Brucan Pubs

Brucan Pubs was founded in 2018 by culinary duo, James Lyon-Shaw and Jamie Dobbin. Since opening its first pub in Windsor, the business has seen great growth and now consists of four venues, which offer equally exceptional service and menus following an aggressively seasonal structure.

Prior to implementing Rotaready, the Brucan Pubs team were using spreadsheets to build staff rotas, store new employee information and track employee attendance & holiday. All operational processes were very manual and as the business grew, the need for a more efficient approach was highlighted.

As we grew, we needed to take a leap into the digital age and professionalise our whole set up. We had employees moving between sites and data in 3-4 places, so bringing it all into one place, one piece of software, was key.

We wanted to streamline every step of the employee journey, reduce the amount of paper we used and the number of clicks managers had to do. Now, thanks to Rotaready, nothing is more than 2 clicks away.

A leap into the digital age

In February 2022, the Brucan Pubs team set about their search for a workforce management solution that could help them resolve the issues they were facing; and free up time to focus on delivering the exceptional service that they pride themselves on. The chosen solution also needed to be cost effective and have good functionality without being robotic.

After reviewing a number of options, Brucan Pubs turned to Rotaready to help them tackle the challenges they were facing.

Ultimately our decision to go with Rotaready came down to a number of factors. It actually came in under the budget we had allocated for the project, which we were obviously impressed by. Plus it ticked 9/10 boxes in terms functionally and was a lot smoother to implement than any other solutions we'd seen.

From making the decision to go with the rota software, the pub group had all sites up and running with Rotaready within a couple of weeks. This included an integration with the businesses EPOS and reservation systems.

Implementing Rotaready was very straightforward, everything was done remotely with all of our historical data accurately imported. Generally Rotaready is a really easy and intuitive bit of software to use. Even the less computer savvy were quickly brought up to speed.

Opening a new site with Rotaready in place was SO much easier. When you open a new pub there are enough stresses without having to worry about the admin; Rotaready enabled me to do what I needed to in an hour rather than a whole day.

Enhanced, Extensive, Effortless

Since implementing Rotaready, it's not only been easier for Brucan Pubs to build accurate staff rotas; the business has seen a great number of benefits. Here's what the team told us are their favourite 3 things about the rota software...

1. Enhanced visibility

Visibility has improved for all employees - generally Head Office can now see the ‘bigger picture'. Employee records can be immediately accessed and there's full visibility of rotas and costs across sites. As for managers, they can easily find employee information such as hours worked, contracted hours and holiday entitlement.

And employees now have full visibility over upcoming shifts and are able to book time off via Rotaready's mobile app. Both things they would previously have had to request from their manager.

The permission levels within Rotaready are great, it means the right people have eyes on the right things! It works incredibly well on all levels.

2. Extensive reporting

Day to day reporting was previously laborious for the pub group and it was difficult to find accurate employee information. But since getting started with Rotaready, the team at Brucan Pubs has access to a multitude of reports; something they have found to be particularly useful, especially when it comes to reporting on joiners and leavers.

Rotaready's reporting has also helped improve payroll accuracy as reliable timesheet data is pushed directly from Rotaready into Brucan Pubs payroll solution.

3. Effortless onboarding

Employee onboarding is now easier than ever for Brucan Pubs. With Rotaready the team can be sure that all employees are set-up correctly from day one.

The team has also recently switched on one of Rotaready's newest features, self- onboarding; enabling new employees to set themselves up on Rotaready by submitting their details directly via the Rotaready app. This has removed the need for any paper forms and as a result improved data security and eliminated the risk of human error when translating employee information from its paper format into Rotaready.

The value Rotaready adds can be measured by the smile it puts on my face when I know it's not going to take me half a day to get a new employee set up. 10 clicks is now 2 clicks with Rotaready. It saves us time which saves us money and head space!

What's next?

Brucan Pubs still have a number of features they could be utilising to help make things even more efficient. Next on their agenda is to use Rotaready to automatically issue contracts to new employees and store them within Rotaready. This will help them reduce the number of clicks and processes even further than they have already.

Rotaready are always forthcoming with developments, so much so that there are features we aren't even using yet. I have often queried something with our Customer Success Manager and found out that what I am asking for is already on the way. Nothing is ever standing still.