Empowering HR & Payroll with integrated workforce scheduling
Zelt is the UK’s leading all-in-one HR and Finance platform. As the solo product designer, I designed Scheduling, a new workforce management module that helps teams easily plan shifts, track attendance and prepare hours for payroll in one connected workflow across web, mobile and a shared terminal app.
See it live: Zelt Blog / Mobile App / iPad Terminal
Role
Lead Product Designer
Platform
Web · Mobile · Terminal
Users
Managers & Shift Workers
Status
Shipped · Live
Product challenge
Make complex scheduling feel fast and clear
Managers needed to plan shifts around people, locations, time off
and exceptions without the rota becoming another spreadsheet.
Business challenge
Make Zelt work for shift-based businesses
Scheduling needed to unlock new deals and create a new paid product for existing customers while Sales was already showing it to prospects.
Designing while the product was already moving
Sales demos were happening while the core workflow was still being designed.
Selling while building
Availability, breaks, payroll and permissions worked differently across businesses.
Different rules
Three platforms
Managers planned on web while employees interacted through mobile and a shared Terminal.
Core experience · Sep 2025
Ship the useful core before solving every edge case
Imagine you manage an F1 team or a bakery chain, where most of your staff work irregular hours. You don’t want to spend hours matching schedules with actual working time and calculating how much everyone should be paid.
You want these processes to be automated – a few clicks, and you can finish your coffee. No more time wasted on spreadsheets or jumping between different platforms. You can manage it all in one place.
93% of shifts were created by month
Design decision #1
Weekly planning seemed like the obvious starting point. Real usage told us otherwise: our largest rota customer created 93% of shifts more than a month in advance, so we quickly added a monthly planning view.
Keep context close, but not everywhere
Design decision #2
Too little information forced managers to leave the rota. Too much made the schedule hard to scan.
The final approach surfaced absences, conflicts, relevant employee and business information only when it helped someone make a decision.
One schedule, designed for different contexts
Cross-platform
After the core launch, I extended Schedule across mobile and an on-site Terminal, allowing employees to clock in from their own phone or a shared iPad.
From rota planning to workforce management
Product evolution
Scheduling became a reason to choose Zelt
Impact
3-year contract
worth £40k secured before launch, with Scheduling key to the decision
100+ employees
across 22 sites managed by the first Schedule product adopter
93% of shifts
planned over a month ahead
by our largest rota customer
