The Rostering Puzzle: Strategic Workforce Planning for Variable Demand

By Tim Fagan, Senior Manager, Trace Consultants

If you’ve ever walked into a morning handover and felt the tension before anyone’s said a word, you’ll know exactly what I mean by the rostering puzzle.

The phones are already ringing. A few people have called in sick. Demand has spiked in a way last week’s roster didn’t predict. Someone’s asked for compassionate leave. A new compliance rule has landed. And the service target everyone is measured on—response time, waitlists, patient ratios, visit windows, incident coverage—doesn’t care that humans are not Lego blocks.

In Australia and New Zealand, this problem has become harder, not easier. Labour markets have been volatile. Costs have moved. Industrial relations and leave compliance are evolving. Australia’s Annual Wage Review increased the National Minimum Wage and modern award minimum wages by 3.5% from 1 July 2025, adding real pressure to already tight service budgets.  And in sectors like aged care, award changes flowing from the Aged Care Work Value Case have introduced staged changes and pay rate increases (with key changes taking effect from January 2025 and additional increases from October 2025).  Meanwhile, broader workplace reforms under the “Closing Loopholes” laws have rolled out in phases between late 2023 and August 2025, changing the IR landscape that rostering teams operate within.

New Zealand organisations have their own complexity curve. Leave compliance has been a long-running headache for employers, and Cabinet decisions in August 2025 signalled a move toward new employment leave legislation intended to replace the Holidays Act 2003 with a simpler model.  (If you’ve lived through Holidays Act remediation projects, you don’t need me to explain why “simpler and more workable” gets attention.)

So here’s the key takeaway I want to land:

Strategic workforce planning and rostering is about meeting service targets while managing the specific complexities of shifts and labour costs in a volatile Australian market—across aged care, hospitals, and other labour-intensive organisations.

This isn’t a “get better at scheduling” pep talk. It’s a practical guide to lifting rostering out of reactive firefighting and into a controlled, measurable capability—without losing the human element that service organisations run on.

Why rostering feels harder than it “should” be

Most organisations treat rostering as an operational function: build the roster, fill gaps, approve swaps, manage overtime, repeat.

But in reality, rostering is the point where three forces collide:

1. Demand volatility (what the service needs)
2. Workforce supply constraints (who is available, skilled, and safe to deploy)
3. Cost and compliance (awards, fatigue, leave rules, budgets, industrial arrangements)

When those three are stable, rostering is straightforward.

When they’re not—and in many sectors they aren’t—rostering becomes a daily puzzle with moving pieces. The “best” roster on paper can fail in the first two hours of the shift if it doesn’t reflect how demand actually behaves.

Demand isn’t just volume. It’s shape.

Aged care demand isn’t evenly spread across a day. Hospitals don’t experience “average” ED arrivals. Facilities teams don’t get breakdowns according to neat weekly patterns. Call centres don’t receive a perfectly smooth call rate. Hospitality doesn’t staff to the average Friday; it staffs to the Friday where a major event is on, plus a bus tour turns up early.

The shape of demand—peaks, troughs, seasonality, event-driven surges—matters as much as the total volume.

Supply is more than headcount.

In labour-intensive services, capacity isn’t “number of people on payroll”. It’s:

• skills and scope (who can do what safely)
• fatigue limits (who shouldn’t do more)
• location and travel (who can get where, and when)
• shift preferences and retention risks (who will quit if this becomes unsustainable)
• compliance (minimum breaks, maximum hours, award rules)
• reliability (availability, sickness trends, unplanned leave)

If you’ve got the headcount but the wrong skill mix, you still don’t have capacity.

Cost is no longer just “overtime vs base”

Cost is now a broader system problem. Wage increases and award changes flow through base rates, allowances, penalties, classifications, and career structures.  In some sectors, cost pressures are compounded by agency reliance, backfill practices, and the hidden cost of turnover. And reforms that alter the employment landscape can shift how organisations think about casualisation, labour hire, and workforce models.

The difference between rostering and workforce planning

A useful distinction:

• Rostering is the weekly (or fortnightly) act of allocating people to shifts.
• Strategic workforce planning is the ongoing discipline of ensuring you have the right workforce capacity, composition, and deployment model to meet demand—now and into the future.

If you only roster, you’re forever reacting.

If you plan strategically, rostering becomes the execution arm of a deliberate design.

