RotaCloud

RotaCloud is the system we use to help schedule our student staff rotas across various teams. If you are a manager of student staff you will probably need to access this system and understand the process we use for creating rotas, authorising shift swaps and authorising early starts or late finishes to scheduled shifts. You should also use it to record and monitor lateness and absenteeism.

The system allows you to:

• create rotas
• authorise shift swaps
• authorise early starts or late finishes
• record and monitor lateness or absence

You, HR and the payroll team will use the information from the system to make sure staff get paid accurately for the shifts they have worked.

You will have been sent an activation email from our rota system, RotaCloud, so please follow the instructions to log in. If you experience any difficulty, please get in touch with the HR team.

Once you are up and running RotaCloud is available online.

You can also download the RotaCloud app to your phone. This is good for viewing shifts but we recommend you use a PC as some functionality isn’t so good on the app.

Every two weeks managers create rotas for their student staff team. Students are asked to log in to RotaCloud by a particular date and identify which times they are unavailable to work using a PC or laptop and not the app on their phone as some functionality gets lost. If they have regular unavailability (lectures, fixtures etc.) they will mark this on their RotaCloud.

Rotas are created and published every two weeks and they run from Monday to Sunday for two weeks. In the week before the rota is due to start the deadline for unavailability is on Monday, rotas are built on Tuesday and then all rotas are published on Wednesday to start on the following Monday.

Student staff know that they need to add and change unavailability using a PC or Laptop rather than the App. If a member of staff has difficulty with their unavailability and how it is displayed on their rota this is usually the reason why.

If any members of staff need to change unavailability that they have already set, they must delete the current period of unavailability and then add a completely new unavailability. If they make changes to their existing unavailability without deleting it, their current unavailability will not update correctly with any changes not being visible to you.

Staff can swap shifts with other staff who are also trained to work in the specific role and location of the shift.

To swap a shift the student will communicate with colleagues via social media and once they have found someone to swap with they will request a shift swap in RotaCloud. You will receive a notification from RotaCloud of the request asking you to accept or decline the request. The rota will then be automatically updated.

When creating the rota there may be shifts that are not allocated to specific members of staff. These shifts are available on the rota as open shifts for staff to claim if they are trained for the specific role and location.

Staff sign and out for each shift at one of the clocking stations that are located in each of the following venues; Tommy’s Kitchen Bar; Union Shop; Union Building; Medicine and The Packhorse.

At the end of each day you should approve all shifts that have been worked that day in your department. If there any questions about the shift this gives you an opportunity to investigate when the details are fresh in everyone’s mind. Typical questions would be about early or late clocking or failure to clock in when working.

You can see the key dates required for rota availability and publishing here.

At the end of each day the manager responsible for the shift must go through the attendance records for all staff who were due to work by looking at the clocking in and out times for any lateness or missed shifts.

Where a shift has been missed, you need to mark it as either authorised, sick or unauthorised depending on whether or not you were aware in advance that the staff member would not be working.

If the staff member made contact in advance of their shift to explain their absence you can mark the absence as authorised or sick if you accept the reason for absence. If no contact has been made or the reason for absence was not acceptable then the shift must be marked as unauthorised. A note should be added to the shift to say whether or not contact was made so that this can be monitored and addressed with the staff member.