We like to hear about how we’ve helped ease the pain of rostering for each of our clients. The first of in our series of client spotlights details successes at the University of Newcastle. Here’s what they had to say about how our service has improved their operations:
Background
UoN Enquiries is responsible for rostering up to 60 casual staff to work over 4 locations. Approximately 80% of these staff are students, with availabilities that often change week to week.
Before Ento
Prior to using Ento, we would ask for staff availabilities for a semester (approximately 14 weeks), insert them into an excel spreadsheet and then create a weekly casual roster on to another spreadsheet. Every change in availability required the casual staff member to contact the Team Leader who would manually update the staff member’s availability in the excel spreadsheet. Staff would contact the Team Leader on a daily basis to change their availabilities or advise that they could no longer do a shift. With up to 60 staff to manage, it sometimes took 2 days to finish a roster, and mistakes were often made with assigning staff to shifts they were unavailable for.
With Ento
Ento took the work away from the Team Leader, and put the onus on the casual staff to update their own availabilities. The staff found the Ento system really easy to use and adapted to the change in process very quickly. Now, the Team Leader rarely has to change the roster after it is published and can keep close track of the hours staff have worked before they submit their time sheets. It is also very easy to fill a shift if a staff member calls in sick or is unable to do their shift, simply by referring to Ento and checking time-offs. Rosters now only take a maximum of a couple of hours to do.
Libraries aren’t usually the first organisations that spring to mind when you think of a complicated rostering situation, but with a wide variety of shifts times and roles, and with multiple locations usually being centrally managed, a lot of variables quickly pile up that can overwhelm a simple paper or excel rostering system. That’s where we come in: ento.com.
