Carlisle Support Services: Solving Rostering Issues with Global Workforce Management Software
Carlisle Support Services, one of the leading suppliers of value-added solutions across the public and private sectors in the UK and Ireland, provides innovative cleaning, security and crowd management, retail and stewarding services. The company deploys over 2,500 frontline operatives through a management team of 70 people and holds their workforce in very high regard.
In an expanded effort to look after their staff and their interests, Carlisle launched an Operational Excellence Programme within the organisation to look at how they recruited their people (Recruit IT) and how they trained their frontline operatives (Learn IT). The programme also provided a review of their workforce management system (Work IT), as well as how their employees were achieving a work / life balance (Engage IT).
Carlisle had been working with TimeGate from TEAM Software since 2005 and already relied on the software solution to make sure they always had the right people in the right place at the right time. More recently, they wanted to offer their employees additional flexibility and self-service options that would allow them to work when they wished, and further support the organisation in handling the flexible demands they receive from customers across the portfolio. Carlisle was keen to work more closely with TEAM Software as they embarked on the Engage IT module of their Operational Excellence Programme.
“One of Carlisle’s key values is to encourage everyone connected to the business to become sector-based experts. TEAM Software is helping us with this,” said Michael Shirt, Finance Director at Carlisle Support Services. “As we develop and train our staff, it records their skills, their experience and their training. We can use these as selection criteria when we are looking to offer work out.”
Shirt added that one of the key advantages Timegate offers
the company is speed.
“A customer may contact us with an event or deployment or a project, we can now send out the shift, the requirement of the customer, back out to our workers and in a very short turnaround of time, they can respond to us,” said Shirt. “They have all of the information they need at their fingertips, so they are being texted or emailed these opportunities to work.” By enabling Carlisle to reach their flexible working objectives, Timegate has also provided the company with the means to ensure consistent, excellent service delivery.
“Engage IT means that we can deploy people in real-time,” said Paul Evans, Managing Director at Carlisle Support Services continues. “For a customer, it absolutely means that they can have confidence that Carlisle are the people to work with.”
Evans went on to explain that Carlisle has been able to create a community of up to 7,500 work-ready applicants and employees that can be used to fulfil client demands. Applicants can register with Carlisle and go through a vetting process to get them to a point where they are ready to be deployed. Then, via an app, employees can log on and see available shifts. They register their interest in shifts, which goes back to Carlisle’s 24-hour control room. The scheduling and rostering team decide whether an employee has the right skillset and the training for the assignment they’re registering for. If an employee is qualified, they’re instantly deployed into that shift. Upon deployment into the shift, a communication is sent to their phone that gives them details of exactly where they are to report to, what the duties are, and exactly how long they have been deployed.
“Beyond that, when they come into that shift, it also allows us to know that they’re there, they’re safe and that they are actually performing,” said Evans. “It’s all about making this a two-way process rather than just being an employer and an employee. It’s a complete partnership.”
In addition to providing significant time and resource savings for Carlisle, Timegate also provides their workforce with means for self-service. Individuals have a more flexible way of working through the Engage IT initiative, because Timegate enables Carlisle’s management teams to react and respond to client demands and workforce requests at a much faster rate.
“Before the partnership with Timegate, it was a very labourintensive process to get people to be at work at the right place at the right time,” said Evans. “You’d run the risk of not only disappointing the employees as you would be ringing them at any point in the day, typically when they were on days off and enjoying their home life, but also disappointing from a client point of view.”
Evans explained that customers would ring in and ask Carlisle to fulfil a short-term requirement, but managers had no real way of telling the customer how many people were available and could be deployed. Now, that rostering is automated. “Now that we have Timegate embedded, our management teams find more time to spend with their customers and more time to spend with our employees on the front line,” said Evans. “The community it touches is that of our clients. It provides confidence, true confidence, that we can absolutely deliver on what we have promised.”
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