Wasting away with admin? Here are 4 ways to save time in workforce management
Jun 2025 ⋅ 5 min read
We all want to save time. We all wish those repetitive, mundane tasks wouldn’t take so long. We’d all rather be doing something else with that time. That’s why we invented washing machines, dishwashers, and air fryers, after all (and why AI butlers will likely one day man them for us).
When it comes to rota planning, managing holidays, payroll (and every other fun task under workforce management’s umbrella – no, gazebo), there are only so many hours in the working day to get everything done. How often are you shutting yourself away in the office or taking work home for your evenings to build rotas, make amends, calculate pay, and sort holidays? Managing a team is hard enough without doing it all across multiple spreadsheets.
You know from experience how much those ‘free’ spreadsheets cost, in money and time. So, if you're constantly facing endless rota changes, labour cost and accrual calculations, and last-minute holiday requests… You’re not alone. Here are 4 ways managers can save time with their workforce management.
4 areas of workforce management where managers can save time
1. Rota planning
Let’s start simple and with your most visited (and time-consuming) task. Rota planning is where managers lose most of their time. A proper copy tool can be a game-changer here.
Now, we’re not talking about a simple copy-and-paste job, like copying certain cells in your spreadsheet rota and pasting them wherever you want them repeated. That can quickly turn chaotic – into a nightmare you’re surely used to by now.
What we’re talking about is a smart workforce management system where you can select the date range and the employees of the shifts you want to copy, then duplicate that rota pattern across any date range you desire. That’s far easier, simpler, and quicker.
It takes just a few clicks to do and allows you to plan weeks, months, or even years in advance.
Rotating shifts, swing shifts, 4-3s, 4-on-4-offs – you name it. No matter the pattern, powerful copying tools can create rolling rotas or staff with fixed shifts and availability for as far along as you’d like, and make tiny adjustments as and when you need to.
Plan three months of shifts and put them aside until a few weeks before they’re needed, if you’d like. It’s flexibility at its finest.
You can plan and edit quickly, keep staff happy with a consistent routine, and have time to crack on with more important things that need your attention (like your actual job!).
2. Wages & costs
How much time do you spend calculating each member of your team’s wage come Pay Day when they have a variety of different pay rates?
With workforce management software, you can set custom pay rates for each role or individual.
Why is that useful? By having the flexibility to set specific wage rates for specific roles, perhaps alongside a default salary and overtime rate, any shift you plan to a specific role will have that associated salary. Meaning no manual calculations.
You can even view labour costs directly on the rota, so you know if you're on or over budget as you schedule, and those manual calculations (or checking each staff member’s rate and finding errors on Wage Day) are in the past.
That’s a far easier payroll – and much less time even thinking about numbers.
3. Holiday accrual
Automatic holiday accrual calculations are already a big time saver. The less time your head’s in your hands over a calculator, the better. But there’s more time to be saved here.
Similar to role rates, it’s highly useful to be able to set custom leave rates.
Workforce management systems, alongside selecting what holidays are paid, unpaid, and included in the holiday accrual, allow you to set specific pay rates outside the standard percentage. This is another big game changer.
Again, like role rates, it saves time by eliminating those manual processes you had before by automatically calculating the associated costs of leave pay and accrued holidays, especially if they differ.
When the calculations are automatically done for you, you don’t need to play around with numbers in spreadsheets anymore.
4. Holiday requests
Finding yourself understaffed with too many people off at the same time is awful at the best of times, but during peak times? No thanks. You’re chasing people to find cover and/or facing a day with an overworked team. Either way, you’re wasting time and stressing over an issue that could have been avoided.
A good workforce management system lets you set rules around who can be off when.
By using leave request rules, you can:
- Block leave requests during peak periods
- Limit how many people from a site, team or role can be off at once
- Set standard rules for the year or just your busiest seasons
Instead of having those awkward conversations when rejecting a holiday or sifting through all those requests, cross-referencing who’ll be off when and how much of your team you’ll even have… make a rule that will deny the leave request for you.
Leave rules are particularly useful for hospitality and retail industries, where peak times are far more common and potentially (no, let’s be honest – highly) stressful. Denying more or all holiday requests for upcoming busy spells allows businesses to be more prepared and confident that they won’t find themselves understaffed. What’s more, they’re not wasting time checking calendars and making sure each request is fine.
Wrap-up
In all, automation is your friend.
Ridding yourself of the manual processes that take up too much of your workday (and, in more cases than not, your own time) leaves you with more time to focus on what matters: growing your business, managing teams, keeping on top of costs, tracking attendance… The list goes on.
Nothing beats feeling in control and saving time and money. That’s the beauty of efficiency and the power of smart workforce management.
