The Montague Hotel

Situated in South Melbourne, the Montague Hotel is an iconic Victorian pub, combining a contemporary aesthetic with a traditional atmosphere and offering.

The Montague is owned and run by the AHA National President & Victorian President of the Australian Hotels Association, David Canny, who also runs the Red Lion Hotel in Ballarat.

Running two hotels in different parts of the state has its challenges – for a start, it’s impossible to be in two places at once. Likewise, there are regional variations in the menu offering, number of patrons and other important factors.

With over 50 staff at the Montague Hotel alone, the group has a large workforce that needs to be onboarded, rostered and paid correctly on a regular basis.

“We were looking for a digital solution for our workforce management, and we came across Tanda at a trade show. Some likeminded hoteliers started using Tanda, we made contact with them and they became partners with the Australian Hotels Association (AHA).”

Moving to Tanda’s digital system has helped the Montague Hotel and the Red Lion Hotel wrangle their rosters into shape. Instead of manually drawing up rosters with a pen and paper, David’s businesses can create digital rosters and instantly send them to all of their staff.

From here, staff are able to swap shifts amongst themselves, and get reminded when they’re working, reducing absenteeism. It’s an efficient way to create and communicate rosters, reducing admin for staff and allowing them to focus on running the business.

Tanda’s comprehensive rostering features also automatically flags overtime, qualification risks and break rule violations. It’s something which helps David run his business every day.

“Tanda is fantastic for us, it ticked all the boxes, be it communication with our staff or onboarding for our staff, compliance. I know my managers love the rostering feature to be able to build templates, forecast the week ahead, make the changes when there’s going to be extra work required, so you stay in control.”

With so many staff, it’s crucial that the Montague Hotel and the Red Lion Hotel have a strong focus on compliance, and are paying their staff the correct amount. But in the hospitality industry, pay can get complicated quickly.

With different awards, penalties and entitlements, as well as emerging compliance issues like breaks – even tiny miscalculations can result in large underpayment issues.

Tanda is built with this environment in mind. Our hospitality clients can place their employees on different managed awards which automatically calculate pay and entitlements based on the time they work. Automatic breaks can also be rostered in and managed under our system.

Tanda is also built to be compliant with new outer limits hospitality rules that have recently come into effect. Tanda users can easily check if they’re compliant with these restrictions on staff on an annual salary in the app.

For David, this gives him peace of mind.