Field notes › Rostering
Keeping a bench of standby crew you can actually call on
Every labour hire office has a standby list. Sometimes it's a tab in a spreadsheet, sometimes a group chat, sometimes a rosterer's memory of who said to call if anything comes up. On a quiet week it looks like plenty of cover. Then a shift falls over at five in the morning and the list turns out to be mostly history. One person has taken a permanent job, another's first aid lapsed over winter, and a third moved away without telling anyone.
A bench is worth what it can deliver on a bad morning. Keeping it in that condition is a steady, unexciting job that happens between the emergencies.
Decide who actually counts as standby
Being on the bench should mean something specific. The person holds the tickets and inductions for the work you'd call them for, has told you recently when they can work, and picks up when you ring. Someone missing any of those is a name on a list, however good they were on their last job.
It also helps to stop thinking of one bench. A standby worker who can cover general labouring on any site is a different asset from one who holds the inductions for your two biggest clients. Group your standby people by what they can genuinely cover, then hold each group up against the work you're most likely to lose someone from. The thin spots show quickly. You might have plenty of people who could fill a labouring gap and hardly anyone who could cover a night shift at the site that gives you the most grief.
Be honest about who has left, too. When someone has clearly drifted off, don't delete them. In Mustr you can mark them inactive, which keeps every certificate, shift and note, drops them out of roster pickers, stops their reminders and suspends their login so they aren't counted for billing. If they come back, it's reversible, and your bench shows the people who are really on it.
Availability goes stale fastest on the bench
Workers on regular shifts stay in touch with the office because they have to. People on standby don't have that pull. There's no upcoming shift to check, so their availability sits where they left it, sometimes for months, while their lives carry on.
The answer is to make the update small and ask for it regularly. In Mustr, workers drag out their availability on their own phone through the worker portal, with nothing to install, and admins set how often they're reminded to keep it filled. If your business leans on standby crew, lean towards more frequent reminders, because for those people availability is the only signal you have.
A reminder won't do all of it. Someone who hasn't been offered work in two months may not bother answering one. A short personal message from a rosterer every so often, asking whether they're still keen and what their plans look like, keeps people attached in a way an automated prompt can't.
Tickets don't stop expiring when the work does
This is the quiet failure. A regular worker's lapsing ticket gets noticed because it blocks next week's booking. A standby worker's medical or site induction can run out with nobody looking, because nobody is booking them. You find out on the morning you need them, which is the worst time to find out.
Treat the bench like the working crew when it comes to expiry. Chase renewals with the same attention, and decide ahead of time who pays for a renewal when the worker hasn't had shifts from you lately. Some firms cover it for people they want to keep and some don't. Either way, say so up front, because a worker who learns at renewal time that they're paying to stay on a list that never rings will quietly leave it.
Mustr shows certificates expiring soon on the dashboard up to 60 days out, with one-click reminder emails, and admins choose how many days before expiry the chasing starts. Workers can upload the renewed certificate from their phone camera, and it lands in a to-approve list for the office to check before it counts.
Be fair about who gets the call
Under pressure, rosterers ring the people who said yes last time. That's understandable, and over a season it hollows out the bench. The reliable few get every shift, everyone else hears nothing, and after a while those people find other work. Then the reliable few take leave in the same fortnight.
Spread the work on purpose. Competencies and site experience come first, since there's no point sending someone who can't do the job, but among the people who can, rotate. Keep a simple record of who was offered what so you can see when someone keeps getting passed over. If there's a reason they're missing out, tell them. A worker who knows the gap is one missing induction can go and fix it.
Putting gaps up as open shifts helps as well, because people put their own hand up and the office picks from everyone who applied instead of whoever answered first. In Mustr the applicants are listed on the shift, one tap to assign.
The post on filling open shifts covers that side in more detail, or you can try it with sample data and see how availability and expiring tickets look from the office.