Making the most of OneBoxBM - Workforce Management

This is part of a series of posts that’s designed to help you get the most out of OneBoxBM, to view the index click here.

In OneBoxBM workforce (employee) management is split between the workforce management area and the admin area.

To make your life easier, we’re only going to cover the workforce management area in this post, which includes:

• The New Employee Editor
• The Employee View
• The Employee Search
• Shared Employee Documents
• Excel Exports
• Employee Boxes

(Prior to reading, we recommend first taking a look at the post around the 'Workforce Admin Area' as some of the fields use the data populated in said area.)

Note: We’ve also put together some useful help guides to help you manage your employee data; we’ll reference the specific guides in each section.

In keeping with the rest of the series, we're going to continue using a restaurant as an example.

In this scenario, we have just hired a new cook in an entry-level position.

They are in the last 3 months of a catering course at college, so they can only work limited hours.

Once they've finished college, we're going to look into increasing their hours, with the view of them moving to a more full time position over the course of the year.

• 0 - 3 Months
  • Job Role: Trainee Cook
  • Hours: 8
  • Hourly Rate: £8.00
  • Availability: Saturday/Sunday (Anytime), Tuesday/Thursday (from 6pm)
  • Objectives: They're to find their feet by helping around the kitchen.
• 3 - 6 Months
  • Job Role: Trainee Cook
  • Hours: 24
  • Hourly Rate: £8.50
  • Availability: Monday/Wednesday (up to 4pm), Other Days (Anytime)
  • Objectives: Work towards becoming more self-sufficient, and start tackling some of the easier dishes on their own.
• 6 - 12 Months
  • Job Role: Line Cook
  • Hours: 30
  • Hourly Rate: £9.00
  • Availability: Monday/Wednesday (up to 4pm), Other Days (Anytime)
  • Objectives: Work towards becoming sufficient with all dishes.

From the above we have a number of key pieces of information about our new employee. Not only that we have a rough plan for their first year in the business.

Unlike many competing products, you can capture all of the information above for the year, and beyond, in OneBoxBM.

This is done using our date-effective system, which allows you to specify the relevant from/to dates for which the data is applicable.

Not only that, we will always display the most relevant data for the given date.

Note: You don't have to make use of the from/to dates, you can just override the data as and when you need to.

The New Emplpoyee Editor

Note: You can view the relevant help guide for the 'New Employee Editor' at the following link.

When first creating a new employee in OneBoxBM, your first stop will always be the 'New Employee Editor'.

To keep things simple, the 'New Employee Editor' will only prompt you for the key employee details, such as:

• Their Title (Mr, Mrs or Miss etc)
• Their First Name
• Any Middle Names
• Their Last Name
• Their Employee Cook

In this instance, we’re going to create our new employee under the 'Kitchen (Team)' group.

Note: 'Kitchen (Team)' is a group that we have created for this example. The idea being that we can use this to filter our records via the search.

Upon the creation of the employee record, you will be presented with the 'Employee View'.

The Employee View

Note: You can view the relevant help guide for 'Employee Management' at the following link.

Much of the day to day management of employee data will be handled within the 'Employee View', which contains the following tabs/sections:

• Summary
• Details
• Employment Details
• Rates Of Pay
• Hours/Working Days
• Objectives
• Time Off
• Clients
• Comments
• Documents

Now we've already captured our employees most basic details as part of the employee creation process, so we can move onto filling in the remainder of their details including:.

• Their address
• Their personal and work contact information
• Any emergency contacts

The next three sections, (Employment Details, Rates Of Pay and Hours/Working Days) all make use of our date-effective system.

This involves going to each section and creating multiple revisions (records), one for 0 - 3 months, one for 3 - 6 months and one for 6 - 12 months.

As we mentioned previously, you don't have to create multiple revisions of each record. However, we're looking to keep comprehensive employment records.

First we're going to start with 'Employment Details', which includes:

• The employees job title.
• The employees employment status.
• The employees start/end employment dates.
• The department(s) the employee works under.
• The employees job role(s).
• The list of things the employee is responsibile for.
• Any additional details/notes about their employment.

Next we're going to move onto 'Rates Of Pay', which includes:

• The employees rate(s) of pay.
• Any overrides to the rate(s) of pay.
• Any additional details/notes about their rates of pay.

Finally we're going to move onto the 'Hours/Working Days', which includes:

• The employees min, max and preferred hours.
• The days which the employee can or can't work and what times they're available.
• Any additional details/notes about their working hours/days.

