Making the most of OneBoxBM - Rota 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 staff rotas are managed from within the rota management area. Which includes:

• The New Rota Editor
• The Rota View
• Rota Search
• Rota Excel Exports

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

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

We're starting to plan our staff rotas for the 6-week summer holidays, as we're a family friendly restaurant we're expecting to be a bit busier than usual.

We've made ourselves a new rota template that we're going to be using to create the upcoming staff rotas.

The New Rota Editor

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

When first creating a new staff rota in OneBoxBM, your first stop will always be the 'New Rota Editor'.

To keep things simple, the 'New Rota Editor' will only prompt you for the key staff rota details, such as:

• The From/To Date
• The Template (Optional)
• Rota Details
• Rota Departments
• Rota Notes

In this instance, we’re going to be using our new 'Summer (2024)' staff rota template as our starting point.

Now we've already filled in most of the key details when we created the source template. However, we want to stress to all employees that this is the first week of the summer rota.

To do this we're going to make some amendments to the details and the management notes.

Upon the creation of the employee rota, you will be presented with the 'Rota View'.

The Rota View

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

Much of the day to day management of your staff rotas will be handled within the 'Rota View', which contains the following tabs/sections:

• Summary
• Details
• Targets
• Schedule
• Days (Starting Monday to Sunday)

Note: each 'Day' on the rota view has it's own tab/section.

Now we've already captured the basic details as part of the rota creation process, so we can move onto 'Targets'.

While we're expecting to be busier than usual, and we want to make sure we have enough staff to cope with the increased number of covers. We also need to try and keep our employee hours/costs under control.

In order to do this we're going to set our:

• Target sales
• Target spend per head
• Target employee hours
• Target employee costs

Fortunately, we've already set our targets in the rota template that we've used to create the current rota so we only need to give them a quick look over.

You're free to update/override any of the rota targets regardless of whether you use a rota template or not. In addition to this, changes made to the template will not impact any rotas that have already been created using said template.

Now we've set our initial targets, we can add our employees to the schedule. Rather than add the employees via template, we've decided to make use of the 'Auto-Add' feature. Which will automatically assign all relevant employees to our schedule. With our employees assigned we can get to scheduling our rota and employee shifts.

First we're going to start with our rota shifts,

In OneBoxBM, each day has it's own shifts within these shifts you can:

• Set the shift details
• Set the shift targets
• Set the shift employee job role requirements

In our restaurant we have morning and evening shifts everyday apart from Sunday, which will just have a single longer shift.

Fortunately for us, we've already set all the default values for our shifts in the rota template, so we only need to go and review them.

First we'll start with the basic details, such as the shift start/end time. We'll also review the basic details about the shift and add any additional notes for the management team; we've already done this in the template, so it's really just a check over everything.

Next, we're going to review the targets for the shift. These will be based upon the initial targets we set at the rota level.

To finish things off, we're going to review our shift job role requirements. This will help us make sure that we have enough staff covering each area of both the front and back of house.

As we mentioned previously, we've already filled in much of the data when creating our rota template.

If however, we hadn't started from a rota template, we would be able to make use of the 'Copy From' feature. This would allow us to simply select a rota shift and open a new 'Rota Shift Editor' window with the details already filled in; any targets and job role requirements will also be copied.

Now that we've reviewed our rota shifts and made some amendments to the default values, it's time to move onto the employee shifts.

While it's possible to plan the entire staff schedule using the schedule view, we personally don't feel that it's the most effective way to go about it. Instead we're going to be making use of the 'Rota Schedule Builder'.

Using the 'Rota Schedule Builder', we can go through each day, Monday to Sunday, and plan out our schedule all while:

• Working towards meeting our employee job role requirements.
• Keeping within our target employee hours.
• Keeping within our target employee costs.

If we expand out the list of shifts, we can see that we have two shifts scheduled on the Monday. Within this we can also see that we have a number of job roles we need to fill.

• Morning (06:00 to 14:00)
  • Cook (1)
  • Floor Manager (1)
  • Host (1)
  • Pot Washer (1)
  • Waiter/Waitress (1)
• Late (14:00 to 22:30)
  • Bar Tender (1)
  • Cook (1)
  • Floor Manager (1)
  • Host (1)
  • Kitchen Manager (1)
  • Pot Washer (1)
  • Waiter/Waitress (1)

Now it's usually fairly quiet when we first open up and when we're just closing down, so we don't really need to open and close with someone dedicated to doing those roles. However, we are expecting customers, so we do need someone to fill the hosting and pot washing roles.

To address this we're going to be making use of the primary and secondary job roles; we could also use split shifts if we really need to.

