Can Staff Shift Planner Accommodate Differentiating Employee Rates?
Published: 14/08/2022
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In this article, we address business owners, financial directors, and accountants. If your business operates on a shift-based model but you’re reluctant to invest in a staff shift planner due to varying rates, we aim to change your perspective. This could be one of the best business decisions you make.
We often discuss the benefits of automation. Whether you completely hand over the process to machines or automate parts of it, you will gain something from it. There is no process that cannot be automated, and often the reservations we hold are unfounded. In today’s article, we will explore one such process - shift scheduling. We’ve noticed that many companies are missing the opportunity to utilise a tool for automating shift rotation schedules due to differing employee rates across various shifts. In simple terms, it’s a common misconception that no tool can accommodate complex pay rates.
Most software solutions promote convenience and time-saving benefits as their selling points, seldom addressing the issue of pay rates. We can understand where the confusion arises. Therefore, in this article, we shall tackle the question: can staff shift planners accommodate differing employee rates?
If you’re short on time and need a direct answer, we are pleased to confirm that yes, a staff shift planner is fully capable of considering differing employee rates. Of course, this will largely depend on the solution and how flexible the applicable settings are. Nevertheless, even the most basic tools should be able to accommodate some level of customisation for different types of businesses.
Depending on the complexity of your rates, even free solutions can suffice. However, if you require more advanced customisation, you should research paid options. They offer a broader range of features, including overtime, weekend rates, and time-based rates. Overall, with the rapid development of the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) market, there is a guaranteed solution available for every business, regardless of how unique their needs may be. Therefore, if you’re concerned that your employee rates are too complicated for a staff shift planner to accommodate your requirements, we assure you they are not. And if that is not convincing enough, find the longer answer with more evidence below.
First things first - don’t underestimate what today’s technology is capable of. The SaaS industry is particularly dynamic when it comes to developing new solutions. Most shift planners, due to their need for accessibility and flexibility, are SaaS and have likely already exceeded your wildest expectations.
The pace of modern businesses is incredibly fast, and therefore every second counts. This is precisely why SaaS developers are constantly seeking ways to expedite and streamline workflows through automation. While it may appear that switching between tabs to import or export data from one solution to another is a time-consuming task, those few seconds accumulate into hours you could otherwise devote to more progress-driving activities. This is one of the key reasons why most solutions offer various modules within the same platform, allowing you to tailor your processes easily within a centralised location.
Since shift workers rely heavily on timesheets, which serve as the primary source of information for calculating differentiated rates during payment processing, it is logical for the shift scheduling software to function alongside a timesheet solution. A truly powerful tool will incorporate both, alleviating the burden of creating schedules in line with your financial capacity and calculating employee wages. Moreover, depending on the additional features of the platform and how you utilise them, you will likely be able to automate even more administrative tasks.
Another valuable asset of SaaS tools is the integration with other software. Simply put, a single tool is unlikely to have everything you need to run a successful business. You will therefore require several solutions to manage different parts of it. For instance, you cannot expect a shift scheduler to also function as accounting software. However, returning to the goal of reducing manual data entry and app-switching, there exists the option of linking different tools for seamless data transfer - which is software integration.
When you integrate your staff shift planner solution with an accounting tool, it sends the data regarding the compensation owed to the workers, including the various rates already calculated, directly to your accounting software. The transfer, unlike the import-export procedure or manual data entry, only requires a couple of clicks within the scheduling solution. This makes the process much quicker and also reduces the risk of human error. Therefore, integrations are an important factor to consider when searching for a suitable tool, but we’ll expand on that in the next part.
However, as remarkable as the SaaS market appears, there’s one challenge - it’s vast and continually expanding. As a result, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the multitude of solutions, ultimately investing in a tool that may not be the most beneficial for your specific business. The upside is that the extensive array of options ensures every business can find at least one tool to meet all their must-have requirements. The difficulty lies in locating it.
As stated before, there is a solution for every business, regardless of the level of complexity or niche functionality you require. With that in mind, it’s important to emphasise that you should never settle for a tool that doesn’t tick all of your boxes. Additionally, the right software will not require you to build your processes around it but will instead adapt to help you optimise them. For this reason, we suggest beginning your search for the right solution by making a list of the features you’d truly love to have.
The next step is to separate them into must-haves and nice-to-haves. For example, if you have different employee rates for day and night shifts, your must-have feature is the ability to record that. If you also pay extra for overtime, but your workers don’t often work it, an overtime rate feature would be nice to have. It is easier to choose the right solution when you have a clear outline of what you need it to do. Most software vendors will attempt to dazzle you with an extensive list of functionalities that sound impressive but might be irrelevant to you. Therefore, having a list of features helps you stay on the right course.
While you should prioritise the unique needs of your business, you shouldn’t dismiss functionality that is widely used within your sector, even if it seems redundant to you. Industry standards are referred to as such because they are assets proven to be valuable for businesses operating in that industry. Chances are you don’t fully understand the benefits they offer. For this reason, you should research your competitors or similar businesses to gain insight into how they utilise these features.
For instance, if you’re a small company with a handful of clients, you might think that an invoice automation function isn’t necessary. Assembling invoices only takes a couple of minutes each time, and you may feel that there’s little benefit in having them generated by software. However, there’s more to invoice generation than merely saving time. No matter how diligent you are—after all, you’re human. And humans make mistakes. An automated process, on the other hand, executes a script to pull and organise the data you input. Therefore, the only way for it to be erroneous is due to incorrect data or improper configuration. If you don’t have many clients, you cannot afford to lose them over a trivial manual data insertion error, can you?
It’s important to keep in mind that the process of digitisation doesn’t stop evolving after you employ a solution that meets the needs of your business. In fact, you should be prepared to continuously enhance its performance by optimising the way it executes tasks. We’ve briefly mentioned integrations earlier in the article, but they play a crucial role in securing the ROI for every tool you adopt.
Moving forward, you should focus on creating a centralised system of solutions that you use. You can achieve this by linking them to one another via integrations, thus making it easy to transfer data between them and unlocking further automation functions. The frequent use of different solutions across various departments often leads to an accumulation of siloed data, resulting in lost opportunities. A centralised software stack utilised by the entire company ensures that no data falls through the cracks.
The best aspect is that your stack doesn’t need to be extensive - it is actually advisable to limit it to 3-4 solutions. This approach is therefore very cost-effective and, depending on utilisation, a substantial driver of ROI. That said, it’s important to choose your solutions wisely. A solid tech stack can become the cornerstone of your business processes for years to come.
The landscape of technological advancement is changing as we speak. It can therefore be difficult to stay on top of what today's solutions are capable of. The features we could only dream of a few years ago are now viewed as basic requirements or industry standards. A staff shift planner serves as a prime example. Not long ago, it seemed like a solution that only workplaces with the same pay rate could benefit from. Nowadays, however, it easily accommodates differing employee rates.
The market is vast. There are tools with various feature sets, price ranges, sector specifics, integrations, and more. In short, there is something for everyone out there, regardless of how niche or unique. The only requirement is that you must be specific and laser-focused on what it is that you seek. With that and a pinch of patience, you are bound to find a tool to meet all your needs.
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