Combine duties where appropriate to ensure effective use of staff
Combining duties
When developing a roster it can be useful to consider the skillset of staff members at your disposal. It is rare within tourism, travel, hospitality and event sectors that employees will only have one role which they will be asked to perform on all of their shifts. Situations can change quickly and help may be required within other areas of the business.
To overcome this problem, it can firstly be highly beneficial to recruit individuals who have a broad skillset and have had experience within various roles in the past. Training and mentoring are further tools that can expand the skillset of new or existing employees – making it possible for them to combine their duties when needed.
Employee profiles
An operations or human resources manager might decide to create an online roster system which contains details about all employees and can help them make decisions about shift assignment. By having profiles that contain information about the skills and experience of each employee, you can assess the needs that are required at particular times or at certain events and match these to the appropriate workers. Once employees have completed training, their profile can be amended to incorporate new areas within the workplace that they are capable of working in.
Benefits of combining duties:
➢ It can prevent you from having to recruit new individuals to cover sickness of parental leave
➢ It enables employees to build their knowledge and skillset
➢ It enables you to manoeuvre employees during shifts in particularly quiet or busy periods
➢ It can help to increase operational efficiency.
Mixed functions
A critical aspect that you need to be aware of when rostering staff to combine duties is the implications it can have on wages, as stated in the relevant award for you industry. For example, in The Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2010 ‘mixed functions’ section, it states that when an employee is engaged for more than two hours in a day on duties that carry a higher rate than their regular classification, they must be paid to the higher rate for the entire day. When they work for less than two hours in the higher role, they should only be paid the high rate for the time worked in the role. Information on classification of job roles can be located within your relevant award document.
P a g e | 26
Combining tasks at different locations
Another method of making use of staff effectively is through making them perform roles at a number of different locations. This involves asking employees to deal with a number of tasks as one larger piece of work rather than performing them all separately. This will apply especially when your organisation holds events in a number of different locations or holds premises such as hotels or restaurants in varying places. When an employee conducts their job at all locations, it can be cost-effective to visit all sites within one trip, rather than say returning back to a base location frequently. This can help to reduce on fuel and travelling expenses, such as the cost of overnight stays. Additionally, minimising the movement of employees between locations can help to reduce their time spent away from home and thus increase their quality of life. When it comes to rostering then, you should aim to limit the amount of time employees spend travelling as this can increase costs and lower efficiency.
P a g e | 27
Activity 1C
P a g e | 28
1.4 – Roster teams with complementary skills mix to meet operational requirements
Balancing staff of different roles
It is crucial that you have staff members with differing levels of authority on shift at any time. The experience levels often vary between staff and having only relatively inexperienced staff or staff working at the lowest levels working at the same time could result in inefficiency in the workplace. They may be less able to organise others, and might be less comfortable with dealing with queries or complaints from customers, thus reducing customer service. You should always aim to have a shift manager present at each location that your business operates. Additionally, customers often request to speak to a manager to resolve any concerns they have; not having one present can lead to further difficulties.
Rostering staff with complementary skills
When choosing staff to work together on a shift, it is worthwhile to consider the skills that each individual has and what they can contribute to a team. While this might not be as important to consider when employees are working on their own, there are many situations within the tourism, travel, hospitality and event sectors that employees have to work together to provide the highest standard of service possible.
Examples of skills or qualities that may be required include:
➢ Leadership
➢ Strategic ability
➢ Knowledge of the industry/service provided
➢ Physical ability
➢ Customer service skills
➢ Experience of working with children.
Thinking about some of the above examples, if there is not a member of staff on shift who is comfortable with performing a role then certain tasks may not be completed and the service provided may be hindered. For example, if a range of heavy goods needs to be moved between locations or within the workplace and you do not have employees who can safely move the goods, then operational procedures will not take place as planned and it could have a knock on effect on other areas. Similarly, if you run a business that requires staff to lead group activities or games with children, then it is important to have employees rostered who have had training and experience in doing so, or else the quality of service provided may drop or it may not be able to take place at all.
Depending on resources, you should always aim to have at least two members of staff who can perform each role. This means that if an employee becomes ill or needs to respond to a family issue, there will always be another person to cover who can perform the role.
P a g e | 29
Rostering based on relationships
You may also want to consider the dynamic of a team when developing a roster. Although you should ideally have all staff members having positive relationships and being able to work together effectively, there may be circumstance where personality differences have caused clashes between workers. While managers may decide to speak to individuals who have conflicted in the past about setting a positive attitude in front of customers, it may also be beneficial to separate such employees. This may involve having them work at altering times of day or at different locations. If customers were to see staff members arguing at any point, this could have a damaging impact on the reputation of the business and lead to a downturn in business.
Similarly, if there are employees who have proved to work well together in a team, you may decide to place them on the same shifts whenever possible.
The post Combine duties where appropriate to ensure effective appeared first on My Assignment Online.