Organising your workforce

Peer Groups are a great way of maintaining the various departments of your workforce

Every workforce can be divided into several different “groups” depending on their varying skillsets or responsibilities. For example, if you are a manufacturing company, you may have skilled machine operators or possibly forklift truck drivers. Similarly, if you are a creative design company, then you may have skilled artists, production staff and dedicated installation teams. Making sure you have adequate numbers of staff to cover each skill area is key to helping your business running effectively.

A good time & attendance system can help in maintaining these “Peer Groups,” and ensuring that you always have enough staff on hand for each discipline and there are no nasty surprises further down the line. For example, let’s take a Peer Group called “Forklift Truck Drivers” which, obviously, is going to contain all the staff members who have that skill. A decent time & attendance system (like, Oh, I don’t know…. Capture^it for example!) will use that Peer Group to make sure that you always have enough employees with that skill available to work. In doing so, it will ‘look forward’ for as long as you wish.

Using the Capture^it system, you can set the minimum required number for each skill. For example, if you can’t operate with fewer than two Forklift Truck Drivers, then you would set two as your minimum in the safe knowledge that you will be automatically warned if you are at risk.

The reasons why an employee might not be at work can be varied; such as holiday, planned absence, off-site training and the like. Irrespective of the reason, their planned absence from work will be used in establishing whether you have enough cover. At time of booking, you would be immediately warned if any Peer Groups are at risk. Importantly, an employee can be a member of multiple Peer Groups, e.g. First Aider and Key Holder.

Peer Groups also have a use across the whole company. First Aiders are a Peer Group of their own, and an important one at that! Making sure you have enough First Aiders on site should be a priority for any company. Put all your First Aiders into a Peer Group, and if, by sickness or holiday bookings, you end up in a situation where you don’t have enough, the system will let you know. On the subject of First Aiders, do you know what the minimum number of First Aiders is for any company? The answer is two. Many think the answer is one, but consider this: if something happens to the first aider, they can’t administer first aid to themselves!

Other popular Peer Groups include Fire Wardens, machine operators, Key Holders, Drivers, IT Technicians, Receptionists and Security Officers, and that is just to name a few! Having all your Peer Groups organised on a time & attendance system is an excellent way of maintaining those groups and helps eliminate nasty surprises and stressful days due to shortages of staff.