In practical terms, strategic workforce planning answers questions like:

• What demand do we need to meet, and how variable is it?
• What service targets are non-negotiable (and which are negotiable)?
• What workforce mix do we need (full-time, part-time, casual, agency, contractors)?
• Where are the structural bottlenecks (skills, locations, time windows)?
• What should “good” look like in terms of overtime, leave cover, and utilisation?
• Which constraints are real, and which are self-imposed by legacy policies?

Then rostering becomes less about guesswork and more about optimising within known rules.

A practical framework for variable demand rostering

When demand is volatile, you don’t win by chasing perfection. You win by building a system that is resilient, measurable, and fair.

Here’s a framework we use across labour-intensive environments.

1) Start with the service promise (and be brutally clear)

Service organisations often carry a quiet contradiction:

• “We will meet our service targets.”
• “We must reduce labour costs.”
• “We must protect wellbeing and retention.”

You can pursue all three, but only if you define what “service targets” actually mean.

Examples of service promises:

• Aged care: visit windows, continuity of care, safe ratios, response times for incidents
• Hospitals: safe staffing, surge capability, theatre utilisation, ward coverage, ED flow
• Local government: response times for critical maintenance and emergencies
• Facilities: compliance coverage, after-hours readiness, fault response
• Contact centres: answer times, abandonment rates, quality scores

Once you define the promise, you can translate it into demand drivers and coverage requirements.

If you can’t articulate the service promise in plain language, your roster will always be a compromise that nobody owns.

2) Understand demand properly (not just averages)

Most rosters are built off historical averages or manager intuition.

That’s not enough when demand is variable.

Better demand understanding includes:

• peak day vs average day analysis
• intra-day patterns (hourly shape, not daily totals)
• event impacts (public holidays, school holidays, major events, planned outages)
• seasonal shifts
• lead indicators (referrals, bookings, call volumes, admissions forecasts)
• “failure demand” (rework and repeat tasks caused by poor first-time resolution)

A useful question to ask: What proportion of today’s work was predictable a week ago?
If the answer is “most of it”, your issue might be process, not forecasting. If the answer is “hardly any”, your workforce model likely needs more flexibility and faster redeployment mechanisms.

3) Translate demand into workload, and workload into staffing

Demand signals only become useful when converted into workload.

Workload is the combination of:

• task volumes
• task durations
• travel time (where relevant)
• variability (standard deviation matters)
• non-productive time (handover, admin, safety checks)
• escalation overheads

From there, staffing needs can be modelled by:

• coverage requirements (minimums, ratios, “always-on” coverage)
• productive hours per shift after breaks
• skill mix rules
• fatigue and safety rules
• allowance for unplanned absence (shrinkage)

This is where a lot of rosters fall over: they roster to headcount, not workload. The result is either chronic understaffing (and overtime) or chronic overstaffing (and frustration about cost).

4) Design a workforce mix that matches volatility

Variable demand is not solved purely by “better rostering software”. It’s solved by aligning the workforce model to demand characteristics.

Common levers include:

• more flexible part-time structures (instead of forcing full-time patterns everywhere)
• planned “float” roles (not as a punishment, but as a designed capability)
• split shifts or staggered starts (where appropriate and agreed)
• internal banks/pools for backfill
• cross-skilling to increase redeployability
• clearer rules for overtime and call-in (to avoid ad hoc inequity)
• agency use as a last resort, with controls and learning loops

In aged care and hospitals, this can also include explicit surge capacity models—because pretending surges won’t happen doesn’t make them disappear. It just shifts the impact onto people at the worst possible moment.

5) Build rosters around constraints, but challenge the right ones

Constraints are real in service environments. The trick is distinguishing:

• constraints that protect safety and fairness, and
• constraints that exist because “we’ve always done it that way”.

Common constraints worth testing:

• overly rigid shift start times that don’t match demand peaks
• “everyone rotates equally” rules that ignore skill needs
• blanket rules about weekends/nights that drive perverse outcomes
• cumbersome approval processes for swaps and minor adjustments
• policies that force managers to hoard staff “just in case”
• lack of clarity on what can be flexed during surge conditions

When constraints are unclear, rosters become negotiation documents instead of operational tools.

The rostering realities in aged care

Aged care rostering is particularly complex because demand is both:

• predictable (regular care needs), and
• unpredictable (incidents, acuity changes, staff absences, family needs)

Add to that:

• workforce shortages in many markets
• wage and award changes flowing through classifications and pay structures
• heavy compliance load and documentation requirements
• high emotional labour and burnout risk
• continuity of care expectations (relationships matter)

In this environment, “just add casuals” isn’t a strategy. It can erode continuity and increase training burden.

