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Staff Rota

Schedule nursery staff shifts based on staffing and occupancy requirements for each room, using the Blossom staff rota.

Abbie avatar
Written by Abbie
Updated over a month ago

Staff rota overview

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The staff rota and worklog look similar. The core difference between them is that the worklog is for logging actual hours, whilst the rota is for planning staff shifts in the future based on staffing and occupancy requirements for each room.

Shifts can be assigned in teaching, non-teaching and outdoor locations which are created in the rooms section. Use the week picker to select a week or the arrows to jump forward or back one week. For past weeks, shifts, leave and staffing flags are a snapshot based on the last day of the week and cannot be changed.

Staff required and staff expected

Staff rota > Change filter at the top from 'All Rooms' to an individual room

The charts show the staff expected and staff required throughout the day so you can visually see when you are under or overstaffed at a glance and efficiently plan your rota. By clicking on a certain point on the chart you will see the children expected in and their session at that point in time.

The staff required is based on:

  • The nursery setting for staff: child ratios for specific age groups.

  • Occupancy levels of children expected in

  • Minimum staff required for a room in the room section.

The staff expected is based on the shifts you have assigned in the room. Break times reduce the staff expected totals.

Top tip: To view the graphs, please remember to filter by room. The graphs will not show if you are filtered by all rooms.

Staffing flags

Staff rota > filter for individual room > filter by day

The staffing flags row highlights the number of instances where you have staffing issues on the rota for each day. Expand the row to view the specific times you are under or overstaffed.

Assign weekly shifts

To assign shifts for the week use the add shift button or select a staff row if there are existing shifts. You will need to then input specific information to each field. These consist of:

  • Activity (contracted, overtime or break).

  • Location (only applicable for working times).

  • Start and end time. It will calculate the hours.

  • Staff-child ratio. If the staff member is qualified with the setting 1:13 ratio switched on in their profile, they can take responsibility for more children of certain age groups (specified in the nursery settings). Setting a ratio between 1:8 and 1:13 for the shift will impact the default staff-child ratio and the staff required for this time and room.

To save time, use the 3 dots on a day to copy the shift times to all days for the week. The 3 dots in the table header can quickly remove all shift times for the week.

Top tip: If you copy to all and need to erase certain days please use the three dots to remove shifts for the specific day.

If the copy to other weeks option is ticked and you save changes with the confirmation button assign shift or edit shift, in the next step you can specify which weeks to copy the whole week’s shifts to. This step tells you if there are shifts assigned for those future weeks as all working and break times of selected weeks will be replaced by the week being copied.

Rota week view

The week view shows an overview of the shift times for staff members in a specific room. The times are grouped together into working and break cards as well as holidays and sick leave, which are there for guidance and can exist in parallel to shift times.

The day total for each staff member is at the top of each day. This working total deducts any overlapping break hours from the working hours. The week totals under the staff member’s name break down into the work, break, holiday and sick leaves. The total above this is the total working hours for the week (excluding breaks).

Rota day View

The day view gives a more detailed view of the staff members with shifts assigned in the selected room and day. Use the tabs to switch between the days of the selected week. A timeline makes it easier to view the staffing flags in the chart and the current working and break times with the bars.

Export rota

The export button lets you export a PDF or CSV file of your rota. The PDF file is more visual and can be used to send to staff members, while the CSV export gives you the raw data.

For the PDF export, select your export parameters:

  • Room: The rooms to be included in the export.

  • Week: the week for the rota export.

  • Send to: Select the staff member to send the PDF rota to. You can also send the rota to all staff in one go.

Send: Choose to either send individual shifts to each staff member so each staff member will only receive their own shift or include all staff shifts from the rota.

For the CSV export, select your export parameters:

Send to: Select the manager or nursery administrator should the CSV export be emailed to.

Breakdown:

  • Daily: This is the most detailed breakdown showing staff member’s working hours for each day.

  • Weekly: Working hours are aggregated per week. This is useful to check if people have been assigned their total weekly contracted hours.

  • Total: Working hours aggregated for the total selected period.

Staff member: Select either all staff members or a specific staff member that export data should be for.

Reports dates: depending on your breakdown option selected your export data period can be for months, weeks or days.

Click the export button to confirm and the CSV will be sent to the selected staff member by email.

The export will contain the information within the Staff Profile. This includes their payroll number and contract details.

Top tip: Export both the worklog and rota using the same breakdown and report date to compare the actual and planned working times.

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