Blogs

Self-scheduling is a modern approach to workforce management where employees are given the autonomy to select their preferred work shifts, within the parameters set by the organization. This strategic shift from traditional scheduling methods fosters a more inclusive and empowering work environment. By actively involving staff in the scheduling process, organizations can potentially increase job satisfaction, reduce turnover, and enhance overall productivity.

Kait O’Callahan, Clinical Coordinator at Unitec, is our guest author. She, along with Sharon Sitters, Lecturer at Unitec, and Mike Peterson, Clinical Tutor at Whanganui Hospital, have done a study through Unitec into the perceptions around self-rostering in radiographers. Rosterlab was fortunate enough to support their research with our AI rostering platform.

Dive into our beginner's guide to open shifts: grasp the essentials and master effective implementation. Get started today!

Are you just starting your rostering journey, or looking for an overview of all the different rostering concepts that you could use to improve your own rostering process? In this guide, we explain all the core concepts of rostering including key concerns when rostering, the different types of rosters, open shifts, shift swaps, on-call shifts, electronic rostering systems, and more.

In assessing Te Whatu Ora's 2023/2024 Workforce Plan, it is encouraging to see the proactive attention towards the well-being and longevity of our healthcare workforce. One of the critical points I gathered from the report was the need to rethink our approaches to rostering. The implication is clear: the healthcare sector requires employment models and service delivery strategies that maximise the talents of its workforce without causing burnout. This is an area where technology can be instrumental, particularly in terms of AI-optimized rostering solutions.

An excellent roster is one that best meets and enables a unit’s staffing coverage requirements. Real life is complex and nuanced, so simple representations of which staff we need and when we need them can always be improved. In this article, we present four different levels of staffing optimisation. Each level represents a more complex rostering problem, allowing for more optimisation possibilities and considerably more effort and skill to construct.

There are so many ways to make a roster: fixed repeating patterns, rotating shifts, preferences, different shifts lengths, self-rostering, open shifts and more. In this guide, we present our guide for how we recommend people make and manage rosters for both optimal staff retention, and skill mix.

For those of us writing rosters with 24-hour coverage, there is the necessity to account for sleep days for those that are transitioning from night shifts to day shifts. Sometimes in the deep roster writing state, we can lose track of these things in the struggle to fill every shift. Let's set up some Excel formulas to check this for us instead of seeing it ourselves much later.

Have you ever wondered how to set up your rostering spreadsheet to quickly check if you have the right number of people on every day? Maybe you already have, but you would like some colour coding or even a quick check that every day is staffed correctly. In this post, I will go over some easy-to-implement excel formulas to do just that.

When we set out to make an AI rostering platform, the team at Rosterlab encountered many, many Excel spreadsheets. We’ve also wound up making innumerable spreadsheets ourselves. It's part of the territory of rostering, and also part of the territory of testing a rostering AI. In this post, we go into the how what, and why of the new Rosterlab Free Tier (the who is us, and when is sign up here now).

Staff rostering has a tremendous amount in common with the ideas explored in one of my favourite movies, Moneyball. Like Brad Pitt, rosterers have to squeeze a winning amount of productivity out of their team, while staying within a limited budget.

In healthcare, making a roster is easy; if you have excess staff who are happy to work whenever. If you don’t have a workplace utopia, rostering is an arduous struggle to balance the myriad trade-offs within the roster of: staffing numbers, contractual obligations, fairness, individual happiness and the hours it takes to find the right balance.

How to effectively make cost efficient staff rosters. Tips on the different factors to consider.

How to manage night shifts more effectively for your health and wellbeing.

Tips on how you can implement rotating rosters for your organisation and why these rosters can be beneficial.

Explore how smart shift scheduling boosts workplace morale and efficiency, and see how technology like RosterLab makes it easy.

Discover how to balance on-call scheduling with RosterLab for happier staff and operational efficiency.

Discover how to streamline shift swaps in your workplace with our guide, covering eligibility, time restrictions, processes, FAQs, and using scheduling software.