At Tanda, we move fast to solve the world’s greatest workforce challenges. We released over 200 features last year. Here are the major ones. The last 12 months have seen Tanda rise above the capabilities of traditional workforce software. Our product team has focused on releasing features that help management to plan and execute the […]
Emerson Domingo
10 June 2019 |
At Tanda, we move fast to solve the world’s greatest workforce challenges. We released over 200 features last year. Here are the major ones.
The last 12 months have seen Tanda rise above the capabilities of traditional workforce software. Our product team has focused on releasing features that help management to plan and execute the perfect shifts — all while constantly strengthening our core offering.
Building the world’s #1 workforce platform requires going above the administrative efficiencies traditionally gained with workforce software. We’re talking about features that empower businesses to enhance the way they employ and manage staff. These help managers plan and execute successful shifts; help employees integrate their work and private life; and allow businesses to measure their success in the right ways.
In these last 12 months, the Tanda product team also materialised the 6 headline features announced at the 2018 Tanda conference, all of which are now live in the Tanda platform.
The year has seen the release of over 150 user interface updates, 25 key redesigns of existing features, and 10 key feature releases. They all fall into these themes:
Helping managers to execute the best decision-making
Helping managers integrate compliance into decision-making
Helping employees integrate their employment and personal lives
Allowing businesses to build their own workflows by adopting a platform approach
Features that help managers execute the best decision making
Live Insights: on-the-go decision-making
Live insights is big business technology that we’ve made available to businesses of any size.
Off the shelf, Live Insights syncs live sales from integrated cloud based point of sale systems like Kounta, Vend and Ordermate, and compares real-time with award-interpreted wage cost.
This closes the feedback loops on wage cost reporting and allows managers to execute decision-making during operations, instead of after the day is done.
Live Feed: real-time shift updates
Managers who are involved in shift handovers know how important it is to be updated on what’s happened during the previous shift. Live Feed gives a real time overview of the state of the shift, showing a full picture of who is there, who isn’t, and what the staff movements will be.
Key Alerts: Know staffing issues in real time
Great shifts can be planned ahead of time on the roster, but it’s not until the shift starts that the plan is put to the test. This is where wage costs can unexpectedly inflate. Five minutes here, five minutes there. These minor variances to the roster add up to large amounts when it happens across multiple shifts.
Key alerts helps managers stay in control by proactively notifying them of these little variances before they blow up costs.
Cognitive Demand Builder: Predict future demand, and adjust for it
Integrated point of sale data has been available as standard in Tanda for several years now. Access to data is one thing, but it’s the way we’re allowing managers to use that data which is unique to Tanda.
Tanda’s new demand builder allows managers to build a demand profile from historical sales data and modify for expected changes in demand. The feature can algorithmically select a sample group of historical sales while eliminating anomalous days automatically. It means that businesses of any size can plug in their point of sale system and have access to meaningful demand data instantly.
Best-fit shift replacements: Finding the right match
When choosing a replacement for an employee who can no longer work a shift, it’s difficult for a manager to assess every influencing factor. This can include contract hours, overtime risk, cost difference, qualifications, and safety considerations such as fatigue management.
Receiving shift replacement requests on My Tanda (L) and choosing best fit replacements on mobile (R)
When a shift replacement request comes through, the manager sees a set of best fit options. Importantly, Tanda calculates the cost difference between employees in real time, which avoids the issue of employees unexpectedly entering overtime, or more senior staff members performing junior roles.
Shift Feedback: Information is Powerful
Feedback needs to be actionable and specific to be useful to management. We trialled several methods of collecting frontline feedback with our beta group to create the first version of Tanda Shift Feedback. The feature is integrated as a prompt on the existing platform, meaning employees and management aren’t required to divert their resources to a new process, and the time investment is minimal. More about shift feedback.
A more full-featured leave
Tanda users can now open the app on their phone and instantly view their leave current leave balance, see the best times to apply for leave, and plan future holidays with leave balance projections.
We’ve also strengthened the management controls in the leave process and increased transparency with additional features:
Custom events: a method for employees to gauge the best times to take leave by being able to see who else has applied at the same time
Leave balance projections: ensures adequate leave balance for planned time off
Safeguards against leave balances entering negative territory
Backup leave types for when the primary leave type is exhausted
The ability to accrue Time In Lieu within Tanda
Accurate leave hours through editing breakdowns on leave requests
Features that integrate compliance into management decision-making
In Australia, maintaining compliance doesn’t just mean paying staff members correctly. There are many state and local laws that apply in respect to workplace health and safety, fatigue management, licencing & qualification requirements, and record keeping requirements.