First we're going to schedule in a cook, who in addition to his primary role of 'Cook' will also have a secondary role of 'Pot Washer'.

To do this we're going to be using the 'Employee Shift Editor', which will allow us to:

• Specify the shift start and end times.
• Specify whether they're working a standard or overtime shift.
• Add any additional details about the shift and the roles they're performing.
• Specify how long they get for their break and whether or not the break will be paid.
• Specify the rate of pay.
• Specify their primary and secondary job roles.
• Add any additional notes for the management team.

As we're assigning our cook a secondary role of pot washer, we're going to add some extra details around the fact that we wont have a dedicated post wash; we could also just add this to the rota shift details.

We've already decided the same cook is going to be working the morning shift on the next two days. To save ourselves some time, we're going to making use of 'Copy From' feature; this will open a new 'Employee Shift Editor' with the data prefilled, you just need to amend the dates and save the record.

Now that we have our cook scheduled in, we're going to add a waiter/waitress. Like the cook they're going to start our with primary and secondary roles; it's just the two of them opening up, so they're going to have to split their duties.

As we've already established, while there isn't an issue with assigning multiple job roles, we do have a bit of a problem in that, until the 'Floor Manager' comes on shift, the waiter/waitress will be filling in for them. Which means we're going to need to pay them a higher rate to compensate them for the extra responsibilities.

To do this, we're going to split their shift into two parts. For the first 2 hours, they're going to bo paid as a 'Floor Manager' then for the remainder of their shift they're going to be paid their regular rate; this just involves creating two separate shifts on the same day.

As this point we're assigned both a 'Cook' and a 'Waiter/Waitress' to the schedule for the 'Monday'. Now we just need to go through and make sure we have someone in every role.

While we're doing this, however we do need to be keeping an eye on our target hours and employee costs. Fortunately, we can just expand the relevant sections on the 'Schedule Builder' and check our daily running total against our defined targets.

By this point we've got Monday pretty much nailed down. We just have to work through the rest of the week; thankfully we have our 'Copy From' feature, which will speed things up.

One thing you may have already noticed when usimg the 'Schedule Builder' is that the underlying schedule on the staff rota is being filled in as we go. This is because the schedule builder is just a convenient way to build and view your schedule day by day; as we mentioned previously we feel it's the best way to go about scheduling your employees.

This means that you can close the schedule builder at any time and view the underlying schedule, which as useful as we feel the schedule builder is, is something we recommend doing periodically.

During our testing we found it useful to build the schedule using the schedule builder, then fine tune it in the schedule view.

In addition to using the schedule builder, you can also view a day by day breakdown from within the relevant day tabs on the 'Rota View'.

Rota Search

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

The employee responsible for closing off the morning shift needs to go and update the actual sales and spend per head; while you can do this as time we want to keep things up to date as we go.

To do this, they need to search for the employee rota and open the 'Rota View'.

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

Note: The employee rota search will automatically apply a date filter when first loading the search, so you may need to amend this prior to searching for the relevant rota(s).

Excel Exports

Note: You can view the relevant help guide on 'Staff Rota 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 staff rotas
• 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 staff rotas to excel from directly within the system.

Not only that you can select which parts of the staff rota to export, this allows omit certain sections of the employee rotas 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.

We hope this gives you some additional insight into how to make better use of OneBoxBM to manage your staff rotas.

In Summary

• The New Rota Editor
  • Create new staff rotas quickly and easily using the 'New Rota Editor'.
  • Create new staff rotas using your predefined rota templates.
• The Rota View
  • View a summary of essential details relating to the staff rota, including some key targets.
  • Manage the basic details of each staff rota, including the from/to dates along with any additional details and/or notes.
  • Set the top level targets for the staff rota including, sales, employee hours and employee costs.
  • Schedule your rota shifts, specify the shifts targets and employee job role requirements.
  • Populate your employee schedule using the 'Schedule Builder' then fine tune it using the schedule view.
  • Make use of the 'Copy From' feature to quickly and easily fill out your employee schedule.
  • Access a summary of each employees details from within the rota, including their hours, schedule and general availability.
  • Manage employee time off and leave requests from the schedule view; includes holidays, sick days and personal days.
  • View a day by day breakdown of your staff rota including daily targets and a daily schedule.
• The Rota Search
  • Search your employee rotas using a variety of search filters, including status, department and more.
  • Group your employee rotas by department and status making them easier to manage.
• Excel Exports
  • Export a selection of staff rotas, to Excel, from within the 'Rota Management' area.
  • Select which parts of the selected staff rotas to export, which not only saves you time but helps you stay more GDPR compliant.