Deputy are shaping future of shift work administration

Optimising rostering for organisations utilising shift work can be a significant challenge at the best of times. Shift transitions, 24-hour rostering requirements, with employees calling in sick, combined with varying qualification levels, all add up to a difficult balance to strike.

That's where Deputy comes in. Instead of spending hours on repetitive and cumbersome administrative tasks that could be much better used on optimising their business, staff training or myriad other pursuits, every day line managers across industries such as retail, hospitality and healthcare are bogged down by the various complexities of rostering staff.

Now, organisations utilise the Deputy AI platform to save countless hours, producing ready-made rosters so managers know their team's workflows are optimised, putting the right people in the right place in the business.

Deputy also allows for more expedient approval and management of timesheets, another time-consuming task that is essential to complying with wages owed to staff.

Across sectors, this has helped many line managers take back significant blocks of time and energy, according to Deputy CTO, Ciaran Hale, a presenter at last week's AWS Summit in Sydney.

"We've been in our open beta phase for a while now. In that period, we've been kind of surveying all of our users of the AI platform that we've launched," Hale said.

"Then the second part, we've been looking at all of the prompts, because we did kind of this open model where people could ask anything of the agent. 

"Through that, we really identified two main use cases that were taking up the time of primarily location managers or business managers. (Imagine) you're a manager in a cafe or a restaurant or a theatre or whatever that may be.

"A huge amount of their time is focused on building rosters and managing time sheets. They're spending hours doing this where, you know, they want to be with their customers. They want to be growing their business or they probably want to be ending their day and doing something different."

Shifting work trends, cost-of-living pressures and a rise in entrepreneurial culture (colloquially known as side hustles) in Australia have given rise to poly-employment (working for multiple employers). Deputy is also a helpful tool for employees, ensuring they avoid clashes, work the shifts that best suit them, and maintain a healthy and sustainable work-life balance.

However, the recently released Big Shift Report, based on the analysis of over 60 million shifts and 188 million hours worked, found that 63 per cent of part-time poly-workers reject the use of AI, compared to 37 per cent of their securely employed counterparts.

Whether it's fitting in work between life's commitments like family, friends and social groups, working towards an aspirational financial goal, or simply trying to make ends meet under challenging economic conditions, flexibility for workers is a key tenet for Deputy.

"The big thing that we're seeing is this poly-work or poly-employment trend," said Hale.

"What we believe and what we're seeing is if you're working multiple jobs, having an application and having a technology stock that allows you to manage those complex rosters is really, really powerful.

"AI is a really great way on the go to interact across those two rosters, so you don't end up with competing shifts. And that's what we want. We're seeing this trend, and we want AI to be a tool to help people with that."

Legal and regulatory issues are also a big factor in rostering for shift work. With some of the most robust employment laws in the world, companies need to be cognisant of employees' rights in Australia. Laws can vary significantly between different sectors, and executives are very mindful of avoiding the significant underpayment scandals faced by large corporations in banking, retail and hospitality over the past few years.

With built-in guardrails against overworking or underpaying employees, Deputy assists organisations across Australia remain compliant, leading to increased satisfaction amongst employees.

Before it would be possible for a barista in a Sydney cafe to be allotted more than their agreed weekly hours, the system would automatically flag this. 

A minor would not be rostered on for an area of a Melbourne establishment which serves alcohol.

"One of the biggest reasons that people use Deputy is because of our compliance towards labour laws," Hale said.

"Australian labour laws are complicated and complex and there's lots of variations.

"Where the real power of Deputy AI comes in is if I am a location manager of a cafe or any of our businesses, and I've got 20, 30, 40 people working under me that I have to manage across a roster of multiple weeks.

"Right now, you would need to go and look at it and see who's worked their overtime. Deputy right now in the UI comes with flags and won't let you do things.

"The cognitive load to do that is crazy. The power of our AI agent is you can go build my roster for next week and find me the right staff to work for that."