG Payroll™ will only communicate changes if they are made to published rosters. When communicating is done by email, PSG Payroll™ will send the staff member the changed roster for the applicable week and clearly mark which shifts have been changed and what the previous roster was. Note: There are additional charges for using the SMS roster communication facility. [Top]

In some cases rosters need to be adjusted alongside day light saving time changes. For example, aircraft flight times. PSG Payroll™ handles this seamlessly. Additionally, PSG Payroll™ automatically and transparently handles staff work durations if they work through a day light saving change (usually in the early hours of the morning). [Top]

PSG Payroll™ has a powerful Shift Pattern Planner tool that allows roster administrators to create simple patterns through to complex overlaid patterns. PSG Payroll™ offers two types of shift pattern methods; Horizontal and Vertical which can be easily combined if required. Simple 4 on 4 off, 6 on 3 off, or 5 on 2 off and so on roster patterns can be easily built and applied. Furthermore, PSG Payroll™ has the intelligence to apply shift patterns around booked leave to maintain the rosters integrity. [Top]

As PSG Payroll™ is an integrated solution, numerous reports can be produced that combine the various areas of PSG Payroll™ such as Timesheets, Payroll, HRM, and of course Rostering. Reports that are commonly used by our customers include Roster vs Actual, Roster vs Budget, Attendance reports, Roster Costing and so on. Additionally, these reports can be collated by cost centre, department, branch, region, country or company. [Top]

From time to time staff may request their shifts to be swapped with their work colleagues. Depending on your company’s policy PSG Payroll™ can easily facilitate this using two methods. Firstly, staff via their Employee Kiosk can use the Shift Swap bulletin board to request shift changes. Then other staff using the Shift Swap bulletin board can then agree to the swap. Once both staff members have “agreed” to the swap managers have the final approval to either approve or deny the swap. Staff are informed of the change via email or via the Communicating Roster Changes facility if enabled. PSG Payroll™ will visibly mark the shifts in the roster along with verbose comments of when the shift was swapped, who the shift was swapped with, the original shift information and who approved the swap. [Top]

Demand based rostering is where PSG Payroll™ will look at a number of variables and determine the appropriate staffing levels (i.e. how many staff), the skill level of staff, the work type of staff (i.e. part-timer, casual, full-timer) to build a roster that will meet the “projected” demand of the business. Unlike, Role Roster and Skill Based Rostering where the roles and staff levels are predetermined. Demand based rostering will automatically tell you what staffing levels you will need in the coming weeks to manage your business demand. For example, in a Hotel environment, PSG Payroll™, using automated interfaces, will examine reservation information, Point-of-Sale information, revenue figures and other variables from the previous year (i.e. if the information is available) as well as the current year (i.e. what has been booked), along with a seasonal variance algorithm, public holidays, budget information, skill levels of staff and local event information to automatically build the most cost effective roster. Note: that once built managers can then manually “tune” the rosters if required. As you can imagine this is a complex rostering tool that requires external information feeds and depending on your requirements and existing information system may occur additional charges. Please contact us for more information on how demand based rostering can benefit your business. [Top]