Customer story: Bright Futures

Starting as one home in 1999 for children with autism, learning difficulties, and complex needs, Bright Futures has grown over its 26 years to offer support to both children and adults, as well as specialist education, across its 30-plus sites – and counting.

The challenge

When one site can mean a terrace of four two-bed homes, and a 600-plus workforce includes care teams, business support colleagues, maintenance, and more, Bright Futures had a mammoth task when it came to scheduling for them all – especially when it sat with just one person.

While balancing the duties that came with managing a home and being an area manager, at one point, Phil Speed was building the rotas for the whole company, covering every site and (at the time) 200-300 employees.

The process

Rotas began as a table in a Word document. One person would work through one rota at a time for each site, crossing off or highlighting any holidays as they went. They moved to a piece of software that transferred their data over into Excel. This made things a little easier, but even with this software, as they were still pulling information across, their process hadn’t truly changed.

“It was quite challenging, you know, trying to know what people were doing,” Phil told us. “So, you'd have to look at our HR system to see who's on annual leave, put them on annual leave, do the rest of the rota. Then the next site – do the same thing.”

There were always four weeks’ worth of rotas in advance, with a new 7-day rota made for each site every week. This, at times, took 2 to 3 days to build.

Every Friday, rotas were printed and sent from Bright Future’s head office to the relevant sites, where managers would manually write any amendments, like cover, lateness, or sickness, at the bottom of the rota. Any shift changes or swaps required a paper form, which led to manager approvals and getting pinned to the noticeboard for future payroll.

Paper rotas & lost time

Of course, as Bright Futures grew, more time was drained by the manual admin – which merely scratched the surface of the many challenges they faced.

Paper rotas were always at risk of being lost or damaged, and, as a collection of children's homes, Bright Futures weren’t strangers to finding them somehow in children’s hands. A few rips aren’t usually the end of the world, but as a legal document, a bit of sellotape wasn’t going to do a good enough job.

Once-in-a-blue-moon occurrences can be dealt with. But it’s the consistent frustrations that cause the most issues for everyone.

Some sites would get the rota and change it themselves, wasting Phil half a day on doing that rota. If staff were off, whether sick or on holiday, they would need to ring in to find out when they were next working. Then, when it came to the software they used, they could only have one person in it at a time, so they had to take turns and couldn’t make multiple changes.

“It was so time-consuming.”

Bright Futures were continuing to grow, and the system they were using couldn’t go any further. With up to 30 sites, some with 30-plus staff each… It just wasn’t feasible anymore.

The solution

Phil, eventually becoming Bright Future’s Digital Change Manager to help the company’s transition to digital systems, was brought in with a few others to look at a couple of rota planning and workforce management software. But it was being able to play around with RotaCloud, alongside the real, human interactions with a UK support team, that made them decide.

They piloted RotaCloud with a few different sites to test any teething problems. “We took one of our maybe bigger homes, a smaller home, someone who was tech savvy, someone not as tech savvy – trying to make sure we can cover everything.

“Once we realised it was successful after a month, we did another month from a payroll perspective to make sure all of that information was coming.”

And once it was, it was all go!

So, what does the process look like now?

Rota planning

Each manager and deputy manager has their own login with the access they require, with RotaCloud's workforce management sitting alongside their existing HR system. Any edits and shift swap requests can be made in a few clicks, automatically updating the rota.

What began as a few email reminders for sites to publish their rotas is “now second nature,” Phil said.

Everyone in the company has instant and constant access to the rotas as soon as they’re published. Not only managers and staff, but the training team can schedule training for staff months in advance.

“When the manager comes to do the rota, it’s already there. They can go, "Ah, I'll have to put them on at the end of the shift or put them on another day”. So, you know, it's nice that it links in from different areas of the business.”

While no longer building the rotas is one of Phil’s benefits, it’s certainly not the main (or only) benefit – for him or the company.

The benefits

“From the staff’s perspective, they can plan their lives better,” Phil told us.

“They’re getting the rotas live as and when they want them. They can check them. They can do things from home. They don’t have to wait to come in to do a shift swap because it might be too late.”

Plus, instead of staff needing to phone in to find out when they’re working, “Now, you can be anywhere in the world and ping – you know, if notifications are on. But even if they're not, it’s there.”

With everything stored in a cloud, “From a sort of safeguarding perspective, you've got people's names that are time-stamped on there, and if a tablet or laptop gets broken, you can pick another one and carry on where you left off.”

No more sellotaped paper rotas – something Ofsted and CQC inspections much appreciate!

Even down to timesheets, Bright Futures has full visibility of every one of their sites. Using RotaCloud’s Time & Attendance product, they set up tablets at every home for staff to clock in and out. While they have and use the mobile app to access rotas and request shift swaps in their own time, they limit clocking in to the sites’ dedicated tablets with photo-taking to ensure everyone’s where they’re meant to be.

“I don't necessarily need to see everybody's face first thing in the morning,” Phil said. “But we know they're there then, and it's the right person who's clocking in.”

It all works seamlessly with payroll. Phil sits down every morning to work through the day before, and it only takes him half an hour. It replaces a full day’s work each week.

Overall

Thinking back to the amount of print-outs, the back and forths, the request forms, the ringing around, Phil admitted, “It all sounds very old-fashioned now, really, when you look at what we can do… But I never thought anything of it.”

We asked Phil if he would recommend RotaCloud.

“I genuinely would. I think it's been a massive game-changer.”

“There are loads of positives. I don't think I could say which is the biggest benefit. I think everyone would have their own. You know, payroll would go, “This is it for us,” and staff are going, “No, no, no, this is it.” So I think, across the board, it's just had a massive benefit.”

This is a sentiment Phil holds firm. “A rota isn’t just for the person receiving it to know what they're doing. It goes across the business.”

It isn’t just making the rota-planners’ lives easier, saving them time with admin, rotas, and payroll.

It makes managers’ lives easier, making multiple changes at once, knowing where everyone is meant to be.

It makes staff’s lives easier, knowing when they’re working, getting paid correctly, and being able to plan their lives better.

Everyone is being impacted by it – that’s why there were so many involved in the choosing process at the start, after all.

As Phil said earlier, “it links in from different areas of the business.” It keeps people in the loop. It stores records. It keeps homes safely staffed. It benefits everyone.

And that’s the best feedback of all.

Thank you, Phil and Bright Futures!