How Wivenhoe House ditched spreadsheets and embraced smart scheduling
When Stevie Robson took up the General Manager role at Wivenhoe House Hotel, the teams were relying on Excel spreadsheets and paper timesheets. Luckily, Stevie knew of the perfect solution to revolutionise this 18th Century hotel’s scheduling and time tracking.
Meet the team
- Who: Stevie Robson
- Role: General Manager
- Business: Wivenhoe House Hotel
- Where: Colchester, UK
That serves up
- An 18th Century hotel with a rich history
- Quality service in beautiful grounds
- A loyal, committed workforce
- A partnership with the UK’s only hotel school
Who are Wivenhoe House Hotel?
Tucked away in the heart of Essex, not far from Colchester, is the four-star Wivenhoe House Hotel. Dating back to the 18th Century, the gorgeous country house hotel is steeped in over 300 years of history and boasts some very famous previous visitors.
John Constable, Prince Albert, Winston Churchill and even Nelson Mandela – to name just a few – have paid a visit to the house and surrounding estate over the years. And while there may not be as many famous faces passing through its doors these days, the hotel still has something rather unique about it.
As well as being an award-winning four-star hotel, event space and wedding venue, Wivenhoe House also partners with the Edge Hotel School to offer training to the hospitality stars of tomorrow.
Part of the University of Essex, the Edge Hotel School opened in 2012 and is the UK’s only hotel school, offering practical, real-world experience to its students through Wivenhoe House. This hands-on approach speaks for itself, with students going onto illustrious hospitality careers around the world.
And while students do their practical learning at Wivenhoe House, the hotel itself is still very much a professional establishment, offering exceptional service and an unforgettable guest experience. And yet when General Manager Stevie Robson took up his role in February 2024, he found there was one area seriously lacking: scheduling.
The challenge
“In my previous role at a hotel group, we introduced Planday back in around 2017. It was an upgrade from the rotten system everyone had been using – Excel spreadsheets,” Stevie said.
“And then when I arrived at this hotel, it was a bit like going back in time. I came in and realised we were back to Excel spreadsheets. And there were handwritten timesheets that were never completed properly, or there was misinformation on them, and finding people’s rotas was an absolute nightmare.”
With 40 bedrooms, five event spaces and an 85-seater restaurant to manage – not to mention a fresh batch of new students each year – Wivenhoe House needed a scheduling system that could manage multiple departments, teams and areas around the business.
A system that made managing such a large, multi-faceted business easier. A system like Planday.
“One of the reasons I wanted to introduce Planday initially was, quite selfishly, to have my own oversight of the business: knowing when people were at work, when they weren't, and when they were going to be in,” said Stevie.
The solution
When he started at Wivenhoe House in 2023, Stevie wasted no time in ditching the spreadsheets and introducing Planday across the business.
“Very quickly it became a priority on my list to introduce a new system. And with Planday being a well known system that I’d used and liked, it was top of the list. And fortunately we managed to get the approval for it and get it introduced, and I’ve never looked back,” he said.
And neither have his staff. The teams embraced the new system almost immediately, and have been using it for timesheets, communication and much more ever since.
“Getting all of the staff to clock in and clock out [on the app] and saving on all of the admin of timesheets. And one of the features I really like is the ability to communicate with all of the staff quite easily,” added Stevie.
“Historically in places I've worked, putting a piece of paper on a noticeboard – you know that people aren't going to read it. Or asking heads of departments to communicate things, you never quite know if it's reached everyone. Whereas with Planday I can send a message out to everyone and I can see if they've read it, down to the date and time.”
The result
Planday is now fully bedded into the teams at Wivenhoe House, and the results have been hugely positive for both management and staff. And in one area in particular, the hotel has been able to make some real savings straight away.
“One of the things that we found was happening here was that people weren't recording the break that they had during their shift, so that break was being paid,” said Stevie.
“So after an internal audit we found that we were paying a substantial amount each year in breaks, which we obviously shouldn’t have been.”
Planday helped to put a stop to that. With staff clocking in and out on their phones, and all timesheets being recorded in the system accurately, everyone was getting the right pay for the right amount of hours worked.
And while some staff were initially sceptical of the new system, they’ve now fully embraced Planday and are using it to their advantage. As waiter and bartender Angad Khandari told us, it’s a vast improvement on the manual system they used before.
“Before Planday, we had to put our availability on a WhatsApp group, and then the managers would give us shifts in an Excel sheet and send it as a screenshot to us. And if you wanted to change or cancel your shift, you had to either call the manager or come in and tell them,” he said.
“Since Planday, it's much more organised. It's easy to give our availability on the app, and I can easily cancel my shift or pass it down to someone else. So it has made it easy for me to balance my life and working here.”
The future and the Edge Hotel School
The beauty of Planday is that the longer it’s used within a business, the more useful it becomes. Reports become more accurate, and the opportunities for efficiencies and cost savings increase.
As anyone who works in hotels and hospitality knows, labour costs are generally the biggest expense – especially in a place as big as Wivenhoe House. Planday has already been able to deliver some cost savings, so Stevie is excited for what the future holds.
“One of the ways we were able to use Planday to help with reducing payroll and controlling the wage bill, was not necessarily to look at how much we were paying people, but how many people we had and how many hours people were working,” said Stevie.
“We are able to run those reports in Planday and look at the level of business versus the hours worked. Moving forward that will be a real benefit to us in terms of looking into those levels of staffing and helping with the payroll costs.”
And what about the Edge Hotel School? Stevie and his team are proud to work with such a unique educational establishment, which was named the best European hotel school for 2025. And as the school’s Deputy Head Adrian Martin said, that’s down in no small part to the partnership with the hotel.
“This is a commercial, four-star, fantastic hotel. And the students here get real life experience. This is not simulated, it’s not training. This is actual real life experience. And that means that at the end of their course, they can put three years of work experience as well as three years of university study on their reference,” he said.
With hospitality changing so rapidly, and technological advances in the industry moving so quickly, that hands-on experience is invaluable. And combined with the Edge Hotel School’s forward thinking and focus on the future, the students graduate fully equipped for success in a transforming industry.
“The school is kind of cutting edge here because we do research as part of the university. So there's research going on here about AI technology, robotics. My research, for instance, is about using AI to pre-profile customers,” said Adrian.
“You learn what's coming next. And that means that what you learn in lessons here is state of the art. It might even be beyond where the industry is at the moment, because we're preparing for the future.”
And it’s a future that’s looking very bright for both the school and Wivenhoe House. Following the successful rollout of Planday, the hotel is already looking to the next tech-based improvements with an AI concierge service.
But whatever advances they make, their commitment to high quality service and an unforgettable guest experience will remain the same. And with the hospitality stars of the future coming through its doors each year, that isn’t going to change any time soon.
Ready to ditch spreadsheets?
