Staff scheduling online for cinemas, theatres, live events and other entertainment businesses
When the lights go out, or the curtain goes up, visitors to your entertainment establishment know it means only one thing. The magic is about to begin for your customers. As a manager in this environment, you know you need a well-oiled team working seamlessly behind the scenes to ensure this happens.
Putting together the right team takes time and effort. The unique scheduling demands of the entertainment industry adds to the difficulty. Findmyshift's scheduling software offers flexible and user-friendly solutions that help you create schedules faster and smarter while also controlling all the related costs.
In this guide to online scheduling for entertainment industry businesses like cinemas, theatres, festivals and other live events, we’ve included features that empower both managers and employees, reduce missed shifts, and help you deliver on your company’s promise to its guests.
Here are some of the features you can look forward to using and the benefits they offer.
Eliminate repetitive manual planning with shift templates
All managers know that employee scheduling can be a very repetitive and ongoing process. Our scheduling software eliminates the need to start a schedule from scratch by providing customisable shift templates. All you need to do is identify the common working patterns in your organisation and plug the details into our system. Our templates will streamline and simplify the scheduling process and help you create conflict-free schedules smarter and faster.
Reduce absences and late arrivals with automated shift reminders
Employees not turning up for work or arriving up late creates operational delays and compromises customer service. While some absences might be intentional, most are the result of forgetfulness or misreading shift start time, dates, or location assignments. Our automated daily shift reminder feature helps employees stay on top of their schedules and show up prepared for work. They can choose how they wish to be contacted and how often. Find out more ways to improve employee punctuality here.
Keep employees in the loop with our online noticeboard
All too often, crucial bits of information go unnoticed or don’t reach the intended audience. Our online noticeboard offers excellent visibility and enables you to communicate efficiently from a single platform. Use it to post notices about social activities, work-related events, or meetings. It’s also a great way to post answers to event-related questions about a new venue like, “Where do I park? Where is the entry gate? Where do I sign in?”
Simplify time tracking with our built-in time clock
Keeping track of employee arrivals, departures, and breaks can be a full-time job in itself! Our built-in time clock eliminates the need to monitor these activities manually and helps you accurately track employee hours. This feature ensures that employees get paid for every minute they work. Not only does this have legal ramifications, but it also goes a long way to driving morale, motivation, and satisfaction. You can even make use of additional features like location-tracking and photo coverage of clock-in points to make sure employees don’t abuse the system.
Reduce payroll processing costs with automated timesheet reports
Creating payroll for any company is time-consuming and complicated. The process cannot start until hours are verified, a tedious process with a high risk of errors. The Findmyshift system gathers and aggregates your payroll data and makes your payroll process more efficient. Not only does this reduce payroll-related costs, but it also helps avoid potential tax issues.
Empower your employees with self-service features
Shift-swapping is understandably common among individuals who work in the cinema, theatre, and live event industry. Having managers shift their focus to attend to each request distracts them from pressing duties. Our online scheduling software lets your employees initiate swaps online. Managers can keep in control though by setting the system to only post updates to the schedule after manager approval of the swap. Not only does this ensure complete schedule coverage but it also results in substantial time savings.
Quickly and easily identify where employees are stationed at any time
Tracking your employees work and hours is not just for payroll purposes. The ability to quickly identify where a particular employee is can help mitigate an operational issue or keep them safe during an emergency. Our program lets you separate split schedules by job or role, such as ticket takers, set-up crews, concessions, or security etc. Alternatively, you can segment by venue or specific locations within that such as front or back of house. This information is visible at any time and from any location as it's stored online.
Avoid scheduling confusion with one centralised schedule
Manual schedules are a breeding ground for chaos and confusion. Each time a change occurs, schedulers have to make sure no conflicts have arisen. Employees then have to keep track of which roster is the most current. This confusion can result in low morale, inefficiency, and poor customer service, as well as missed shifts! These actions ultimately affect the bottom line. With our system, all your team members have 24/7 access to the most up-to-date roster, thereby eliminating any doubt about where and when to show up.
Efficiently schedule and manage your seasonal workforce
Seasonal employees are common in the entertainment industry. Busy periods often coincide with holidays where students may be available who aren’t around at other times of year. This means lots of new faces in your business. Working with this group of individuals is a challenge even for the best manager.
Despite this, you want them around as they can help you achieve your business goals. Store their contact information and availability in our scheduling system so you have a roster of potential hires to call when your busy season rolls in. Our automated messaging and notification system helps you contact them quickly when they’re needed. Find more tips for finding and hiring great student employees for peak seasonal times here.
Stop playing phone tag with employees by using an automatic notification system
Effective communication increases employee engagement and productivity and reduces administrative work. Our software can send messages and notifications to employees via email, text message, or push notification. You can contact the entire workforce or only a select few in a specific role or geographic location. With just one click, you can keep employees up to date on critical shift information or find a replacement for a last-minute call out.
Improve management control with automated rostering
Using a manual system to write or type your schedules opens up your business to a horde of avoidable issues such as over or under-staffing. It’s difficult for a person to consider all the factors that should go into an efficient work schedule. Our online system can automatically generate an optimal program for your team according to your specific organisational needs and employee preferences. You can quickly make any changes before sending out the schedule using our drag and drop feature.
Keep track of your budget
Wages are a substantial operating expense in any business. Reducing this cost is the single most effective change a company can make to improve its margin. Built into our system you will find automated cost reports based on timesheet and time clock data. Use this information to keep track of your labour budget. The program can also alert you in real-time to specific activities that threaten your budget like employees skipping lunch or break punches or punching in outside their scheduled hours.