What tends to work better:

• designing a stable core roster that covers predictable workload
• building a structured flexibility layer (bank/pool, planned floats)
• using demand signals to plan rather than react (e.g., known high-risk periods)
• simplifying admin so frontline staff spend time on care, not paperwork
• making fairness explicit (so overtime and unpopular shifts don’t become political)

There’s also a wider funding and compliance context. Government guidance has been issued to support providers in implementing wage increases linked to the Aged Care Work Value Case.  This is a reminder that rostering is not just “operations”—it’s tied directly to funding, compliance, and workforce sustainability.

The rostering realities in hospitals

Hospitals are where rostering meets complexity at speed.

Demand is volatile (ED arrivals, bed flow, theatre overruns), and staffing is constrained by:

• strict skill requirements
• patient safety and minimum coverage needs
• fatigue and overtime limits
• industrial arrangements and agreements
• the operational reality that handovers, breaks, and supervision take time

The common trap is to treat rosters as fixed artefacts. But in hospitals, the real game is dynamic capacity management—knowing what levers exist when the day deviates from plan.

Effective approaches often include:

• rosters built with explicit surge rules (what triggers escalation, who is contacted, what gets deferred)
• better use of predictive indicators (bed management, elective schedules, known demand drivers)
• clear governance around overtime and additional shifts (safe, fair, and consistent)
• skill-based allocation rather than purely “equal rotation”
• realistic staffing models that include non-patient-facing workload

And importantly: a shared view of demand, workforce, and constraints—not separate spreadsheets living in silos.

“Other labour intensive organisations”: where the same puzzle shows up

The rostering puzzle isn’t limited to healthcare.

You see the same structural dynamics in:

• disability and community services (variable demand, travel, skills)
• hospitality and venues (event-driven peaks, late changes, casual workforce)
• manufacturing and processing (shift coverage, overtime, fatigue, absenteeism)
• warehousing and logistics (seasonality, cut-off times, volume spikes)
• facilities and maintenance (reactive work + compliance coverage)
• contact centres (volume variability + quality requirements)
• emergency services support functions (readiness + cost control)

The specifics differ, but the underlying challenge is the same:

How do we meet service targets when demand moves—and do it without blowing out labour cost or burning out the workforce?

The cost side: labour costs aren’t just “too much overtime”

Overtime is the visible symptom, but the underlying cost drivers are usually structural:

• mismatch between roster shape and demand shape
• poor shrinkage planning (sick leave, training, admin time)
• excessive reliance on agency due to lack of internal flexibility
• rework and inefficiency that inflate workload
• turnover that creates permanent training overhead
• fragmented scheduling practices across sites/teams
• lack of real-time visibility, leading to “just in case” staffing

Wage increases and award changes amplify these issues. A 3.5% wage increase flows through every hour you roster.  If your roster design is inefficient, that inefficiency just got more expensive.

This is why strategic workforce planning matters: it targets the system, not just the symptom.

Technology: helpful when it supports decisions, harmful when it replaces them

Rostering technology can be powerful. It can also become shelfware if it’s not aligned to the operating model.

Good rostering tech supports:

• demand-based staffing models
• skill and credential constraints
• fair allocation rules
• shift bids/swaps with governance
• fatigue management and compliance checks
• real-time coverage visibility
• reporting that managers actually trust

But technology won’t fix:

• unclear service targets
• broken handovers
• inconsistent role expectations
• lack of accountability for staffing decisions
• policies that incentivise gaming
• poor data definitions (e.g., what counts as “productive time”)

In New Zealand, leave complexity has been a recurring pain point for payroll and rostering, and reforms are explicitly trying to reduce uncertainty and compliance burden.  That context matters when selecting systems and designing processes—because “leave” is never just an HR function in a shift-based environment. It’s a rostering constraint that affects coverage and cost every day.

The human side: fairness is a performance lever

Rostering discussions often get stuck on numbers: hours, FTE, overtime cost.

But fairness is a major driver of performance, retention, and discretionary effort.

If staff believe the roster is:

• inconsistent,
• biased,
• opaque, or
• constantly changed without consultation,

you’ll pay for it in absenteeism, turnover, and conflict.

Fairness doesn’t mean “everyone gets the same”. It means:

• the rules are clear,
• the reasoning is understood,
• the trade-offs are transparent,
• and people feel respected.

