Making the most of OneBoxBM - Workforce Admin

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.

The workforce management area is and will always be one of the most involved parts of OneBoxBM. It’s not particularly complicated, it’s just that there’s more to it then other areas of the system it’s also one of the areas that requires the most upfront admin.

On that note to make your life easier we’re only going to cover the admin area in this post, which includes:

• Departments
• Job Roles
• Responsibilities
• Rates Of Pay
• Employee Groups
• Document Types
• Shared Document Types

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

Departments

Note: You can view the relevant help guide for the ‘Departments Manager’ at the following link.

Departments are the specific areas of business that your employees work under; each employee can be assigned to as many departments as necessary.

If we take a restaurant for example, we could have:

• Back of house
  • A kitchen
  • A pot washing area
  • An area for prepping food
• Front of house
  • The restaurant floor or customer area
  • A bar
  • A reception area/desk

Now the departments in OneBoxBM are stored as a flat list, which means that we can either list each department/area like so:

• Kitchen
• Pot wash
• Food prep
• Floor
• Bar
• Reception

Or we can use the more general grouping:

• Back Of House
• Front Of House

You could also add either (BH) or (FH) to the start or end of each department name; the departments are listed alphanumerically so adding it at the start should group them together.

As to our recommendation, we would add each department separately as this will be more useful when it comes to searching your employment records in OneBoxBM; you can separate ‘Cooks’ from ‘Pot Washers’, which wouldn’t be possible at department level if they’re both under ‘Back Of House’.

In addition to this when you take into account the fact that employees can also be assigned to multiple departments at once, there’s no real downside to adding each and every department separately.

Job Roles

Note: You can view the relevant help guide for the ‘Job Roles Manager’ at the following link.

Job roles are the specific roles that employees are given within the business; each employee can be assigned as many job roles as necessary.

If we take a restaurant as an example, we could have the following roles:

• Restaurant Manager
• Assistant Restaurant Manager
• Kitchen Manger
• Cook
• Pot Washer
• Floor Manager
• Waiter/Waitress
• Bar Manager
• Bartender
• Host/Hostess

In addition to this a number of Job Roles could also have trainee/junior positions:

• Cook
• Waiter/Waitress
• Bartender
• Host/Hostess

Much like departments, job roles in OneBoxBM are stored as a flat list which means there’s no formal hierarchy of job roles, so we have to enter them into the system like so:

• Restaurant Manager
• Assistant Restaurant Manager
• Kitchen Manger
• Cook
• Pot Washer
• Floor Manager
• Waiter/Waitress
• Bar Manager
• Bartender
• Host/Hostess

Now as we’ve said above, we also have a number of trainee/junior roles and no formal hierarchy so can enter them with the rank first:

• Trainee Cook
• Trainee Waiter/Waitress
• Trainee Bartender
• Trainee Host/Hostess

Or we can add the rank after:

• Cook (Trainee)
• Waiter/Waitress (Trainee)
• Bartender (Trainee)
• Host/Hostess (Trainee)

As far as the system goes there’s no difference, job roles however are ordered alphanumerically so it depends on whether you want job roles in your system to use the following ordered:

• Cook
• Cook (Trainee)
• Waiter/Waitress
• Waiter/Waitress (Trainee)

Or

• Cook
• Waiter/Waitress
• Trainee Cook
• Trainee Waiter/Waitress

As far as our recommendation goes using the format Cook (Trainee) works better as it groups the job roles together.

Each job role in the system also has a list of responsibilities, not only can you select which responsibilities are relevant to the role you can also add new responsibilities as well. We’ve found that it’s often easier to add these in while we’re adding the job roles to the system.

Responsibilities

Note: You can view the relevant help guide for the ‘Responsibilities Manager’ at the following link.

Responsibilities are the specific responsibilities that employees are given within the business; each employee can be assigned as many responsibilities as necessary. In addition to this you also assign responsibilities to specific job roles.

If we take a restaurant as an example, we could have the following responsibilities:

• Cooking
• Cleaning
• Food Prep
• Procurement
• Washing Pots
• Cleaning Tables
• Waiting Tables
• Serving Drinks
• Supervising Staff

Unlike the departments and roles which can only be managed from their respective manager/editor, you can also add new responsibilities from within the ‘Job Roles Manager'; while you can’t edit or delete them from within the ‘Job Roles Manager’ it’s often easier to create the initial list of responsibilities while filling out the list of job roles.

In addition to this you also have a number of free text fields against each employees employment record, we recommend making use of this to further clarify the specific details of each employees employment.

Rates Of Pay

Note: You can view the relevant help guide for the ‘Rates Of Pay Manager’ at the following link.

Rates of pay are the specific rates assigned to each employee; each employee can have as many rates of pay as necessary.

