The employee contract (Part 2)

In a previous blog post , we discussed the employee contract. We spoke a lot about how both the employee and their employer have certain rights and responsibilities. The idea being that the relationship between both parties could be improved if they focused not only on what they have a right to but also what they have a responsibility to provide.

While we could continue to examine this further, we feel that we would be better served by going through just how OneBoxBM can be used to tackle many of the issues we highlighted previously.

Job Roles and Responsibilities

The ability to capture details around an employees job roles and their responsibilities has been a core part of OneBoxBM from the start. We realised early on that we want our users to not only be able to assign multiple job roles to a single employee, that it would also be beneficial if users could track their employees progress.

This is why not only can employees be assigned multiple job roles and responsibilities at any one time, users can also specify the effective dates for which the employee is assigned those roles and responsibilities.

Not only that users can also assign multiple responsibilities to each job role, with the responsibilities then being inherited by any employee within that role.

In addition to this, each employment record contains two free text fields that can be used to further define the employees role. One of which is only visible to management users.

All this allows detailed specification of each employees job role, it also allows employers, managers and team leaders to track the progress of their employees/team members over time.

Rates Of Pay

Much like the ‘Job Roles and Responsibilities’ employee ‘Rates Of Pay’ has been a core part of the OneBoxBM solution from the start. Once again users can assign multiple rates of pay to each employee at any given time. Not only that users can also override the default rates on a per-employee basis.

In addition to this, each rate of pay record contains two free text fields that can be used to provide further context as to why an employee is paid a specific amount. One of which is only visible to management users.

All of this is designed to help employers ensure parity across the board by providing a convenient way to view and manage each employees rates. It also allows them to track the changes over time.

Tinme Off And Leave

In OneBoxBM, both time off/leave requests and allowances are grouped into 3 categories: holidays, sick days and personal days.

With the right permissions, each and every employee can not only make their own requests for time off they can also view the basic details of the requests made by other employees.

This can help take the pressure off team leaders and managers as they can simply manage the requests that have been made, rather than having to go and make the requests themselves.

It also provides a convenient way for employees to check if anyone else requires time off/leave around the same time. All without them being able to see the specifics of why another employee requires the holiday, personal day or sick day.

In addition to this, any changes to the from/to date of the request will also place the request in an unauthorised status so it can be reviewed by the appropriate team leader or manager.

Objectives

Being able to manage and track objectives is essential from both the employee and the employers perspective.

For the employee, it’s often about having something to work towards, whether it’s acquiring new skills or developing existing ones.

For the employer, it’s often about highlighting areas where they feel the employee needs to improve to become more proficient in their current role. Or what skills the employee needs to develop or acquire to move onto a new role altogether.

One thing we noticed when looking at our competitors was that while many solutions allowed you to set objectives, they often fell short when it came to reviewing them.

This is why we built the ability to not only set objectives from within each employees employment record, we also implemented the ability to set periodic reviews. With each review not only having a target date but a target percentage and two additional free text fields, one of which is only accessible to management users.

This allows managers and team leaders to not only set the objective but also set targets or milestones along the way. Then, when it comes to reviewing the employees progress, the manager or team leader can then record and compare where the employee is to where they’re expected to be.

Documents

Cloud document storage comes as standard with a OneBoxBM subscription, which means that users are free to upload/attach any relevant documents to their employee records; providing that they meet the upload requirements.

This can be anything from a signed employee contract to training and performance records.

Access to these documents can be restricted in such a way that the employee can always view their documents, but the management of said documents is limited to their manager or team leader.

Comments

As we mentioned previously, many of the sections on the employment record have the option to enter free text. This is generally presented as two text fields: one that’s intended to provide additional context/clarity and one that’s reserved for management users.

In addition to this, each employee record also has a comment section, which, like the documents above, can also have its access restricted. This allows managers and team leaders to make notes or comments about things they may have observed or wish to discuss about the employee without the employee being any the wiser.

Staff Rotas and Employee Schedules

One of our goals with OneBoxBM has always been to go beyond just offering users the minimum. We’ve never been happy with just giving the user a few fields to fill in and calling it a day. We feel that this is especially evident when it comes to our staff rota and employee scheduling system.

