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Is Rota Planning with spreadsheets hurting your business?

By Guardian Nigeria
26 April 2022   |   2:40 am
Rota Planning with Dedicated Software vs. Spreadsheets ► The Cons of Excel's Complexity ► More Time ✅ Cut Losses

Spreadsheet software has been used by many companies for a variety of HR tasks for decades. That fact applies to young modern businesses as much as old established ones. In the past, when no dedicated software for rota planning existed, tools like Excel were a welcome solution to simplify staff scheduling. The method has established itself by now.

Even today, buying a new software when they already have access to the Microsoft programs isn’t typically a high priority for startups who don’t have much money to spend on luxuries. However, dedicated software for rota planning is widely available now and can help you avoid the downsides of working with spreadsheets. What are these cons to using Excel and co. and how can a target-oriented alternative help?

Downsides of Spreadsheet Rota Planning

While Excel is perfectly capable of creating rota plans, it wasn’t specifically created with this purpose in mind. This leads to some complications you can avoid if you use modern staff management software. You can summarize the downside with this simple phrase:

  • Spreadsheet software is needlessly complicated and will lead to losses in the long run.

How a Spreadsheet Confuses Employees

A program like Excel is a powerful tool. You can create countless tables with various formats and many complex features. It filters, sorts, and calculates data and formulas with many possible applications in a business. No wonder, Excel skills are still one of the most wanted criteria for new recruits. The ability to use both numbers and text and apply the program’s functions to either made it a great fit for creating documents like shift plans.

That software like this can help with rota planning isn’t in question. Just being able to use it for staff schedules does not make it a good solution, though. It is this variety of complex features that makes a program like Excel less suited to a task like rota planning than a software that was crated for it specifically.

Dedicated rota planning software like Papershift can bring clarity in communication, simplify, and optimize the process. Since it has no unnecessary excess of features, it is easier to learn. Its UI for creating plans and adding or accessing information is simple and intuitive. By giving every person their own app or desktop access, HR personnel and staff members have dedicated views depending on their authorization. This way, you can guarantee personal data security and control who can see and/or edit which plans.

The software’s focus on one task allows it to have more functions that help to create optimized and effective rota plans. Much of the process can be automated and synched with other management software for time tracking or payroll accounting.

In comparison, Excel:

  • requires schooling: There are entire seminars that teach staff members how to handle Excel, even for as little as a single task they are meant to use it for.
  • is hard to navigate: It’s not just creating spreadsheets with Excel and its formulas that can be unwieldy. While you can use the software’s filters and sorting features to see the relevant data, an Excel spreadsheet is still complex and makes it necessary for staff members to actively search for their shift rather than being notified individually.
  • can easily be altered (accidentally or on purpose): Whether you are the person creating and editing the sheet, or somebody who just wants to access the information, accidentally deleting or altering the contents of an Excel cell is far too easy. These kinds of changes are hard to notice and retrace.
  • lacks rota specific features: Excel having any functions that are suited for rota planning is more of a bonus than a dedicated feature. This means it does not have the full scale of abilities needed to create a good shift plan. A software like Papershift, for example, allows staff members to add their own availabilities, absences, and lets them apply to open shifts. It can also keep track of the worked hours and labor law regulations, to alert you of overtime and other problems.

How is a Rota Software Cheaper for Employers Than a Spreadsheet?

Excel’s complexity requires more time and effort and is more prone to mistakes. All three of these factors can cause losses. Using a dedicated rota software frees up time by making it easy to use and additionally automating many processes. Employees do not need to spend time, effort, and the businesses’ money on Excel classes. Their schedule is freed up for the more important core tasks of their job. On top of that, the intelligent software uses algorithms and analyses to find the best and flexible solutions for acute business needs.

With benefits like this, cutting costs by not investing in a dedicated software when you already have access to Excel is a miscalculation. Saving time, reducing errors, and creating efficient rota plans will save the business more money over time.

Conclusion

Dedicated software for rota planning differs from Excel by providing the user with the full extent of features needed to create good shift plans, instead of accidentally having some functions that help with it. Saving money by bending a spreadsheet software’s abilities to create rota plans is a miscalculation. By using a dedicated program, the task gets easier and provides more beneficial results to both the employers and employees. Freeing up time, reducing mistakes, and optimizing plans will instead increase the businesses’ efficiency and revenue.

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