The top rostering & scheduling pain points for frontline businesses in 2025

On paper, rostering looks simple: fill the shifts, cover the hours. In practice, it’s one of the most complex — and impactful — parts of running a frontline business. Rostering is a constant balancing act between demand, cost, compliance, fairness and employee satisfaction. When it goes wrong, the effects can be felt across the whole organisation, from higher labour costs to staff burnout and compliance risk.

The good news? The most common rostering challenges can be solved with the right technology. Let’s explore five pain points faced by frontline businesses — and how Humanforce Workforce Management solutions help overcome them.

1. Inefficient, manual rostering workflows

Relying on spreadsheets or manual processes for rostering is still common, but it creates unnecessary admin and errors. Managers lose hours each week trying to juggle availability, shift swaps and demand changes. Employees also feel the frustration when rosters don’t reflect reality or are constantly updated at the last minute.

How Rostering & Scheduling helps:

• Automates roster creation using templates, demand forecasting and availability rules

• Builds in compliance checks, so errors are prevented before they happen

• Allows real-time updates and drag-and-drop flexibility

• Empowers employees with shift bidding and preference settings

This reduces admin burden and ensures staff are scheduled efficiently, fairly and compliantly.

2. Soaring labour costs, budget overruns & overtime exposure

Labour is often a business’s heftiest expense, and poor rostering makes it easy to overspend. Factors like unplanned overtime and heavy reliance on agency staff can quickly blow out budgets.

How Roster Manager and Workforce Analytics help:

• Provides live visibility of rostered costs against budget

• Flags potential overspend before rosters are published

• Tracks historic workforce data to inform more accurate forecasting

• Optimises staff utilisation to reduce reliance on overtime and agency workers

The result: labour costs stay predictable and under control.

3. Complex compliance, awards and rostering risk

Awards, enterprise agreements and workplace laws add layers of complexity to scheduling. When handled manually, it’s all too easy to miss break rules, misapply penalty rates, or roster unqualified staff. These errors can create costly compliance risks and payroll headaches.

How Awards & Compliance helps:

• Automatically applies award rules, penalty rates and break requirements

• Flags compliance risks in real time as rosters are built

• Calculates complex pay conditions (like shifts crossing into public holidays) automatically

• Produces audit-ready records for peace of mind

With compliance built into the rostering process, managers can focus on running operations instead of worrying about errors.

4. Poor communication, shift changes & last-minute gaps

Communication breakdowns are one of the biggest frustrations in frontline work. Staff often receive late notice of shifts, while managers waste time chasing people to fill last-minute absences. The result? Gaps in coverage and disengaged teams.

How the Humanforce Work App helps:

• Send instant push notifications and SMS alerts for roster updates

• Enable staff to swap, accept or bid on shifts directly in the app

• Allow managers to approve changes and cover gaps in seconds

• Ensure absence alerts are raised immediately to avoid disruptions

This keeps everyone in sync and reduces the stress of last-minute rostering.

5. Lack of visibility, analytics and data-driven decisions

Without clear workforce insights, managers are forced to make decisions based on gut feel. This often leads to inefficiencies, unbalanced rosters and reactive problem-solving.

How Workforce Analytics helps:

• Delivers real-time dashboards on labour costs, overtime, absenteeism and utilisation

• Provides forecasting tools to align staffing with expected demand

• Allows comparative analysis across sites and teams to identify inefficiencies

• Supports proactive planning rather than reactive fixes

Armed with data, leaders can make confident decisions that improve performance and reduce costs.

Conclusion

By addressing these five pain points — inefficient workflows, cost overruns, compliance risk, poor communication, and lack of visibility — frontline businesses can transform rostering from a daily struggle into a strategic advantage.

Humanforce’s Rostering & Scheduling, Awards & Compliance, Workforce Analytics and Humanforce Work App bring automation, compliance and connectivity to one of the most important aspects of workforce management.

About Humanforce 

Humanforce is the all-in-one platform for frontline and flexible workforces, offering a truly employee centred, intelligent and compliant human capital management (HCM) suite – without compromise. Founded in 2002, Humanforce has a 2300+ customer base and over half a million users worldwide. Today, we have offices across Australia, New Zealand, the US, and the UK. 

Our vision is to make work easier and life better by focusing on the needs and fulfilment of frontline workers, and the efficiency and optimisation of businesses. 

To learn more about how Humanforce’s solution can help automate people processes in your business, please contact us.