Have you ever longed for a time when your HR, payroll, and workforce management systems worked together seamlessly? When you could assign just the right employee to the right job, on the right shift. at the right time. and know your payroll processing would remain error-free?
That’s exactly what the partnership between Zellis and Rotageek delivers.
We sat down with Jason Steuber, Vice President of Solution Consulting and Partnerships at Rotageek, the workforce management and scheduling software provider. He spoke to us about the limitations of manual scheduling, how a digital system can overcome such challenges, and why the company decided to embark on this relationship.
What’s the problem with traditional workforce management methods?
Workforce scheduling is a complex business. This is particularly true in those sectors where employees work variable shifts, such as retail and hospitality. Manually dealing with dynamic labour demands, particularly if workforces are large, can take a considerable amount of managers’ time, effort, and administration.
For example, a retail store’s demand is constantly changing, day to day and hour to hour, affected by seasonality, school holidays, and even the weather. As a result, it will be necessary to create new schedules, on a week-by-week basis, that are as nuanced as your labour requirements.
The problem though, is that it can take hours to complete this task manually. Many companies still use spreadsheets.
However, just because spreadsheet software may be free or included as part of a larger software bundle, doesn’t mean it’s efficient. Simply copying and pasting last week’s schedule may save time, but it won’t prove very effective in the end.

How does Rotageek address these challenges?
Our system consists of three modules: digital scheduling, autoscheduling, and forecasting.
- Digital scheduling is an all-in-one workforce management solution with digitised scheduling and rota capabilities at its core. The idea here is that, rather than leave customers to struggle with spreadsheets or paper, we bring these activities into the digital world for them.
- Our autoscheduling solution, based on machine learning, takes workforce management to the next level. We’ve found, over the years, that every customer follows their own list of about 20 rules when creating schedules. So, we feed these rules and constraints into the autoscheduler to create legally compliant schedules and rotas in seconds. These are optimised to take into account labour laws, contractual commitments, working policies, and even each employee’s preferences.
- Our third module is forecasting. To help predict labour demand, we have the AI capability to forecast using our customers own data, such as footfall or historical transactions. We also tap into information from external data sources such as local and national events, economic data, and weather.
By meeting these requirements, not only does employee productivity increase; both customer experience and labour costs are optimised too.

What other benefits do workforce scheduling solutions offer?
Because our autoscheduling module enables you to create advanced schedules incredibly quickly, you never have to trade off time against effectiveness. As a result, managers are freed up to focus on more productive, value-add activities.
For example, in the past, a manager may have had to spend up to five hours in front of a computer manually working out schedules. But Rotageek’s tools enable them to spend more time on the shop floor helping customers or coaching employees.
Another advantage is that employees can maintain a better work-life balance. Our tool makes scheduling fairer by helping managers distribute weekend shifts more evenly, for instance. This avoids continually asking the same people to work weekends, which can prove demotivating.
Autoscheduling can also help you avoid breaching employment legislation. For example, by inadvertently scheduling one employee to work more than 70 hours per week, you could fall foul of The Working Time Directive. Rotageek would help to prevent this by automatically finding another employee with capacity and allocating shifts to them, in line with their contracted hours.
Another key consideration is the boost to organisational productivity and profitability when you’re able to better align demand with the right employees. This is because you can deliver better results with as many, or fewer, employees.

What kinds of industries is Rotageek most suited to?
Rotageek tends to be most highly adopted in industries with large, complex workforces, dynamic labour requirements, and multifaceted scheduling needs. These include retail, hospitality, and entertainment businesses.
Why did you decide to partner with Zellis?
Traditionally, HCM systems are really great at dealing with traditional HR processes like onboarding, offboarding, and promotions. Rotageek, meanwhile, specialises in managing and handling workforces with variable shifts. Integrating our tools with an HCM system delivers more effective workforce management at all levels.
For instance, taking Zellis as our HR and payroll platform of choice allows data to flow seamlessly and securely between both systems in real time. This enables more accurate payroll processing due to employee information being automatically updated. It also provides realtime visibility into who is working, doing what, and where, making it easier to cover empty shifts and reassign oversubscribed ones.
Key takeaways
- Manual workforce scheduling is not fit for purpose for organisations with large, complex, dynamic workforces that undertake variable shifts.
- Digital workforce management systems, such as Rotageek’s, use AI to optimise schedules and predict demand based on your customer data.
- Key benefits include freeing up managers’ time to undertake more productive tasks, enabling employees to have a better work-life balance; ensuring compliance with employment legislation, and boosting organisational productivity and profitability.
- The partnership sees a seamless integration of Zellis’ HR and payroll platform with Rotageek’s workforce management and scheduling systems. This means it’s now possible to assign the right employee to the right job, at the right time, with confidence in your payroll processing accuracy.