How GuardianHub generates optimised rotas, handles shift patterns, covers sickness, and balances guard workloads automatically.
GuardianHub's rota engine analyses your sites' requirements, guard availability, shift pattern templates, working time regulations, and historical data to generate optimised weekly schedules. It considers site risk levels, minimum guard counts, guard skills and SIA licence types, travel distance between sites, maximum working hours, and guard preferences. The engine produces a draft rota in seconds — a task that typically takes operations managers hours.
Before the AI can generate rotas, you need to define your shift patterns. From Rotas > Patterns, create templates like "Day Shift (07:00-19:00)," "Night Shift (19:00-07:00)," or "Weekend Relief (08:00-20:00)." Each pattern includes start time, end time, required guard count, break duration, and applicable sites. Templates are reusable across weeks and sites. GuardianHub ships with common patterns pre-configured — you can edit or delete them.
Create site-specific patterns for locations with unique requirements. A construction site might need different shift times than a corporate office.
Guards set their availability through the Guard App — marking days they can work and preferred shift types. The rota engine respects these preferences while still meeting site requirements. If a guard is unavailable for a shift the AI needs filled, it suggests the next best match based on skills, proximity, and working hours compliance. Guards receive shift offers they can accept or decline, and the engine learns from these choices over time.
When a guard calls in sick, the Sick Cover feature kicks in. The engine identifies the gap, searches available guards with matching skills and site access, and generates cover offers. These offers go out as push notifications — first guard to accept gets the shift. If no one accepts within a configurable time window, the engine escalates to relief guards or agency staff. Control room operators can monitor the cover process from the Command Centre.
Once you've reviewed and adjusted the AI-generated rota, click Publish. Every guard on the rota receives a push notification and email with their shifts for the week. The published rota is locked — guards can see their schedule in the app but cannot modify it. Changes after publishing require an admin override, which creates an audit trail entry. Published rotas feed into the patrol monitoring system so control rooms know exactly who should be on duty.
If you still have questions, our support team is ready to help.
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