Compliance HQ: Compliance in one place
Given the multifaceted nature of workforce compliance in Australia, we’ve made things simpler. Compliance HQ is a central dashboard for all of the tools used in the process of maintaining compliance. Every setting you need to stay compliant with all levels of government is here.
Qualification Notifications: Stay on top of expiring qualifications
Qualifications cover processes of any nature that are required to be reviewed, retrieved on demand or represent a minimum training requirement for particular activities within the business. Employees are now notified of pending qualification expiries, as is the manager, and qualification expiries are now easily reportable.
The new, more powerful Time Clock
Redesigned the time clock from the ground up, the new Time Clock features a more intuitive UI, including break buttons, team swapping, and smart shift status. Inside, it retains powerful photo verification, passcode protection, and automatic timesheet creation features from the previous version. It’s the easiest, most powerful attendance recording tool we’ve made.
Roster validations: limit inefficient rosters
Roster validations are customisable limits that will flag managers when it’s reached. They can be used operationally to control overtime for example, and used in the same way for fatigue management or other forms of compliance such as minimum and maximum shift lengths. Read more about roster validation.
Automated higher duties: approve timesheets quicker
Automated higher duties allows different pay rates to be associated to teams and activities where an employee may be paid more than one level. This ensures that roster costs consider changes in level based on activity, and that higher duties are automatically tagged on timesheets for export to payroll.
Use cases include staff members in food service industries who work in both a supervisor and non-supervisory capacity, and industries such as transport that pay different rates depending on the type of equipment operated.
Training Centre
The Tanda Training centre cuts down the resources required for businesses to train new management in using the Tanda platform. The Training Centre includes the option for businesses to upload their own resources customised to their unique workflows to ensure a bespoke experience based on their internal procedures.
GPS Clock-ins: Clock in anywhere in the world
Tanda supports your mobile workforce. So we built GPS tagged clock-ins on the Tanda mobile app. Wherever they are, and wherever you are, Tanda’s time and attendance features works anywhere in the world.
Features that help employees to integrate their work and personal lives
Shift replacements
Employees have non-negotiable events pop up in their personal lives that will require time off. For example, a mandatory examination, or births and deaths in the family. Business also have a non-negotiable requirement to open the doors and trade to survive, so when the two of these non-negotiable requirements clash it results in a lose-lose scenario.
Shift swapping is about affording the flexibility to turn lose-lose scenarios into win-win, with the dual benefit of being able to instantly canvas the whole workforce for shift replacements. Appropriate management controls ensure accountability in the selection of replacement staff.
Custom events: highlight busy periods ahead of time
Indicate busy times of year for your staff
Custom events allows staff members to best plan their time off. Informing them of peak times of year gives staff more certainty of the best periods to request for leave. And combined with the leave calendar and leave projections, this allows them to plan future time off effectively.
Features that allow businesses to build their own workflows by adopting a platform approach
The difference between being an off-the-shelf solution and a comprehensive workforce platform comes down to the ability to customise workflows. Build Tanda to fit the business, not change the business to fit Tanda.
You know your business best. So we’ve invested in powerful customisation tools that allow unique use cases, and gives businesses the tools they need to turn Tanda into a solution for their unique problems.
Custom permission levels: have more control on who’s in control
A greater degree of flexibility in roles, especially surrounding who can view costs and provide approvals allows Tanda to fit existing internal controls.
Custom Fields: a new, powerful communication tool
Custom Fields allows users to gather or communicate any information staff need to be successful in their job. This is done by creating text fields and apply them to shifts and employee profiles.
Create fields to gather or communicate information
Common use cases for the employee profile include:
Details required by HR on the employee profile, e.g. date of last review
Allergy information
On the roster, fields could be put for specific tasks and assets such as:
A specific truck that will be driven by a transport worker.
Addresses of clients assigned to disability support workers
A list of tasks for a cleaner
There is no limit to the potential uses cases.
Coming Up
Roster patterns (beta)
Many awards, agreements and industry regulations stipulate arrangements for roster patterns. This is particularly prevalent in shift worker industries that have fatigue management considerations, such as firefighters and emergency workers. Our roster patterns beta builds on our existing work to make Tanda the most comprehensive workforce platform for shift worker industries like healthcare, mining, manufacturing and essential services.
This is in its final stages of development and will be released very soon.
If you made it to the end, well done!
Takes a ton of commitment to read through a year’s worth of updates. And that’s only the major ones; our product team is always improving Tanda.
If you’re not a current Tanda user and would like to learn more, head www.tanda.co to book in time with our team to chat.