Enterprise 21 CEO Colin Mackie provides business advice on franchisee rostering

Colin Mackie is the CEO of business advice company Enterprise 21 , providing advisory services to the franchise industry. Here he outlines the features of what he considers the most efficient and accurate rostering tool for franchisees.

One basic fundamental of business operation for Franchisees is the setting of the roster – one of the most onerous and least liked tasks in running a business that employs a number of young or casual employees.

Many franchise systems provide a form of rostering program, either manual or on-line, with many of these being totally impractical or well below the standard of other systems that are available. Often, in the case of rosters ‘good enough’ is the catch-call, regardless of the effectiveness of the approved or suggested system.

It has been said that one of the least enviable of jobs in a business can be setting and maintaining the roster. When franchisees have a number of staff - part time, full time, casual, permanent part-time and all the combinations - juggling the needs, wants and preferences of everyone can certainly be a major headache to them.

Once the roster is set it does not mean that the manager can now relax and expect that her staff will comply with what is expected from them. Monday morning is usually the first sign of disruption. It invariably comes in the form of a phone call from a mum, husband or flat mate to say the one of the Franchisee’s staff is sick (code for ‘hung over’) and can not come to work.

Now they will need to phone around to find a replacement. They will either get unanswered calls or mums, boyfriends or the cat and, if they are very lucky, they may even get the person that they actually phoned, only to be told that she is sorry as she is at university all day.

Franchisors are constantly impressing upon their franchisees to keep their labour costs to a minimum, but without any forward budgeting or forecasting tool in place, the franchisee does not know the wages component until after the wages have been paid: a little late to take affirmative action.

It does not need to be this way. There are a few new on-line roster systems that address most of these problems. One, Roster Portal, developed by an IT graduate at the University of Queensland who has paid his way through university by working in a Donut King store, has developed a fantastic system.

This Roster Portal system has been tried, tested, tweaked and added to over a 2 year period to offer the most user-friendly and effective roster and staff budgeting tool available.
A roster that once took up to two hours or more can now be done in 5 to 10 minutes. Staff can access one part of the portal to insert their holidays, exams, haircuts and other commitments months in advance. The manager can see this clearly as he sets out the roster without having to phone or search through diaries or scraps of paper. The staff can personally insert their preferred hours and their available hours from home for approval by the roster manager.

As the roster is being compiled it will automatically calculate the total wages for each day. If the franchisee wants to put in an estimated turnover for that day, the roster system will give this as a percentage. It is then a very simple task to massage the staff to get the lowest wages possible. One user of the Roster Portal system claims to have saved almost $30,000 p.a. using this facility and the wages export tool.

Once the roster has been set with the best possible staff wages component, one simple click on the computer will send a personalized text message to each employee with their hours for the following week saved on their phone.

The franchisee can also use the Roster Portal facility to notify staff of promotions, special offers, training, drinks, social events and other matters that may be of interest. All of these features have had a secondary but very important side-effect: staff ownership of the roster has increased significantly and staff job satisfaction is noticeably higher.

It can also be used as a very effective communication tool by the franchisor to get general information to the actual employee such as promotions, major changes, awards and accolades.
There is also an even more effective time saving tool: wages export to payroll. Because the roster system calculates the wages for each staff member, it is a very simple task to press a few buttons and export this information directly into MYOB, Quickbooks, or other payroll systems. One client in the hospitality industry was spending each Monday from 8.30 to 6.30 implementing this function. Today, with Roster Portal, she takes a few minutes.

What is even more surprising is that the cost of the Roster Portal system is almost insignificant compared with the cost savings that are obtained. Hours reduced, stress levels reduced, staff ownership and satisfaction increased AND all for no more than the cost than a cup of coffee per day.

Franchisors are encouraged to look at this roster system, which will obviously benefit not only their franchisees but ultimately the whole franchise system.