How to use Findmyshift to manage your staff rota
Technology has revolutionised everything from the services we provide to how we market ourselves.
And employee scheduling is no different.
Smart shift scheduling tools like Findmyshift allow service firms to more easily manage their employees and the shifts they’re designated for.
By taking the stress out of employee scheduling by removing the need for paper rotas, late night texts, and complex Excel spreadsheets, you can free up your time to focus on your business.
In this article, we’ll look at some of Findmyshift’s most useful features for owners and managers of trades firms like cleaners, mechanics, tree surgeons, technicians, and much more.
From simple scheduling and rigorous reporting to holiday help and nifty noticeboards, we’ve got it all covered below.
Keep on top of costs as you schedule
Our real-time reporting features allow you to forecast your costs right from your rota as you’re assigning jobs or shifts. This makes it easy to see upfront what you’ll be spending on wages for the hours you have scheduled.
We also have a time clock included in all of our plans—yep, even the free one—that you can use to set up a clock in/clock out terminal to accurately track when your staff arrive and leave.
This ensures you can pay employees for the actual hours they work, rather than simply what’s on the rota, giving you flexibility and ensuring wages are paid fairly.
No Excel skills required
You have your profession or trade that you’re highly skilled in. So why should scheduling shifts also require you to be an Excel wizard? Findmyshift features a simple drag and drop approach to building rotas.
You can also build and reuse templates, taking one week and using it as the basis for future ones. This will save you time every week that you sit down to do the rota, and this can quickly add up.
Forget fancy formulae and horrendous highlighting too. Wave goodbye to the days of having 8 different versions of your rota, as you anxiously try to work out which of ‘FINAL rota newest (2)’ and “NEW NEW rota latest v3’ is the up to date version.
Simply log into the Findmyshift website or app to get the latest version of your rota, visible to everyone who has access, whenever you like.
Always up to date so you’re always on the same page.
Add pay rate exceptions, breaks, and more
Tradespeople and service providers can be called into action at unexpected times, and this typically entails an enhanced rate for the trouble and urgency.
As such, you may pay employees more when they pick up out-of-hours jobs. Findmyshift makes it easy to schedule shifts with alternate rates so that you can account for inconvenience with appropriate levels of pay.
It’s also easy to add in breaks during shifts and separate your shifts by area so that you know who is where at any given time.
Use notice boards to reach everyone
You’ll likely have a regular need to pass on information to your employees that doesn’t warrant a call or a message, but is important regardless. Do you track down all their emails and start an accidental chain when someone hits ‘reply all’?
There has to be a better way. Findmyshift gives you and your team a centralised notice board to pin important announcements, information, and files that anyone can access without the hassle of email chains or mass texts.
Use it to share new policies, social updates, and more.
Peace of mind with secure cloud storage
All your data is encrypted using SSL, and saved in our cloud storage for anytime availability. Your data remains private and what’s more, we regularly back up your rotas just in case.
If anything does happen—mistakes sometimes do!—you can restore any previous version easily with just a few clicks.
Ensure happy holidays with time-off management
Sorting through and prioritising holiday requests can be a real pain, particularly at this time of year. There’s nothing more frustrating than thinking you’ve found the perfect employee to fill a shift, only to realise they’re off on holiday.
By giving you oversight of requests and booked holidays directly in your rota, it’s far easier to see who you have at your disposal, making decisions and scheduling simpler.
Embrace automated shift reminders and messaging features
You have enough on your plate without checking in to make sure people have seen when they’re meant to be working. Let Findmyshift handle things with automated reminders ahead of shifts, as well as a host of centralised messaging and notification features.
No more missed shifts because someone didn’t notice that their hours had been changed.
Managing Millennials? Add Alexa
If your workforce includes younger, tech-savvy generations, they might make use of technology you wouldn’t typically associate with shift scheduling. But we’ve got that covered too.
Whether it’s integrating into their phone calendars (with both Android and iOS apps) so their shifts auto-populate there, or giving them the ability to ask Alexa when they’re working next, we’ve got the next generation of employees covered.
Just don’t ask us to translate what Gen Z are saying. Bet, no cap.
Shift trades for tradespeople
Your employees are busy people with their own lives, so there will be times when the shifts you’ve assigned don’t line up well for them, despite your best efforts.
Findmyshift makes it easy for employees to request shift swaps, with your permission, so they can find solutions that work for them, as well as for your business.
As a manager, you’ll be able to see and approve these requests, giving you the final say while empowering your employees to work together to get shifts covered.
One low price no matter how much you grow
We want our customers to be successful, so we encourage you to grow your business. Each of our plans has one great value price per team, regardless of how many team members you have. Plus, if you’re scheduling five employees or fewer, it’s totally free!
We hope these features make it easier for your trade business to schedule your employees and continue to expand!