We have received many inquiries over the years from recruitment companies looking for a better way to manage candidates while also helping internal consultants. We know from more than 3000 customers that not every program suits every customer……this rostering / scheduling program is made for recruitment companies.

• Allow candidates to advise availability electronically in advance making scheduling easier
• Candidates can sign in on own smart phone (no hardware required) or location based kiosk
• Build schedules in advance and share with candidates via email or smart device
• Candidates schedules go directly into their own smart device calendar
• Create electronic open shifts and let the keenest candidates fill the positions (first in gets the shift)
• Give your customers visibility/access to the schedule showing live who is in and who is late
• Consultants can see live who is on site and who is late
• Less than 15 cents per employee per day

When talking to potential customers from the recruitment industry I get told I don’t understand the pressures of being a consultant and managing candidates 24 by 7 in some instances with no visibility, customers calling me to tell me an employee has not turned up before I even know about it.

The good news here is I worked in this industry for more than 10 years in a previous life, I had the 24 by 7 phone. I remember being up at 11:00pm trying to find replacements for people who called in sick on a rotating 18 week 24 hours a day roster. Finally i would get to bed well after midnight only to then find more people at 4:00am in the morning for the next customer who just had an unexpected container or two arrive a day early throwing out the roster for the day.

Managing people in high pressure situations was always tough, information at our fingertips often comprised a data base of names or a printed spreadsheet of names. We all did the same thing, we all got on the mobile phone and started dialing, I could spend hours some mornings just ringing numbers hoping to find the candidate required to fill the position. Sometimes you got lucky and got a yes from the candidate in the first few calls, other times 20 calls later you were still looking to fill the position.

I remember days where I needed 10 people to fill 10 positions, I could have been on the phone for three hours just getting these positions filled, if you have ever worked in this industry or ever been a customer of a recruitment company supplier I know you will relate.

Don’t let this be you every day any more

Times have changed, technology has changed now you can do so much more with detailed easy to use systems that not only make your life easier but you can now give access to your customer if you want. Recently I completed a demonstration to a recruitment company in Melbourne online, when I mentioned the idea of sharing information online with the customer they were very nervous, apprehensive and before I could even start to show the possibilities everyone in the room categorically said NO… NO we will not give access to our customer….then I continued the demonstration and showed them how it worked, within minutes all the people in the room wanted to know how soon they could implement, quite simply we blew them away with the possibilities.

I have been in your shoes and searched the globe several years ago to find a better rostering solution for many industries not just recruitment. After looking at and trying more than 30 rostering solutions over 12 months I know I have the best solution for you.

Want to know more – click here and try staff rosters for free

While we prefer employees to sign in with a smart device you can still sign in and out at a PC. Some advantages of employees signing in and out through smart devices for time and attendance include…

How can employees sign in?

iPhone or Android – when employees sign in and out you can capture the GPS position of the employee and place a pin on a map on the employee time sheet.
iPad – when utilising an iPad as a kiosk for groups of employees to sign in and out you can turn on a feature to take a photo of each employee when they sign in and out with the photo going onto the employee time sheet.

As companies become larger in the number of locations the cost of any time and attendance system increases significantly when trying to implement hardware.

With 50 locations hardware costs can vary from $50,000 to $100,000 for biometric hardware including installation and cabling
With 50 locations hardware costs can vary from $25,000 to $50,000 for most other hardware choices like pin number and proximity including installation and cabling

You can completely remove the cost of hardware and give more functionality than a biometric time clock improving company efficiency simply by allowing employees to sign in and out via a PC.

Managers can manage employees, approve leave, build and adjust schedules and much more. Employees can sign in and out, apply for leave, advise future unavailability and more

Watch a very short video on how an employee can sign in at a PC completing removing the costs of hardware.

Rostering has come a long way, the days of spreadsheets and pen and paper should be long gone. Today you can now communicate with your staff electronically giving your employees the power to communicate back electronically saving you the business owner or manager or supervisor hours every week.

What is an open shift?

An open shift allows a manager to offer the shift to any available and appropriately trained employee who works in the location. Creating an open shift will send an invitation via email or SMS to all recommended staff members, offering them the shift. The first employee to accept their invitation will be rostered to the shift, and any attempt by another staff member to accept a shift will be denied. This can be advantageous for a manager looking to rapidly fill a number of shifts, or to fill a particular shift as quickly as possible if an employee calls in sick with no warning.

Introducing Open Shifts/Schedules

Open shifts or schedules allow you the supervisor, manager or business owner to create schedules with start and finish times leaving it up to employees to grab the available schedules. No more chasing people to fill positions.

Once you create the open schedule any employee or casual or contractor that is suitably qualified to take the open shift can claim the shift right from their own smart phone. Perfect for businesses that use a lot of casuals, uni students and the like. Simply create the shifts you want employees to fill and they will be filled.

Employees simply claim the open shifts they want that they are qualified to take as soon as the email arrives

Try staff rosters for free and start working smarter in your business

As cloud software has burst onto the scene over the past couple of years we have seen some spectacular products and we have seen some dismal failures. I am not going to name products here, I will more talk about what to look for when selecting your cloud rostering or time and attendance solution.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of cloud rostering and cloud time and attendance?

The 2 biggest advantages of going to cloud really do outweigh the disadvantage

No hardware/software infrastructure required – you can go completely without any hardware and have no software installed on your computers in the business, this for me is the largest advantage for small business as you need no IT expertise to get your system up and running. Some of the excellent cloud based rostering solutions will allow you to start setting up your account as soon as you sign up for a 30 day trail, within a couple of hours your account can be set up and you will be rostering for next week from your computer, iPad, Tablet or mobile phone, it really does not get any easier.

Communication – When you move to a cloud rostering or cloud time and attendance solution one of the biggest advantages you get is better communication, with nearly every person carrying a smart phone today you can push information to your employees and they can communicate back through the same channel on the smart phone or a computer. I have seen some of the employee time clocks over the years come out with all sorts of features that allow employees when they clock in at the time clock to look up information like how many hours they have worked, what time they clocked in and out over the past seven days and more. These features while sounding clever only congest the employee time clock at a time when people just want to clock in and out.

The only way today to share information with employees is give them an app they can load onto their smartphone giving the employee their own personal self serve kiosk experience that they can access anywhere and anytime.

When thinking about disadvantages there are not many, having the ability to manage your system where ever you are by phone, iPad, Tablet or computer works well for most in the busy life we all lead every day.

Some systems could drop out when no internet is available and this would be the biggest disadvantage of the day, when was the last time you lost internet on your mobile phone? Smart apps will hold data when the internet is not available automatically pushing the information to and from the smart phone as soon as the internet connects again.

I was just reading an article this morning about Goolgle working on replacing computer screens altogether in the coming years with voice activation and instructions moving to a new phase of ease of use. In the coming years you will not even have to manually build your rosters or write emails to communicate with employees, you will simply be able to say what you want and google will look after the rest……the technology has been around for decades but the changes coming in the near future will simply blow you mind.

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