6.10am, the breakfast chef is ill
Your college site opens for breakfast at 7.30. The breakfast chef texts the site manager at 6.10 to say they are unwell. The site manager rings the operations manager, who starts ringing other site managers to ask whether they can spare anyone.
One site is short themselves. One manager does not answer. The office campus has a kitchen assistant who could go, but nobody is sure whether they can drive or whether they know the college's kitchen. At 7.15, the site manager starts cooking breakfast themselves and the lunch prep falls behind.
Each site's rota is a separate world
Contract catering grows one site at a time, and each site sets up its own rota in whatever way works: a spreadsheet, a whiteboard, or a scheduling app used by one manager.
- Operations cannot see across all sites at once.
- Skills, training records and experience at other sites are not recorded centrally.
- Who can drive or travel to which site is known only locally.
- Relief staff and bank staff are called from a personal phone list.
- When cover is arranged, payroll and the client recharge are not told.
Everyone is doing their best within their own site. Nobody has the view across the whole business, which is where cover comes from.
The cost of every early-morning scramble
Service suffers at the site that is short, and the client notices. A site manager doing a chef's job is not doing theirs. Cover from agencies is often more expensive than your own staff, and agency staff do not know your menus or the client's expectations.
Afterwards, the hours worked by the person who moved sites are often recorded against the wrong site, which throws off both payroll and any client recharge for labour. It gets sorted out, eventually, by someone reading texts.
One rota across every site
- All sites' rotas move into one system, or are read from the scheduling tools sites already use, so operations sees everyone.
- Each person has a profile: roles, sites they know, any training records your procedures require, whether they drive and how far they can travel.
- Staff report absence through a phone page or text, which notifies both the site manager and operations and marks the shift as open.
- The system lists who is qualified and not rostered at that time, and who is rostered at a site with spare capacity.
- Operations offers the shift by text to suitable people, and the first to accept is booked, with the site address and start time sent automatically.
- The moved shift is recorded against the site where it was worked, for payroll and for any labour recharge in that site's contract.
| Question at 6am | Where the answer comes from |
|---|---|
| Who is off today? | Absence reports across all sites |
| Who is free and qualified? | Rotas and staff profiles |
| Can they reach the site? | Travel areas and driving recorded |
| Where are the hours charged? | Site where the shift was worked |
A calmer start to the day
When someone calls in sick, the open shift appears on one screen with a list of possible cover, and an offer goes out in a minute. The site manager knows cover is coming and when. Payroll and the monthly client invoice pick up the moved hours without anyone reading back through texts.
Over time, operations can see which sites are regularly short and which have slack, which helps when planning recruitment and bank staff.
It also helps the people who do the moving. Staff who are happy to cover at other sites get offers they can accept or decline on their phone, with the address and start time in the message, rather than a 6am call asking them to go somewhere they have never been. Their extra hours are recorded properly, so they are paid correctly for the site they worked at.
Planned absence becomes easier too. Holidays at one site can be covered weeks in advance from another site's quieter days, because both rotas are visible in one place.
Is this your operation?
- Cover is found by phoning site managers early in the morning.
- Each site keeps its own rota in its own format.
- You are not sure who is qualified to cover at which site.
- Moved shifts are recorded against the wrong site.