SPARK is a food court and community space in York. From food and drink to retail and event spaces, SPARK offers rented units for independent businesses - particularly start-up companies to allow them to grow.

Since being founded in 2016 by Tom McKenzie and Sam Leach, the once-underutilised space turned Community Interest Company (C.I.C) has become a hub for days and nights out, co-working and meetings, and the likes of painting and fitness classes.

The challenge

When your workforce consists of both fixed 9-5 shifts and students working part-time, coordinating a schedule isn’t easy. Full-time workers require stability while part-timers need flexibility, so meeting these demands becomes complex. The students SPARK employ see their rota change week-on-week, but Matthew (General Manager of SPARK) must still allow flexibility due to their availability and any last-minute lectures.

As a community space, Matthew must ensure there’s adequate staff to cover any bookings - be it for classes or meeting rooms - on top of the everyday service for both customers and independent businesses. Any confusion around shifts or an unwillingness for flexibility can so easily lead to under- or over-staffing, meaning lost costs. So, managing so many variables like differing shift requirements and last-minute bookings causes too much miscommunication and lost time without a robust, flexible rota system.

The solution

In his day-to-day role as General Manager, Matthew opens the venue with his operations team before managing the rotas for their staff. RotaCloud allows him to be flexible with shifts without the time-consuming effort or stress commonly associated with it. This saved time means he can focus more on ensuring the spaces are safe, the independent businesses have everything they need, customers can enjoy themselves, and SPARK can continue its success into the future.

“The way that RotaCloud works is really simple. Once I've made my rota and I'm ready to share it, I'll hit the publish button. Staff get notifications of the shifts coming up for the next week and the week after that - because generally I will share every fortnight or so.”

If staff can’t work certain shifts, they let Matthew know or request a shift swap with another member of staff if they’re unable to cover it. For that, all he needs to do is request or authorise a shift swap or drag-and-drop one shift from one employee to another. No phone calls required.

Matthew explained how non-intrusive RotaCloud is in his day-to-day. “I don't have to dedicate an hour, two hours, three hours to making a rota every week.” Instead, Matthew can start a rota one day and come back a few days later to hit ‘publish’ - and any amends before or after are a simple edit. “It's the quickest and the simplest way that I've ever made a rota, shared it and managed it.”

Two of the biggest benefits of RotaCloud? Matthew opened up about the time-saving element at work and its non-intrusive nature outside work.

“If somebody wants to request a shift swap and I'm outside of work, it pings by my phone. It takes me 30 seconds to sort out, and then I can go about my day. I don't need to log in to a computer. I don't need to copy and paste a template from Excel and send it on an email. Super quick and simple at work. Super quick and simple outside of work.”

This became clear when it came to allowing flexibility in his rota planning. When staff have family outside of work or, with most employees being students, last-minute lectures, RotaCloud makes shift changes and offers extra shifts far more streamlined and simple than what can be achieved on Excel.

Matthew creates a template for 3-4 days' worth of fixed management shifts, allowing flexibility for days in between.

“[If] they want to swap shifts, it's really easy for them to request with their colleague and then I can authorise it. If I know that somebody wants extra hours, I can put on an open shift. And for them, it's really easy to claim in the app.”

When asked if he would recommend RotaCloud to fellow hospitality teams, he couldn’t say “absolutely!” quickly enough (thanks, Matthew!), but he didn’t limit it to just hospitality.

From teams with standard or alternating shifts like office jobs to any business employing students who need flexibility, Matthew couldn’t recommend RotaCloud enough - even saying that, if he worked somewhere else, he would take RotaCloud with him.

Well, we’ll happily take that.