With over 7,000 team members in over 1,400 locations across the United Kingdom, the iconic bookmaker operates seven days a week, three hundred and sixty- four days a year; an always-on business in an ever- evolving world.
It was this fast-paced retail environment that prompted William Hill to look at how they planned their staff schedules and supported their people. The previous solution? Pens, paper and postage stamps!
This very traditional business had a rather traditional way of handling their employee scheduling – handwritten rotas done on carbon copy forms; a process they’d had almost since they first opened their doors back in 1966.
In the words of Joe Leith, the company’s forward- thinking Productivity Manager, “We needed a solution that would let us plan thousands of colleagues working in hundreds of locations, give them visibility and the agency to plan their lives while also helping us drive our goals.”
William Hill needed three things: visibility, consistency and adaptability. All things that their manual processes lacked and that implementing a robust workforce management solution like Rotageek, could provide.
Even for this highly established business, modernisation is paramount. The roll-out of Rotageek came at the perfect time, as they were in the midst of widespread organisational change, in a bid to build a betting business for the future.
“The product has been with us since that modernisation and has been a key part of delivering our commitments in scheduling,” - says Leith.
With the main focus being on engaging employees, the more than 7,000 people working on the Rotageek solution had plenty of notice for their shifts, they had clear communication and, importantly, transparency. No more carbon copy rotas!
For the leadership team the shift from manual rotas to a modern scheduling system didn’t only mean better visibility of rotas, but a chance to use this data to discuss the outcomes and analyse ways to improve. “We set an ambition in that early stage to get everyone’s schedules agreed and communicated well in advance; one that we could track in the scheduler and test ourselves against. The success rate for that goal has more than trebled, and that’s reflected in our colleague engagement,” concludes Leith.