At one time a storage shed for steam trains, The Engine Shed in Wetherby, North Yorkshire, is now a popular and stylish wedding and private hire venue, complete with kitchens, bars, seating, and dance floors.

The challenge

We sat down with HR & Finance Manager Emma Hogg to find out what inspired her to make the jump to RotaCloud.

“Before we started using RotaCloud, we were doing all our rotas on Excel,“ she told us. “I would print [the rota], put it on the cellar door, and then WhatsApp it to all the staff.“

“That worked fine, but every time there was any kind of change, I had to redo that whole process,“ she added.

“Just changing one member of staff’s [shift] took at least fifteen minutes of my time to reproduce the rota, reprint the rota, redistribute it...“

With simple admin tasks eating up more and more of her day, Emma knew that there had to be a better way to plan and distribute her rotas.

The solution

After searching online, Emma tried several rota planning tools but decided on RotaCloud. She quickly noticed the difference the system would make to her workload.

For Emma, RotaCloud’s most immediate benefit was time saved managing changes to the rota.

“Whenever there are any small changes, we can make them live on RotaCloud and the system notifies the staff for us,” Emma said.

“Instead of having to remember to update the rota and then notify everyone, I can make the changes right there and then — I just click a button and everyone gets a notification,” she added.

RotaCloud’s locations feature and flexible user permissions, meanwhile, have also made life easy for Emma, who is now able to share the rota-planning responsibilities with her team leaders.

“Before, when I was doing the rotas on Excel, you needed one person to be in control,” she said. “But having RotaCloud has allowed me to delegate part of the rota production.”

“I still feel like I have control over [rota planning], because at any one time I can just have a look and see where we are with the rota,” she added.

Lastly, Emma praised RotaCloud’s various reports, which make keeping track of her employees’ hours and pay a breeze.

“We did the rotas on Excel before, but we also calculated the wages. That involved me manually putting in the times people had worked. Whereas now, I can run a RotaCloud report, and it’s there all in one place.”

“I also have different hourly rates for different roles, so a different person can be a bar manager one day and bar staff the next,” she continued. “Before, I would have to remember [people’s rates], whereas now RotaCloud takes care of all that for me.”

“I would wholeheartedly recommend RotaCloud to other businesses in our industry; it’s changed the way I work completely.”