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Image by Timeout London

About Picturehouse Cinemas

If you live in the UK you may already know about Picturehouse Cinemas, a network of 20 arthouse cinemas. Founded in 1989 with one cinema in Oxford, the company has established itself as a film lover's favourite, hosting new releases, special screenings and old movie favourites.

With many of their locations housed in traditional old cinemas and theatres in cities like York, Exeter, Brighton, and London (where they have seven cinemas in total), Picturehouse Cinemas has (in our opinion) brought back the lost charm of an evening out at the cinema.

We spoke to Neil Gardhouse, Operations Manager for Picturehouse Cinemas, about their journey with Findmyshift so far. He recalls first hearing about Findmyshift from someone already using it, and after his own free trial he decided to sign up.

How Picturehouse Cinemas uses Findmyshift

Picturehouse Cinemas first started using Findmyshift in 2011. They'd recognised that it served their purposes as a single solution for employee scheduling in multiple locations.

Neil explains: "We had communication issues with staff members who weren't always in every day and needed to keep up to date with changing schedules." Thinking forward, Neil was also keen to find a solution that was web-based.

Picturehouse Cinemas decided to go with Findmyshift because it was indeed cloud-based, and offered a number of advantages for both national management and local team managers.

"Managers loved the budgeting feature and staff found the noticeboard a great way to communicate with each other without sharing personal email addresses," says Neil. As Operations Manager, he is also able to review all of the employee schedules in one place, and using the same system for all their cinemas was more efficient than dealing with numerous different approaches to employee scheduling.

When it came to implementing Findmyshift and getting managers familiar with the system, Neil says that it was a quick and easy process: "It took managers around an hour to set up their first schedule, but once they'd created some templates it became much quicker to create new schedules for future weeks."

The benefits of using Findmyshift

By switching to Findmyshift Neil estimates that each manager saves between 4-5 hours every month. He also reports that they have experienced a 20% improvement in staff punctuality since moving their employee schedules online.

Furthermore, the benefits are being enjoyed at both national and regional level. "For me, it's great for giving me access to all of our cinemas rotas in one place. For the General Managers, they really like the reports and budgeting features, which allows them control over costs. Staff members also like having visibility of rotas whenever they want." Neil explains.

Stratford Picturehouse

When we asked Neil to summarise the overall experience:

"Findmyshift is a fantastic online tool that gives me clear visibility to all of our cinema's schedules through one easy website. The budgeting feature allows our management teams to control costs and the cloud hosting allows staff members to view their schedule from anywhere, keeping up to date with those last minute changes."

Thanks Neil!

Read more testimonials here.

Neil Gardhouse is Operations Manager at Picturehouse Cinemas, which is on Facebook and Twitter.

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