In practical terms, that can look like:

• published rules for overtime allocation
• transparent shift swap processes
• clear escalation triggers for surge rosters
• genuine consultation on roster changes
• rostering decisions supported by data, not favouritism

A “fair enough” roster is often more sustainable than a theoretically optimal one that nobody trusts.

A simple maturity model: where are you today?

If you want a quick self-check, consider these stages:

Stage 1: Reactive rostering

• built on intuition
• constant last-minute changes
• overtime and agency are default fixes
• limited visibility

Stage 2: Rules-based rostering

• basic compliance is embedded
• shift templates exist
• still relies heavily on manual intervention
• demand is loosely understood

Stage 3: Demand-informed rostering

• demand patterns drive shift design
• workload modelling exists
• shrinkage is planned
• clear governance on changes

Stage 4: Integrated workforce planning

• workforce mix is designed for volatility
• skills and training pipelines align to demand
• scenario planning is routine
• technology supports decisions end-to-end

Most organisations sit somewhere between Stage 1 and Stage 3. The good news is you don’t need to jump straight to Stage 4 to see benefits. Often, the biggest gains come from moving one stage forward with discipline.

What “good” looks like: measurable outcomes that matter

Rather than promising magic, it’s better to focus on outcomes you can track credibly:

Service outcomes

• coverage reliability
• response times / waitlists
• missed visits / delayed jobs
• patient or client experience measures (where applicable)

Workforce outcomes

• unplanned absence rates
• overtime hours (and distribution fairness)
• roster stability (how often it changes last minute)
• retention signals and turnover

Cost outcomes

• total labour cost per unit of service
• agency usage and reasons
• premium hours (penalties, overtime) as a proportion of total
• rework cost (repeat visits, repeat calls)

These measures help you move the conversation from “rostering feels bad” to “here’s what’s driving it, and here’s what we’re changing”.

How Trace Consultants can help

Rostering is one of those capabilities that touches everything—service, finance, people, compliance, technology. That makes it easy for it to fall between organisational cracks.

Trace Consultants helps clients solve the rostering puzzle by bringing structure to that complexity—without losing sight of the realities on the floor, in the ward, on the road, or on the phones.

Here’s how we typically support organisations across Australia and New Zealand:

1) Demand and workload analysis for variable environments

We help you understand demand patterns properly (including peaks and volatility), translate demand into workload, and build staffing models that reflect reality rather than averages.

2) Workforce mix and operating model design

We assess how your workforce is currently structured (full-time/part-time/casual/agency), identify where rigidity is creating cost or service risk, and design a mix that can absorb volatility more sustainably.

3) Rostering governance, rules, and fairness

We help define clear rostering principles—overtime allocation, surge triggers, swap rules, approval pathways—so rostering becomes consistent and defensible, not a weekly negotiation.

4) Technology selection and enablement (without the shelfware)

We support requirements definition, vendor evaluation, and implementation planning in a way that prioritises adoption, usability, compliance, and measurable outcomes—rather than feature lists.

5) Benefits tracking and continuous improvement

We establish performance measures tied to service outcomes, workforce wellbeing, and cost-to-serve, then embed routines so improvements stick beyond the project.

We don’t make up numbers. We don’t sell silver bullets. We help you build a workforce planning and rostering capability that matches the complexity of your service environment—and holds up on Monday morning, not just in a PowerPoint.

Final thought: the puzzle doesn’t disappear, but it can become solvable

If demand were stable, rostering would be admin.

But demand isn’t stable—and in Australia and New Zealand, the cost and compliance environment adds an extra layer of pressure. Wage changes, sector-specific award adjustments, and broader reforms mean labour decisions carry more weight than ever.

The goal isn’t to build the “perfect roster”. The goal is to build a system where:

• service targets are clear,
• demand is understood,
• staffing is modelled realistically,
• workforce flexibility is designed (not improvised),
• fairness is visible,
• and decisions are supported by good data and governance.

That’s when the rostering puzzle stops feeling like chaos—and starts feeling like a capability.

If you’re ready to move from reactive rostering to strategic workforce planning, Trace Consultants can help you define the pathway and deliver it in a way that suits your workforce, your customers, and your budget.

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Rostering optimisation in service industries

Across Australia and New Zealand, service-based organisations are facing a perfect storm of rising costs, workforce shortages, increasing demand volatility, and heightened expectations from customers, patients, and regulators. In many industries, labour is the single largest cost line, and the most difficult to manage. Yet despite this, rostering processes in many organisations remain manual, reactive, and disconnected from demand.

