Self-rostering: an inefficient rota scheduling

For some years now, there has been a revival around the advantages of self-rostering in the workplace. As soon as this happens, it quickly emerges that the real downsides of self-rostering significantly overshadow the supposed benefits.

In this brief article we will review the main reasons that dismiss self-rostering as an efficient scheduling option for the Retail and QSR industry.

What is self-rostering?

Self-rostering system is an alternative to the traditional work rota schedule. It is a method of distributing labour hours that allows employees to choose their own work schedules with the input of their managers.

It is most commonly used in customer service, retail, public transport and other customer-facing sectors.

How does self-rostering work?

In a rotation window of between 4 and 12 weeks, each employee has a number of points that he or she can spend to bid for the desired shifts in a blank monthly work schedule.

The essence of self-rostering is that employees can manage their breaks and timetables to suit their own personal work-life balance.

For this reason, several companies decided to try self-rostering as a method of workforce management and scheduling. But they quickly realised that this failed experiment was inefficient and non-productive.

Why self rostering fails in Retail and QSR?

There are four reasons why self-rostering is not the best solution to optimise workforce management:

• Not 100% compliant with the labour laws of each region.

Scheduling based on your employees’ bets for monthly shifts makes it impossible to comply with the labour regulations of each region of your stores or restaurants. 

Self rostering is incompatible with avoiding sanctions for non-compliance with working hours, shift rotation or rest break distribution.

• Stress, envy and discontent among employees.

The bidding war to get the desired shift is an element of stress and burnout for employees. Imagine the anxiety generated among the staff when you have to calculate the points you need to get that morning off to go to the bank and your colleague bids more and takes your desired shift away from you.

This is why self-rostering only works in theory, because when it is put into practice, the disadvantages cancel out the naïve intentions of self-management.

• Significantly increases the management workload

Self-rostering promotes employee-led scheduling, in some cases up to two months in advance. It is an impossible challenge for a store manager or restaurant manager to supervise and control with precision, impartiality and pace that all employees respect the number of hours in their contract, that breaks are distributed fairly and that the cost of extra hours at peak customer traffic does not escalate.

• Blind scheduling without forecasting

The main mistake of self rostering is that it never considers forecasting as a necessary first step for efficient scheduling.

Retail and QSR industry top leaders no longer schedule by intuition. They schedule with data provided by AI-powered and predictive analytics technological solutions like Orquest.

The best alternative to self-rostering

At this point, what are the best options for workforce management?

At Orquest, we know for sure that the perfect way to boost productivity, improve customer service and increase sales is a staff management software.

With a wfm software you can positively impact three fundamental areas of your stores and restaurants:

• Customer service
• Customer experience
• Opportunity to sale

Check out this short video to discover how Orquest improves your business performance.

And if you want to receive more information or request a demo, you can do it by filling this form.

Our team will contact you and provide you with a customized service that will help you to confirm that you are right to prefer AI-based scheduling over old-fashioned self-rostering systems.