Why the Rota is the Growth Lever Most Businesses Should Pull

By Ned Gammel

Operating costs have been steadily rising for frontline business, many of which are beyond their control. But the rota is not, and it remains the growth lever most businesses never pull.

Energy. National Insurance. Business rates. All are on the up as operating costs have risen by 48% in the past decade alone. To help overcome these pressures, business leaders are exploring all their options. Ned Gammell, Head of UK&I at Quinyx, argues that AI-led workforce management (WFM) is a crucial route to protecting the bottom line. 

What does WFM actually do?

WFM in its simplest form is getting the right number of people, with the right skills into the right shifts, and crucially, with the right focus for that shift. All added together, this helps drive the best productivity at the lowest possible cost. For many businesses, this still looks like an A4 paper rota posted in the staffroom or a series of texts and links in the team WhatsApp. The managers who make these rotas and send them out spend hours doing so, which is time they would much rather spend doing other parts of their job.

Creating manual schedules is not only slow, it’s tedious and inaccurate. Managers need to balance what the business needs against what their people need, while staying within labour law, abiding by contracts and aligning with volatile customer demand. Whether all of this is able to be taken into account on every scrap of paper, spreadsheet or WhatsApp message, or whether managers have to focus on just filling their shifts, is another question entirely.

Automate this process and that laborious task becomes a growth tool, one that carefully balances availability with demand, and tasks required with the skills needed for each and every shift. Within minutes a more effective schedule is built.

Good WFM delivers schedules aligned with compliance, demand and skills while providing detailed task management and engagement for those on shift. These benefits turn a business’s biggest cost centre into a revenue driver.

The gap between manual and AI-led WFM is wider than most decision-makers assume:

Better WFM cuts wasted wages 

When costs rise, the wage bill is often the first thing to be scrutinised. For a shift-led business, this is hardly surprising as people are likely to be their biggest expense.

With good WFM comes a mindset shift away from seeing the wage bill as simply ‘how many hours we purchase’ toward questioning whether those hours deliver positive results for the business.

AI-led WFM tools match shifts and skills to demand so staff aren’t milling around waiting for something to do or a customer to serve – and the business isn’t paying for hours it does not need.

And in those rarer quiet moments, a good WFM tool will use task management to ensure that those hours are filled with tasks that may once have led to overtime pay – think discount tagging, building a brand’s promotional shelf or doing a stocktake.

Why does a good rota matter so much to staff?

The same schedule that protects margins by removing wasted wages improves the bottom line again by giving people their rotas early and with greater flexibility.

Frontline staff need to know when their shifts are, not simply so they can turn up on time, but so they can manage their money, organise childcare and arrange their social lives. The same way anyone working a regular Monday-Friday, 9-5 week does without thinking much about it.

A late rota or last-minute shift changes, chips away at that work-life balance. Giving people a say adds to it. Letting staff log their availability and preferences costs a business very little while demonstrating a mark of value and respect to its team. A workforce that feels respected will tend to stay in their role longer and be more productive – saving money on hiring and improving output.

Avoiding stress and burnout

Predictability is one half of it. The other is simply having enough people on shift.

A high staff turnover can destroy your bottom line. Hiring a new employee in the UK costs between £3,000 and £5,000, and takes time, leaving the rest of the team to absorb the work. Not only is this a key contributor to burnout, it could also be costing you more on every shift in overtime, depending on your contracts.

Our peak-season research among 1,000 UK retail workers found:

• Over half (58%) of shopfloor staff cite understaffing as the top driver of stress
• More than one in three (37%) say stress during their busiest season makes them want to leave their jobs

Poor resourcing hits staff directly and few will put up with it for long. Having enough people on shift spreads the load, which keeps post-peak turnover down and labour costs stable.

What does this actually change?

None of this makes energy cheaper or changes the tax you pay. What it does do is take a hugely significant cost that a business can control – the hours it pays for – and make sure every one of them is doing something useful. This is what truly makes AI-led WFM a financial decision.

With the Employment Rights Act still rolling out across the UK and customer demand increasingly volatile, the businesses treating WFM as a strategic tool will be the ones primed for growth, even if cost pressures refuse to ease.

About the Author

Ned Gammell is VP of Sales for the UK at Quinyx. He has spent over 15 years across the UK and US working with global mid-market and enterprise retailers to drive business change through workforce technology. He previously spent seven years leading Quinyx’s US retail business, partnering with brands including J.Crew, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and Victoria’s Secret to improve operational efficiency and frontline workforce innovation.