Rostering optimisation has therefore moved from being an operational “nice to have” to a strategic necessity. Organisations that can align labour supply with real demand, while maintaining service quality and workforce wellbeing, are gaining a significant advantage in an increasingly constrained operating environment.

This article explores how rostering optimisation is changing across service industries, why traditional approaches are falling short, and how organisations can build more sustainable, cost-effective rostering models.

Why rostering has become a strategic issue

Historically, rostering was often treated as an administrative task. Line managers or supervisors created rosters based on experience, availability, and rules of thumb. While imperfect, this approach was often “good enough” when labour markets were loose and demand patterns were relatively stable. That context has fundamentally changed.

Today, service organisations are dealing with:

• Chronic labour shortages
• Higher employee turnover
• Increased reliance on casual, agency, or contingent labour
• More complex industrial agreements and compliance requirements
• Fluctuating and unpredictable demand
• Increased scrutiny of service outcomes and safety

As a result, poorly optimised rosters now have direct and visible consequences such as escalating overtime and agency costs and missed service levels and staff burnout. Rostering is no longer just about filling shifts. It is about balancing cost, service quality, risk, and workforce sustainability in real time.

The true cost of poor rostering

Many organisations underestimate the true cost of ineffective rostering because the impacts are spread across multiple parts of the business.

Common consequences include:

• Excess overtime driven by poor shift design
• High use of agency staff to cover avoidable gaps
• Underutilisation of permanent employees
• Fatigue-related safety incidents
• Declining service reliability
• Increased absenteeism and turnover
• Reduced employee engagement

Individually, these issues may appear manageable. Collectively, they can materially erode margins, service outcomes, and organisational resilience. In industries where margins are already under pressure such as healthcare, aged care, disability services, hospitality, logistics, and facilities management, the cumulative impact of poor rostering can be substantial.

Demand volatility is exposing rostering weaknesses

One of the biggest drivers of rostering inefficiency is the growing mismatch between labour supply and demand.

Demand in service industries is increasingly:

• Time-specific rather than evenly distributed
• Location-dependent
• Sensitive to external factors such as seasonality, events, weather, or funding models
• Subject to last-minute changes

Yet many rostering models still assume relatively static demand profiles. Shifts are fixed, headcounts are standardised, and flexibility is limited.

This disconnect leads to:

• Overstaffing during low-demand periods
• Understaffing during peaks
• Reactive schedule changes that frustrate staff
• Costly last-minute labour decisions

Rostering optimisation begins with acknowledging that demand is dynamic, and designing workforce models that can respond accordingly.

From coverage-based to demand-led rostering

A significant shift occurring across service industries is the move away from coverage-based rostering towards demand-led rostering. Coverage-based rostering focuses on ensuring a certain number of staff are present at all times, regardless of actual demand. While simple to administer, it often results in inefficiency.

Demand-led rostering, by contrast, aligns workforce supply to:

• Forecast service volumes
• Workload intensity by time and location
• Skill requirements
• Service standards

This approach requires better data, improved forecasting, and closer integration between operational planning and rostering.

The result is a roster that is:

• More efficient
• More responsive
• Better aligned with service outcomes
• More defensible from a cost and compliance perspective

Workforce mix is central to optimisation

Rostering optimisation is not just about when people work, it is also about who works. Many service organisations are reassessing their workforce mix to improve flexibility and cost control. This includes reviewing the balance between:

• Full-time and part-time employees
• Casual and contingent labour
• Permanent staff and agency resources
• Skill levels and role design

Over-reliance on agency labour is often a symptom of deeper structural issues, such as:

• Poor demand forecasting
• Inflexible employment models
• Inefficient shift design
• Limited cross-skilling

Optimised rostering considers workforce composition as a strategic lever, not just an operational constraint.

Compliance and fatigue are increasingly critical

As industrial relations frameworks evolve and safety expectations rise, compliance and fatigue management have become central to rostering decisions.

Poorly designed rosters can expose organisations to:

• Breaches of enterprise agreements or awards
• Excessive consecutive shifts
• Inadequate rest periods
• Elevated fatigue and safety risks

Rostering optimisation must therefore balance efficiency with compliance and wellbeing. This requires:

• Clear rule frameworks
• Transparent decision logic
• Strong governance and escalation processes

Optimised rosters should reduce risk, not simply reduce cost.