Against each rate you have the option to specify the default or base values for a given date range. So, you can have:

• Cook
  • £8.10 (Hour) from 01/01/2022 to 31/12/2022
  • £8.60 (Hour) from 01/01/2021 to 31/12/2023
• Waitress
  • £8.00 (Hour) from 01/01/2022 to 31/12/2022
  • £8.50 (Hour) from 01/01/2021 to 31/12/2023

If we take a restaurant as an example, we could have the following rates of pay:

• Restaurant Manager (Yearly/Salary)
• Assistant Restaurant Manager (Yearly/Salary)
• Kitchen Manager (Yearly/Salary)
• Cook (Hourly)
• Pot Washer (Hourly)
• Floor Manager (Yearly/Salary)
• Waiter/Waitress (Hourly)
• Bar Manager (Yearly/Salary)
• Bartender (Hourly)
• Host/Hostess (Hourly)

Much like job roles, rates of pay are stored as a flat list so there’s no formal hierarchy. In addition to this it’s also possible to have different rates for people of different ages.

Taking into account the similarity between job roles and rates of pay and the fact they the rates of pay will most likely mirror the job roles, we recommend something similar to this; with some caveats:

• Cook (16-20)
• Cook (21-22)
• Cook (23+)
• Cook (Trainee) (16-20)
• Cook (Trainee) (21-22)
• Cook (Trainee) (23+)

Now this is loosely based upon the ranges for the national minimum/living wage, which could change further down the line. In addition to this, you may also opt to change your pay structure over time.

A more future proof alternative to this would be to add specific ages instead, so:

• Cook (16)
• Cook (17)
• Cook (18)
• Cook (19)
• Cook (20)
• Cook (21)
• Cook (22)
• Cook (23+)

As you can imagine, this would result in some very long lists if you did this for each and every variation. Unfortunately, this is the downside of having a more complex pay structure. If you want to be able to store specific rates for each role and age group, then there’s not really a lot of alternatives; if you took the list above and put it in a spreadsheet you would have the same issue just presented in a different format.

That being said you can also specify an override for each rate on an employees record, not only that you can specify the specific dates for which the rates apply; though it still helps to know the default or base rates.

Employee Groups

Note: You can view the relevant help guide for the ‘Employee Groups Manager’ at the following link.

Employee groups serve a different purpose to everything else that we’ve talked about so far, while you can search for employees by group the main reason for assigning employees to groups is so you can target them when granting access to perform specific actions using the permissions system.

So how does this work? Well, if we take the hierarchy of a restaurant we could have:

• Restaurant Manager
  • All other employees
• Assistant Restaurant Manager
  • All employees except the Restaurant Manager
• Kitchen Manager
  • Cooks
  • Pot Washers
• Floor Manager
  • Waiters/Waitresses
  • Hosts/Hostesses
• Bar Manager
  • Bar Tenders

Let’s say we want to allow the kitchen, floor and bar managers to have a higher level of access when managing the records of employees in their area or department. We would need a way of defining which employees each of the respective managers can actually manage.

This is where employee groups come in, we could have the following:

• Kitchen (Management)
• Kitchen (Staff)
• Floor (Management)
• Floor (Staff)
• Bar (Management)
• Bar (Staff)

Then using either the user group permissions or the individual user permissions you would then select the above group as a target and grant the relevant access to the specific user group or user.

Note: We talk about permissions, users and groups in another post. Alternatively, you can take a look at the following help guide.

As much as were not here to discuss permissions we do feel that it’s worth mentioning a few things about them.

• They have 3 levels, all users, user groups and individual users.
• They’re access based, which means that in order to allow a user to perform a specific action you simply check the box associated with that action.
• Granting a user access at one level means that a user automatically has access at the next. So, granting access at the all users level will allow every user of the system to perform that action, there’s no way of changing it at the user group or individual user level.

Now while this does give you a great deal of control and flexibility it does come with some downsides. For instance, if you want the assistant manager to be able to manage the data of all employees other than the restaurant manger you will need to go through and set the permissions against each and every target group in the system.

While this may sound like a lot of work, it really isn’t as it’s only something you really need to care about when you first setup your system or when we add new features; users will always have the lowest reasonable level of access by default, so you don’t have to worry about anyone seeing anything they shouldn’t.

As far as our recommendation goes, we would put the extra work in and go with the following:

• Kitchen (Management)
• Kitchen (Staff)
• Floor (Management)
• Floor (Staff)
• Bar (Management)
• Bar (Staff)

Alternatively you could put a greater degree of trust in your management team and go with something like:

• Restaurant Management
• Upper Management
• Management
• Staff

While this requires less admin work it does also mean that every department manager will have the same level of access to employee records regardless of whether they’re responsible for them or not.

Note: We may look to allow employees to be in multiple groups in a future update, which will help address the issue with department and target groups; you would be able to bundle all employees in a staff group.

Document Types

Note: You can view the relevant help guide for the ‘Document Types Manager’ at the following link.

Document types are used as a way of grouping employee documents; each employee document can only be assigned one type, but document types can have many documents stored under them.

One again if we use a restaurant as an example, we could have the following:

• Employment Records
• Id/Photo Id
• Training Records

Shared Document Types

Note: You can view the relevant help guide for the ‘Shared Document Types Manager’ at the following link.

Shared Document types are used as a way of grouping shared employee documents; each document can only be assigned one type, but document types can have many documents stored under them.

If we use a restaurant as an example, we could have the following:

• Policy
• GDPR
• Health & Safety
• Training
• Onboarding