The employee schedule is a critical link between a company and its hourly workers. Intelligent scheduling ensures workers know when to work and prevents shift gaps or duplications.
Unfortunately, without effective systems, the staff scheduling process takes an inordinate amount of time to set up the calendar, manage staff availability, and handle shift exchanges. The results are errors, low morale, and higher costs.
Here are some best practices and employee scheduling tactics to speed up and optimize employee scheduling processes.
Five Key Steps in the Staff Scheduling Process
1) Determine your resource needs
Identify and comprehend the labour resources required to accomplish your operational objectives. This means you’ll need to plan the services required by location and role to determine the number of personnel needed for each shift duration.
2) Understand employee availability
Before scheduling, ensure you are clear about staff availability for at least the next two weeks.
There are two kinds of availability requests to consider. General availability, or default availability, consists of days or times when a person is usually unavailable to work. Overrides, on the other hand, are intended to handle time-off requests. They can also be used to override any default availability settings.
Dealing with availability at the start will allow you to make faster judgments as you create your timetable.
3) Know which employees are best for which roles
Match the correct team member to the job at hand.
Consider each employee’s talents, training, certifications, and job knowledge. Ensure that their abilities are appropriate for the duties they are performing. The better the job matches, the better the employee will perform, improving productivity and morale.
Understand the requirements of each assignment, including labor laws, regulations, hours worked and other compliance factors. Also consider employee costs, especially overtime.
An efficient timetable that fits the demands of both the company and the staff, placing the best available person at the lowest cost.
4) Schedule (at least) two weeks out
Scheduling can be a time-consuming activity. One recommendation is to establish schedules in a single session, on a regular, ongoing basis.
Set aside time every two weeks to focus on schedules, arranging them at least two weeks in advance. This allows you to consider all the variables in a focused approach. It also helps provide the team with consistent advance notice and schedule clarity.
While every timetable is susceptible to change before posting it, getting ahead of potential issues provides more time to find solutions.
5) Enforce time off request policies
Most employers require time-off requests to be filed at least 2 weeks in advance. This is useful for gathering availability in the first stage. For example, companies can pin timestamp availability requests on the bulletin board to ensure accountability for all employee time-off requests.
You can also handle time-off requests on paper, which are authorized or denied by a manager. These time-off request forms are simple to prepare and are usually available in the break room or your organization’s time clock.
Employee Scheduling Systems Optimize Performance
Organizations with complex scheduling requirements can use sophisticated tools to accelerate and optimize the process.
Examine historical data and use forecasting
For recurring customers, review your prior scheduling plan, identify any issues, and work to resolve them. Analyze seasonal timetables and other trends. Compare your hectic months to your calmer months.
Advanced analytics can uncover details and patterns that are unnoticeable in the rush of day-to-day activities.
Insights into required resources, issues, and profitability can enable more accurate forecasting and better schedule management.
Deploy employee scheduling software
Scheduling templates can help small organizations organize their employees. As the number of employees and locations grows, there’s an increasing need for specialized software to handle the additional rules and complexity.
Such software will save you time and money while also reducing the risk of human error. Staff scheduling software considers skill sets, available hours, and shift preferences to generate an effective schedule. It can assist in tracking personnel availability and competencies to create custom timetables tailored to the company’s demands.
It improves operational efficiency and maximizes workforce utilization by automating shift planning and management. With automation, scheduling time can be cut from hours to minutes.
Another benefit of employee scheduling software is the effect on workers. Greater transparency into the scheduling process promotes fairness, which in turn positively impacts morale and worker retention, thereby reducing training costs and margin erosion.
Effectively communicate shift information
Clearly conveying shift information is essential so that employees understand when they are expected to begin and end their shifts and what duties they must perform.
Scheduling systems can swiftly and efficiently exchange vital shift information with staff. This helps employees to stay constantly updated on shift information, avoid misunderstandings and keep everyone on the same page.
Simplify shift swaps
In shift-based work, flexibility is essential. It ensures employee satisfaction with their tasks and reduces the likelihood of last-minute cancellations or no-shows.
Using a tool that enables simple shift switching helps ensure that employees are swapped only with others who share their qualifications and skill set, and avoids service outages.
It can help track shift patterns and preferences, making it easier to accommodate employees who need to switch shifts. Especially for last-minute call-ins, it can help mitigate issues by allowing employees to identify who is available for a switch ahead of time.
Perhaps most crucially, it can help reduce the likelihood of employee disagreements and remove management from the problem, allowing them to approve the swaps proposed by employees.
Continually evaluate the scheduling process
Monitor and review your real-time schedule to immediately see gaps, overlaps, and problems in your staff scheduling process. Evaluate employee scheduling practices on an ongoing basis to continually improve and adapt to changing circumstances.
How to Schedule Staff Effectively
Successful employee scheduling saves time and money, decreases human error, and makes the process significantly more efficient. It decreases no-shows or shift duplications and improves employee relations.
By using best practices, strong technology, empathy for workers and solid business fundamentals, employee scheduling doesn’t need to be a burden. Instead, it can be a driver of growth, attracting good employees and optimizing performance.