Technology is an enabler, not a silver bullet

Many organisations have invested in rostering and workforce management systems, yet continue to struggle with outcomes. This is often because technology has been implemented without rethinking underlying processes and decision frameworks.

Effective rostering optimisation requires:

• Clear demand inputs
• Defined workforce rules and constraints
• Agreed service standards
• Strong exception management

Technology can automate and optimise decisions, but only when the inputs and governance are sound.

Increasingly, organisations are also using low-code and analytics tools to:

• Improve visibility of labour demand and supply
• Identify cost drivers and inefficiencies
• Enable faster scenario analysis
• Support managers with better decision insights

The most successful implementations focus on usability and adoption, rather than system complexity.

Change management is often the missing link

Rostering changes directly affect people’s lives. Shift patterns, start times, weekends, and overtime opportunities are deeply personal issues for staff. As a result, even technically sound rostering initiatives can fail without effective change management.

Common challenges include:

• Resistance from frontline managers
• Perceived loss of autonomy
• Concerns about income stability
• Mistrust of “optimisation” initiatives

Successful rostering optimisation programs invest in:

• Early stakeholder engagement
• Transparent communication
• Clear articulation of benefits
• Incremental implementation
• Ongoing feedback loops

Sustainable change requires trust as much as technology.

Industry-specific considerations

While the principles of rostering optimisation are consistent, their application varies by industry:

• In healthcare and aged care, rostering must balance clinical safety, continuity of care, and regulatory compliance.
• In disability services, variability in client needs and funding models adds complexity to scheduling and workforce deployment.
• In hospitality and tourism, demand volatility and seasonality require high levels of flexibility and rapid re-planning.
• In facilities management and service contracting, rostering must align tightly with service level agreements and contract margins.

A one-size-fits-all approach rarely works. Rostering optimisation must be tailored to the operational reality of each industry.

How Trace Consultants can help

Trace Consultants works with service organisations across Australia and New Zealand to design and implement practical, sustainable rostering optimisation solutions. Support typically includes:

Rostering and workforce diagnostic reviews

Assessing current rostering practices, workforce mix, demand patterns, and cost drivers to identify root causes of inefficiency.

Demand and capacity modelling

Helping organisations understand true labour demand by time, location, and skill, providing a robust foundation for roster design.

Rostering framework and process design

Designing clear, demand-led rostering frameworks that balance efficiency, service quality, compliance, and workforce wellbeing.

Workforce mix and role design

Supporting decisions around employment models, skill mix, and role standardisation to improve flexibility and reduce reliance on high-cost labour.

Technology enablement

Assisting with the selection, configuration, and adoption of rostering and workforce management tools, including low-code solutions where appropriate.

Change and implementation support

Ensuring rostering improvements are embedded through strong governance, capability uplift, and stakeholder engagement.

Trace Consultants brings an independent, operationally grounded perspective, helping organisations move beyond short-term fixes towards lasting improvement.

What leaders should focus on now

For leaders in service industries, rostering optimisation should be approached as a strategic program rather than a tactical exercise.

Key priorities include:

• Linking rostering to demand, not just coverage
• Improving workforce flexibility without increasing risk
• Using data to inform decisions rather than intuition alone
• Investing in capability, not just systems
• Engaging the workforce early and transparently

In a constrained labour market, the organisations that succeed will be those that use their workforce intelligently and sustainably.

Final thoughts

Rostering optimisation is no longer about squeezing more hours from fewer people. It is about designing systems that respect the realities of modern service delivery, balancing cost, service quality, compliance, and workforce wellbeing.

As pressures on service industries continue to intensify across Australia and New Zealand, the ability to roster effectively will increasingly separate resilient organisations from those that struggle to keep up. The question facing leaders is not whether rostering can be improved, but whether they are prepared to treat it as the strategic capability it has become.

Is your roster working as hard as your people?‍

If rostering decisions still feel reactive, costly, or overly reliant on manager intuition, there’s likely more value left on the table. At Trace Consultants, we help service organisations design demand-led rostering models that reduce labour cost pressure while protecting service quality, safety, and workforce wellbeing. Clear demand signals, defensible rules, and practical processes that frontline teams can actually use.

Start a conversation with Trace to understand where rostering is creating hidden cost, risk, or fatigue and how a more structured approach can deliver sustainable results across your workforce.

