Black & blue Friday

You may love it, you may hate it. You may have bagged a bargain you didn’t even know you wanted. Either way, you can’t argue that since its full-scale introduction to the UK in 2013, Black Friday has marked the start of the busy festive shopping season.

Records tumble each year. Christmas presents (pun intended) the biggest opportunity in the business calendar. That said, it’s not all good news…

Increased customer demand. Longer opening hours. Larger workforces. Staff wanting more time off.

These all conspire to make the usual headaches of handling rotas and managing staff that bit harder. Getting it wrong means missed sales, slow service and unhappy customers. Not what we want.

But Rotaready’s clients are in the best place possible for making the most of the busy season.

Of course, it’s not only retailers who experience a busy Christmas period…

Every winter the demands on our hospitals grow. Much of the strain is due to the flu / norovirus season as the weather gets colder (we’re not looking forward to that). A&E admissions are usually higher too (perhaps due to some of the more, erm, exciting office parties).

 

You get the idea. Bars, pubs, restaurants, hotels, cinemas, theatres – demand booms everywhere. It keeps on going into the New Year, with the January sales, refunds to process, gift vouchers to be used and so on. And after all the excesses, gyms and leisure centres get a tidal wave of interest as people pin their New Year’s resolution to a subscription.

No matter what industry you’re in, Rotaready has the tools to help.

 

1. Managing larger workforces

• New staff easily added (even if they’re re-hires from another season)
• Powerful HR features to manage the team (e.g. moving staff between sites, uploading & storing time-sensitive documents)
• Text message notifications to automatically communicate staff schedules

2. Seasonal working patterns

• Availability patterns to capture working styles on a seasonal basis
• Exceptions added at the click of a button
• Settings to capture whether staff work bank holidays by default

3. Scheduling to meet forecasted demand

• Absence calendar gives amalgamated view of who’s off
• Staffing levels changed with a few clicks with smart templates
• Intelligent forecasting to model data feeds (e.g. footfall, weather, sales data) to predict demand (more on this another time…)

What’s the Christmas season like at your place of work? Let us know how it’s looking for you.