This might seem like a lot of work, and it some cases an can be. However, by doing this we've managed to outline our new employees first 12 months in the business; if anything changes you can always update/delete any records as needed.

In addition to our new employees details at the various stages of their first 12 months of employment we also listed some objectives.

The idea being that in working towards completing these objectives the employee will progress as expected.

This means that we need to capture the three objectives we listed at the start:

• 0 - 3 Months: They're to find their feet by helping around the kitchen.
• 3 - 6 Months: Work towards becoming more self-sufficient, and start tackling some of the easier dishes on their own.
• 6 - 12 Months: Work towards becoming sufficient with all dishes.

Now we feel that it's important to check in to make sure that the employee is on target to meet their objectives, so we're also going to schedule in some periodic reviews alongside each objective.

During the interview process, our new employee informed us of an upcoming family holiday. To make sure we have a record of this, we're going to log their time off/leave request(s).

As a business, we've received a lot of positive feedback in regards to the hosting of our events, weddings etc, one thing that our customers appreciated was that we assigned staff members to the clients team; you can also view which employees are assigned to clients from within the 'Client View'.

Since we have a wedding coming up in a few months, we're going to assign our new employee to the customers team; they will be assisting with the catering for the event.

Now that we've captured the bulk of the employees details, we want to make some additional notes about the employee.

To do this we're going to make some comments against the employee record; this could be anything (perhaps their anxious about stepping into the role).

You may want more senior members of the staff to review any comments you've made as well as make some of their own.

Now all that's left to do is attach any documents we need to the employee record.

As they're a new employee, there will undoubtably be a number of documents to attach over the coming weeks; this will include a number of documents relating to their training records.

Employee Search

Note: You can view the relevant help guide on searching for employees at the following link.

Our new staff member has recently just completed some of their training modules, the manager responsible for the training now wishes to attach the digital certificate to the employees record; this is in the form of a pdf.

To do this, they need to search for the employee record and open the 'Employee view'.

If they have the reference number for the employee, they can simply enter the number in the search field. Alternatively, they can enter the employees name and/or use the various filters on the employee search.

Once they've found the relevant record, they can simply go through and review the details, making any additions and/or amendments necessary.

Shared Employee Documents

Note: You can view the relevant help guide on 'Shared Employee Documents' at the following link.

In our restaurant example, we have a number of shared documents stored in the 'Workforce Management' area.

This includes:

• Documentation around handling employee data.
• Documentation around onboarding new employees.
• The employee dress code and code of conduct.
• The time off/leave request policy.
• Company policy around accepting gifts etc.

With each type of document being listed under the appropriate category, like so:

• Handling Employee Data.
• New Employees
• Policy

Each category contains multiple documents. Some of which will be used as a reference, others will be need to be filled in.

In this instance, we're going need our employee to have a read though our policy documents.

Excel Exports

Note: You can view the relevant help guide on 'Employee Excel Exports' at the following link.

While you can access OneBoxBM from just about anywhere with an internet connection. We do recognise that there's time where you may wish to get data out of the system, so can:

• Print your employee records
• Email them to someone who doesn't have access to the sytem
• Import them into another system

Should you wish to do any of the above you can export a selection of employee records to excel from directly within the system.

Not only that you can select which parts of the employee record to export, this allows omit certain sections of the employee records before they even leave the system.

While you can always open the Excel file and delete the parts you don't need, we feel it's in better keeping with GDPR as it minimises the risk of people accessing information they shouldn't really have access to.

Employee Boxes

Note: You can view the relevant help guide on 'Employee Boxes' at the following link.

One issue you may run into when searching employee records is that you can't quite get a right results.

Lets take our restaurant as an example, you may want to export a list of employees that are responsibile for upcoming events to Excel.

You could go through a cycle of:

• Search for the relevant employees.
• Export the list of employees to Excel.
• Copy the list of employees from one Excel spreadsheet to another.

While this would work, it's a little cumbersome, it's also going to be frustrating if you decide that you want to export additional data alongside each record.

Alternatively, you can make use of 'Employee Boxes' and build your own custom lists of employees as you're searching your employee records.

Each box will contain its own list of employees, with each box only containing one copy of each employee; you can however have the same employee in multiple boxes.

So, going back to the restaurant, how does this work?

From within the 'Workforce Management' area you create a box called 'Employees To Export', which you then add records to as you're working through you list of search results. Once you've added all of the relevant employee records you simply select the box from the 'Box' filter on the employee search.