Workforce Planning, Rostering and Scheduling – How to Improve Labour Productivity and Hold Internal Staff and External Suppliers More Accountable Through the Right KPIs

Across Australia and New Zealand, organisations are under sustained pressure to do more with less. Labour costs continue to rise, skilled resources are harder to attract and retain, and service expectations from customers, patients, citizens and stakeholders have never been higher.

Despite this, workforce planning, rostering and scheduling are still treated in many organisations as operational or administrative activities rather than strategic levers. Rosters are built based on historical patterns, spreadsheets or static templates. Labour decisions are made reactively to short-term issues. Performance is measured through blunt metrics such as total labour cost or overtime spend, without a clear line of sight to productivity or outcomes.

The result is a familiar set of problems: inconsistent service, frustrated frontline staff, over-reliance on agency or contractors, and limited accountability for how labour is actually deployed.

This article explores how organisations can take a more disciplined approach to workforce planning, rostering and scheduling – and how the right KPIs can be used to lift labour productivity while holding both internal teams and external suppliers more accountable.

Why workforce planning, rostering and scheduling matter more than ever

Labour is typically one of the largest cost lines on the profit and loss statement, particularly in service-intensive sectors such as health, aged care, disability, retail, hospitality, logistics, facilities management and government services.

Unlike many other cost categories, labour is also highly visible. It directly affects customer experience, safety, compliance and employee engagement. Poor workforce decisions show up quickly on the frontline.

Several structural trends are making effective workforce management even more critical:

• Persistent labour shortages across key roles
• Rising wage and on-cost pressure
• Greater variability in demand by time, location and channel
• Increased use of external suppliers, contractors and agencies
• Higher expectations of service consistency and responsiveness

In this environment, organisations that rely on intuition, historical averages or static rosters are increasingly exposed. Those that invest in better planning, smarter scheduling and clearer performance accountability create a tangible competitive advantage.

Understanding the workforce planning continuum

Workforce planning, rostering and scheduling are related but distinct activities. Confusing them – or focusing on one in isolation – limits their effectiveness.

Workforce planning: setting the foundation

Workforce planning is about understanding what labour is required, where, when, and with what skills, to deliver the organisation’s service or operational objectives.

Effective workforce planning considers:

• Demand drivers and volume forecasts
• Service level expectations
• Workforce mix (full-time, part-time, casual, contingent, outsourced)
• Skills, qualifications and accreditation requirements
• Productivity assumptions and constraints
• Geographic and site-specific factors

Done well, workforce planning provides a clear view of labour requirements over different horizons – short, medium and long term.

Rostering: translating demand into shifts

Rostering converts workforce plans into actual shifts and coverage patterns. It determines who works, when they work, and under what conditions.

Good rostering balances:

• Demand variability by day and time
• Industrial agreements and award conditions
• Fatigue, fairness and staff preferences
• Skill coverage and supervision requirements
• Cost efficiency and compliance

Poor rostering is one of the most common drivers of overtime, agency reliance and staff dissatisfaction.

Scheduling: managing execution in real time

Scheduling is about managing change. Absences, demand spikes, late deliveries and unplanned events all require adjustments to the roster.

Strong scheduling capability allows organisations to respond quickly without defaulting to expensive or inefficient solutions. It also provides valuable feedback into workforce planning assumptions.

The productivity problem: why labour underperforms

Many organisations struggle to improve labour productivity not because staff are unproductive, but because the system around them is poorly designed.

Common issues include:

• Mismatch between demand and labour deployment
• Overstaffing in low-demand periods and understaffing in peaks
• Limited visibility of how labour is actually used
• Weak accountability for outcomes rather than inputs
• Over-reliance on external suppliers without clear performance measures

In these environments, even well-intentioned managers struggle to make good decisions.

Why KPIs are often the missing link

Most organisations have KPIs related to labour. The problem is that many of them do not drive the right behaviour.

Common examples include:

• Total labour cost
• Overtime hours
• Agency spend
• Headcount

While these metrics are useful, they are lagging indicators. They tell you what has already happened, not whether labour is being deployed effectively.

The real opportunity lies in designing KPIs that connect labour input to service output and outcomes.

Designing the right KPIs for workforce productivity

Effective workforce KPIs share several characteristics:

• They are clearly linked to demand and service outcomes
• They are controllable by the teams being measured
• They balance cost, productivity and quality
• They are simple enough to be understood and acted upon

Below are key KPI categories that organisations should consider.

