• ACTIVITY A1

1. What are the relevant awards that you must follow when developing rosters for your staff?

  •  Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2010
  • Marine Tourism and Charter Vessels Award 2010
  • Amusement, Events and Recreation Award 2010
  • Racing Clubs Events Award 2010

2. How much annual leave are workers entitled to in Australia?

Permanent employees or those working full-time can have 4 weeks annual leave. On the other hand, part-time workers get annual leave that is proportionate to the number of hours they work pre-week. The duration the part-time employees get is as well determined by the award that applies to the place they work, and could exceed 4 weeks.

3. What should be taken into consideration when determining whether additional work hours are reasonable

  • Organisational needs, such as fulfilment of given objectives
  • Employee’s needs, like the desire to meet family obligations
  • The amount of compensation for the additional hours’ work
  • Factors that pose risk to the safety and health of the employee
ACTIVITY 1B

1. Speak to a minimum of three customers about their current experiences of customer service and their needs and expectations regarding customer service.

2. Outline three common needs and expectations that customers have of employees.

  • Compassion: to be able to understand their needs and show appreciation to customers by looking at the situation at hand from the point of view of the customer.
  • Friendliness: kind and pleasant to customers, greeting them politely and welcoming them to the business premise.
  • Impartiality: offer equal treatment to all customers and show respect to all irrespective of their status.

3. What considerations need to be made about policies and procedures in relation to the impact of leave and overtime on wage costs

  • Whether or not employing a given number of casual workers, with no annual leave entitlement, is cost-effective
  • Determine a cost-effective option between paying overtime staff and giving the extra time as paid annual leave (sticking to the normal pay rate)
  • Find out the cost differences associated with longer and shorter leave intervals, and select the cost-effective alternative

ACTIVITY 1C

1. In what ways can you ensure staff members are capable of combining different duties within the workplace?

  • Hire candidates with experience holding different roles and those with broad skillsets
  • Offer training and mentor employees, especially the new employees, to broaden their skillset. Relevant skills will empower their ability to combine various duties.

2. What are the benefits of having employees combine their duties?

  • It saves the organization costs of recruiting and training temporary workers, when a staff member is either sick or on a leave
  • It is a form of career growth that enables employees to expand their knowledge and skills
  • Makes work rotation easier, and it quite beneficial during the busy business periods
  • It increases chances of an organisation’s operational efficiency

ACTIVITY 1D

1. What skills or qualities may be required within a team that you need to consider when rostering?

  • Leadership skills
  • Physical ability
  • Customer service skills
  • Industry knowledge

2. Based on your answer to the previous question, describe why it is important to have employees rostered who can demonstrate these skills and qualities.

The lack of skills or attributes associated to a task may prevent an employee from completing the assigned tasks, leading to poor service quality or no service at all. Therefore, the only way to solve such a challenge is to roster experienced and trained employees or those whose qualities and skills are known. 

ACTIVITY 1E

 

1.  What policies does your organisation have in addition to industrial agreements?

  • Public holidays
  • Annual leave (as well as compassion and parental leave) and the number of people that can take it at the same time
  • Pay rates for overtime, standard, and penalty

2. What social factors may you have to take into account when developing a roster, and why is it important to do so?


  •  Leisure activities: Happy employees are more productive and one way of ensuring their happiness is to organize the roster in such a way that workers get a number of hours or even off days to take part in their leisure.
  • Parental responsibilities: some employees are parents and have household duties and children to take care of every day.

ACTIVITY 1F

1. Describe three aspects that you may want to establish from colleagues when developing rosters.

  •  Knowledge and skillset
  • Social obligations and needs
  • Cultural aspects

2. What methods of consultation can be used to consult with staff members about rosters?

  • Suggestion boards
  • Staff meetings
  • Over the telephone
  • E-mailing

ACTIVITY 1G

1. Provide at least three benefits of online rostering.

  • It brings fairness to shifts allocation and enables monitoring of every worker
  • Encourages employee input, allowing them state their preferred working hours and indicating unavailability.
  • Improves workplace efficiency by enabling quick creation and distribution of accurate rosters, thereby saving time.

      ACTIVITY 2A
     1. What workplace factors impact on the type of roster that needs to be developed?

  • The organization type
  • Employees’ contract types
  • Number of workers
  • Roles assigned to different employee

2. Describe the uses of two different types of rosters 

  • Duty Rosters: These are applicable when planning on alternating staff roles. It helps to eliminate monotonous work routines by allowing employees to share pleasant tasks.
  • Full-time roster: Applies to organisations that operate for 7 days a week to help allocate the full-time duties. The rules of the associated award will dictate the number of hours that employees should work in a week. 
    ACTIVITY 2B

1. In addition to sending individuals their personal rosters, who else within your organisation do you need to communicate rosters with?

Other than giving each employee a copy of the roster to aid their identification of tasks, the other personnel that should get the roster include:

  •  Human resource: to identify and schedule training sessions for the employees, handling various tasks, and
  • Accounts officers: to check or confirm the work schedules and plan for payment of wages.

2. What are the advantages of providing rosters with plenty of notice?

  • Gives employees enough time to forwards concerns regarding the shifts organization
  • Creates enough room for timely changes to be made to the roster so that it meets the needs of both the employees and the organization
  • Plenty notice also gives employees adequate time to align their social life to the new schedule

ACTIVITY 3A

Describe two different methods of establishing the hours worked by employees.

· Adopting the written record system requiring employees to sign in on arrival and out before leaving the work premise

· Applying time cards to track arrival and leaving times, as well as break durations

2. Explain the importance of maintaining staff rostering records.

. It proves an organisation’s adherence or compliance  with industry rules that regulate working hours, so a company does not exceed maximum hours of work

· A regularly updated roster helps to detect shift allocation issues, such as disproportionate work allocation, and enable such to be corrected.

· A well-maintained roster provides the evidence needed to address any work or wage related disputes

ACTIVITY 4A

1. Describe a minimum of two aspects of rostering of which you ought to monitor the effectiveness.

· The distribution of staff, to determine if the organisations faces durations inadequate and/or excess employees

· Instances where employees have had to work overtime, to find out if the organization has unknowingly subjected staff to excess working hours.

· Employees’ opinion, as to whether or not the shift allocation is fairly done.

· Rate of work absenteeism

2. Provide three examples of negative consequences resulting from understaffing.

 

· Employees will experience fatigue and burnout, as they have more work than they can handle comfortably

· Service quality will decline as fatigued employees lack the motivation needed for work excellence

Customer complaints over poor service quality will rise, and the organisation may lose clients. The long-term impact is decline in sales and profitability

ACTIVITY 4B

1.  1. How could you alter rosters to reduce the levels of fatigue experienced by employees?

  Offer leave to fatigued workers, and reorganise work schedule so that tasks with lower risks come when possibility of fatigue is greater and the complicated tasks as assigned when fatigue risk declines.

2. How could roster development processes be improved in order to reduce understaffing?

Reorganise the current shifts so as to allocate more employees to tasks within a busy schedule, ensuring that workers have skillsets that match the assigned tasks. Again, the organization may have to recruit more workers and add the newly employed staff to the roster so that there are enough people to handle the work.