At a time when the retail and hospitality industries have already been struggling, the coronavirus outbreak seems like a cruel blow to many businesses across the UK. Chances are you’re already starting to feel the pinch – with fewer customers inevitably leading to reduced cashflow, putting even more strain on you and your team.

Luckily, there is one simple yet powerful business tool that could help see you through these difficult times, by ensuring any profits don’t slip through your fingers during the COVID-19 outbreak and helping you spend every single dollar exactly when and where it’s needed.

Smart rotas will help you and your team provide the customers who are coming through your door with the exceptional customer experience they know and love you for, while also making sure you don’t waste a single cent on unproductive staff.

Rota smarter, not harder

What if you could use an intelligent, automated tool to create cost-effective rotas at the click of a button and save your business thousands? It might sound too good to be true – but Roubler’s smart rota feature ticks all those boxes and more.

There’s no better way to rein in your wage spend, and make sure every staffing dollar is being spent efficiently. Not to mention the fact that you’ll save hours of precious time when it comes to creating the rota in the first place – you could spend as much as 81% less time on the tedious task of creating rotas.

Be agile and adaptive

Over the coming weeks it’s more than likely some members of your team will need to take some time off sick, which means you also need to be able to adapt daily – or even hourly – to fluctuating changes in your rota requirements. The smart rota feature is here to help you take an agile approach.

Better still, if one of your employees needs to take time off at the last minute, you can make it easy for them to swap shifts with other employees. The employee self service mobile app will let them put a call out to their team mates to see if anyone is available to cover their shift.

Rethink your rota structure

Like many businesses, chances are your standard rota week runs through from Monday to Sunday. This might be purely out of habit, or because you’re limited by your software and are unable to change the start of the working week to a day that makes better sense for your business.

Consider breaking old habits and starting your rota week on a Friday. You’ll get a better gauge on how busy you are during your busiest days, so you can adapt your rota accordingly for the rest of the week. This will help you find cost savings as needed so your wage costs don’t run over budget.

Be compliant

Let’s face it, the last thing your business needs right now is to be caught out paying your staff incorrectly. Roubler will give you true peace of mind, with always-on compliance tools that will ensure your rota always complies with HMRC rules and regulations.

What’s more, if a manager unknowingly schedules a team member on at a time that will have a big impact on the wage bill – for example, on a shift that will attract unnecessary additional overtime – this will be flagged with senior management for approval before the rota can be released.