Demand-aligned productivity KPIs

These KPIs measure how well labour supply aligns to demand.

Examples include:

• Labour hours per unit of demand (orders, clients, patients, tasks)
• Coverage ratio versus forecast demand
• Productive hours as a percentage of paid hours

These metrics shift the conversation from “how many people do we have?” to “are we deploying the right capacity at the right time?”

Roster efficiency and stability KPIs

These KPIs highlight how effective rosters are before execution.

Examples include:

• Planned versus actual labour variance
• Roster adherence rates
• Last-minute roster changes
• Overtime as a percentage of planned hours

High levels of roster churn are often a symptom of poor planning rather than poor performance.

Service and outcome-based KPIs

Labour productivity must be measured alongside service outcomes.

Depending on the sector, this may include:

• On-time service delivery
• Response times
• Throughput or turnaround times
• Safety or quality indicators

This ensures that productivity improvements do not come at the expense of service or compliance.

Workforce mix and flexibility KPIs

These KPIs help organisations understand whether they are using the right mix of labour.

Examples include:

• Permanent versus contingent labour mix
• Agency utilisation by role or site
• Internal backfill versus external sourcing
• Skill coverage ratios

Over-reliance on external suppliers often reflects underlying planning or rostering issues.

External supplier accountability KPIs

For organisations using contractors, labour hire or outsourced services, KPIs are essential to drive accountability.

Examples include:

• Cost per unit of output
• Fill rates and response times
• Compliance with roster requirements
• Productivity versus internal benchmarks

Without clear metrics, external labour costs can escalate with limited scrutiny.

Holding internal teams accountable – without damaging culture

One of the risks in introducing stronger workforce KPIs is that they are perceived as punitive or purely cost-driven.

To avoid this, organisations should:

• Be transparent about why KPIs are being introduced
• Focus on system improvement rather than individual blame
• Give managers the tools and authority to act on insights
• Pair accountability with support and capability building

When done well, KPIs empower managers to make better decisions rather than constrain them.

The role of technology – and its limitations

Technology can play a powerful role in workforce planning, rostering and scheduling, but it is not a silver bullet.

Systems can:

• Automate complex rostering rules
• Provide real-time visibility of coverage and demand
• Capture accurate labour and activity data
• Enable reporting and performance tracking

However, without clear processes, governance and KPIs, technology often reinforces existing problems rather than solving them.

Organisations should be clear on what decisions they want to improve before investing in systems.

From insight to action: making KPIs stick

Introducing KPIs is only the first step. Real value comes from embedding them into daily and weekly management routines.

This includes:

• Regular review of workforce performance dashboards
• Clear escalation paths for variances
• Linking KPIs to planning and budgeting cycles
• Using insights to refine demand forecasts and rosters

Over time, this creates a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement.

How Trace Consultants can help

Trace Consultants works with Australian and New Zealand organisations to design and implement practical, fit-for-purpose workforce planning, rostering and scheduling frameworks.

Our support typically includes:

Workforce planning and demand modelling

Helping organisations understand true labour requirements by role, location and time period, based on demand drivers and service expectations.

Rostering and scheduling optimisation

Reviewing roster structures, rules and practices to improve efficiency, flexibility and fairness while reducing unnecessary cost.

KPI design and performance frameworks

Defining the right KPIs to drive productivity and accountability across internal teams and external suppliers – and embedding them into management processes.

Operating model and governance design

Clarifying roles, decision rights and escalation pathways so workforce decisions are made at the right level with the right information.

Independent and practical advice

Trace is not aligned to workforce software vendors or labour providers. Our advice is solution-agnostic and focused on what will genuinely work in your operating environment.

When should organisations act?

Common signals that workforce planning and rostering need attention include:

• Rising labour or agency costs with no clear explanation
• Persistent overtime or fatigue issues
• Inconsistent service performance
• Frustrated frontline managers and staff
• Limited visibility of workforce productivity

If these challenges sound familiar, it may be time to take a more structured approach.

Final thoughts

Workforce planning, rostering and scheduling are no longer back-office activities. They are strategic capabilities that directly influence cost, service, safety and staff engagement.

Organisations that invest in better planning and clearer accountability – supported by the right KPIs – are better positioned to navigate labour constraints, improve productivity and deliver consistent outcomes.

For Australian and New Zealand organisations facing ongoing workforce pressure, the opportunity is not just to reduce cost, but to build a more resilient, transparent and accountable workforce model for the future.

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