There are just so many things that set us apart from many of our competitors, such as:

• The ability to create rotas on a per-department basis.
  • Users can create rotas for each department in their business or share a single rota across multiple departments.
• The ability to assign multiple job roles to each employee.
  • Users can assign both primary and secondary job roles to each employee on the schedule on a per-shift basis.
• The ability to create split shifts.
  • The ability to create split shifts
• The ability to capture shift requirements.
  • Users can specify which job roles need to be filled on any given shift.
• Our powerful schedule builder.
  • Users can build the entire schedule day by day while making sure to fulfil any shift requirements all while ensuring that they meet their shift targets.

In addition to this, as OneBoxBM is a browser-based application, managers, team leaders, and employees are able to access the system from almost any device with an up-to-date web browser.

All of which not only makes it easy to manage employee schedules, but also share any schedule updates with the relevant employees.

Time Sheets and Time Sheet Entries

OneBoxBM uses a digital punch card system, with each employee being issued a new punch card whenever they clock in. This punch card will then remain ‘Active’ until either they clock/punch out or 24 hours have passed.

During this time, employee punch cards will be updated whenever an employee clocks/punches in/out from their scheduled or unscheduled breaks.

Once the employee has clocked out the system will automatically generate the associated time sheet entry using a combination of any scheduled shift details and the manual punches made by the employee.

Shared Documents

This provides easy access to any important documents, such as:

• Uniform standards.
• Booking time off/leave.
• Claiming back expenses.
• Booking travel and/or accommodation.
• Receiving of gifts and declaration thereof.
• Accident or incident reporting.
• Handling customer complaints.
• Etc...

Once uploaded to the cloud, any documents will be accessible to all employees with access to the system. Not only that, as OneBoxBM is browser based, users will be able to access the documents from outside the business premises; providing that they’re logged into the account.

Terminal Access

Any PC, Mac, Tablet or Mobile device with an up-to-date web browser can be turned into a OneBoxBM terminal. Which allows users to:

• Access shared employee, client and supplier documents.
• Clock/punch in/out at the start/end of their shift.
• Clock/punch in/out at the start/end of their scheduled, or unscheduled, breaks.
• Access a read-only copy of the current and upcoming staff rotas.

(Terminals are secured using terminal accounts, so the system will only be accessible once a user has logged in using the relevant credentials.)

User Permissions

From what we’ve seen OneBoxBM has one of the most comprehensive permissions systems of any software application on the market. From within OneBoxBM you can:

• Control access for all users.
• Control access for groups of users.
• Control access for individual users.
• Set different access levels when viewing all employee records and employees within specific groups.
• Control access at a granular level.
  • Access is often granted to various sections of the records stored within the system.

GDPR

GDPR and data protection in general can be a bit of a minefield, which is why we’ve designed OneBoxBM to not only be accessible but also reliable and secure. In addition to our comprehensive permission system, we also provide 2-factor authentication, email based, as well as audit/history logs.

As we said at the start, our goal with this post was to talk about some of the ways that OneBoxBM can be used to tackle the issues we highlighted in our previous post about rights and responsibilities.

From the very beginning, we’ve always tried our best to allow users of our system to provide as much information as possible without the system being complex and unwieldy.

The idea is that employers, managers, and team leaders can:

• Provide detailed job specifications.
• Track employee pay progression.
• Track time off/leave.
• Specify who is responsible for what on a given shift.
• Track employee progress through objectives and date-effective employee records.
• Provide convenient access to employee schedules and updates made to said schedules.
• Provide the appropriate levels of access for employees to get the job done.
• View a detailed audit history of employees actions within the system.

All of which helps ensure that both the employer and their employees are on the right track.

Specifying in detail not only what an employees role is but what role they're expected to perform on a given day provides clarity, allowing the employee to focus on the job at hand.

Capturing and periodically reviewing objectives helps ensure that both the employee and their employer are working towards a common goal. Not only that, having periodic check-ins helps both parties ensure that things are still on target.

Having 24/7 access to the employee schedule helps ensure that employees know exactly when they’re working at any given time.

While there’s certainly more we could go into around this idea of rights and responsibilities as well as OneBoxBM as a system, we’re going to leave it as a 2-part series for now.

If you are interested in finding out more about OneBoxBM you can visit the website ( oneboxbm.co.uk). We’ve also put together a series of blog posts which talk all about making the most of OneBoxBM.

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