Employee scheduling, also known as staff scheduling, is a difficulty that every business encounters and strives to address in various ways. Although scheduling the work hours of a large group of employees may sound complicated, it may be a solid strategy to increase productivity and save money if you find the right tools and methodologies.
Any wise company finds a delicate balance between keeping its employees happy and productive while keeping an eye on the bottom line. This is considerably easier to do with the right method and instruments. Employee scheduling software is one of the finest things your business can invest in. An employee scheduling software can assist with staff scheduling and various other duties to ensure you are optimizing output while increasing employee morale. Let’s understand what employee scheduling software is!
What is employee scheduling software?
Scheduling software is a computer programme or application that is either cloud-based or locally installed and automates various employee scheduling tasks such as work schedule management, employee communication, and time tracking.
Employee scheduling software is a computerized way of managing staff in a firm. It’s a powerful tool that lowers your dependency on manual scheduling using simple Excel templates. With everything available at the touch of a button, what features make employee scheduling software an ideal way to save money?
Celayix Employee Software
The Celayix platform is built around employee scheduling. We have implemented features into our platform that will improve user experience and make scheduling more manageable and successful. Let’s have a look at them.
Rules-Based Engine
The genius of the Celayix rules-based engine is the level of control it gives the scheduler. It is extremely powerful and simple to use. You can customize the software to meet any number of business requirements. Consider it a specialized search filter for scheduling your people. The scheduler in Celayix creates the rules. They also decide when the regulations should be followed, relaxed, or ignored. Some of the rules that schedulers might include:
- Overtime Regulations
- Qualification Guidelines
- Rules of Availability
- Union Regulations
- Legal Prerequisites
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial intelligence (AI) is more than a marketing term at Celayix. The schedule automation approach developed by Celayix is a long-term investment. Celayix uses cutting-edge Machine Learning technology to examine historical employee schedule performance and decide which employees are better suited for a new shift plan.
Celayix’s goal is to make staff scheduling as simple as possible. This goal drives every feature we add to our software, including AI. AI provides several scheduling benefits other than making scheduling easier:
- Data Administration
- Enhance the Schedule’s Quality
- Reduce Scheduling Time Spent
- Ensure that scheduling is fair and impartial.
Find a Replacement
The Find Replacement tool offers you a searchable list of available, qualified employees. Celayix powers this functionality using our Rules-Based engine and our Artificial Intelligence as an extra benefit. A scheduler can press the locate replacement button and be presented with a list of available staff who fulfil all business criteria, have not been booked previously, and meet restrictions such as no overtime. This gives businesses a list of the best-fitting and most cost-effective staff, reducing the search for a replacement to minutes.
Instead of going through a time-consuming manual procedure, Celayix allows Employee A to drop the shift quickly, and Celayix provides the supervisor with a wholly compliant and best-fit substitute in seconds – one that is in the best interests of the business. That is when the actual advantages of Celayix Find Replacement are discovered. It not only saves you from the anguish of seeking the employee, but it also finds the best possible replacement. Last-minute scheduling adjustments are easier to manage due to the speed with which Find Replacement functions.
Mobile App
The Celayix Mobile App is designed to assist employees in managing their schedules, communicating with their managers, and serving as a mobile time clock. Employees can monitor their upcoming and available shifts for self-scheduling or bidding. They will be notified of forthcoming shifts in order for them to be on time. They may set their availability to get greater control over their schedules and use the app to request time off.
Other advantages of using a mobile app include the following:
- Robust features for real-time call rerouting
- Switching between desktop and mobile is seamless.
- You have a versatile work toolset at your disposal.
Autofill feature
The autofill tool leverages algorithms that assess requirements to fill available shifts with acceptable staff members. Each company establishes its standards, which may include any number of factors. Examples include qualifications, experience, overtime, seniority, availability, and other variables. Schedulers have total control over which staff autofill recommendations are provided, thanks to these guidelines. Autofill guarantees to meet and complete all business requirements and schedules within seconds.
Autofill recommendations are entirely within the control of schedulers. Once validated, they may send the new shifts to workers for approval. It merely takes a few minutes to create shifts, auto-fill them, and distribute them to employees. The autofill function has the following advantages:
- Eliminate unnecessary overtime
- Faster Optimized Scheduling
- Less risk of understaffing or double booking
- Eliminate Scheduling conflicts
- Fully Customizable
- Comply with labour laws and union rules
Self-Scheduling
Self-scheduling is a tool which enables employees to determine their shifts. The scheduler generates open shifts, and employees may then self-select into shifts for which they are qualified and available. Self-scheduling relieves schedulers of their duties and gives employees significantly more freedom while simultaneously providing flexibility for everyone involved. It also ensures shifts are filled by qualified individuals who fulfil company criteria.
Self-scheduling accomplishes two things:
- It allows you to construct schedules much more quickly.
- Allow employees more latitude to strike a healthy work-life balance.
This tool can offer schedulers various advantages:
- Employee morale and retention have improved.
- Productivity has increased.
- Reducing Absenteeism.
- Schedule your time more efficiently.
Shift Bidding
Shift bidding is when one or more workers express their intention to work an open shift. It is an automated scheduling solution that allows the scheduler to keep total control while giving employees more autonomy over their schedule.
Employers may find it challenging to offer employees more autonomy over their schedules. However, we have direct knowledge of the benefits that come with it. These benefits typically outweigh the benefits of keeping total schedule control. The benefits of shift bidding and self-scheduling are nearly identical.
All these other features provide an organization with monetary benefits over time. If you still need convincing, our next section looks particularly at how employee scheduling software can save you loads of money.
How employee scheduling software can save money for your organization
Our earlier blogs have significantly discussed the impacts of overtime and employee morale and how they impact an organization. Scheduling is a challenging skill, and as your company grows, the scheduling role becomes larger and costlier. However, with employee scheduling software, you can save money differently.
Save money by Saving time.
A poor calendar or schedule spreadsheet is akin to a Sudoku puzzle created by Satan. The time it takes for an employer to create a schedule takes away time from other productive tasks. Plus, scheduling is a task that is constantly changing as a result of changing availability and skills.
Employee scheduling software takes care of these issues. It also prevents your calendar from becoming a mad scientist’s whiteboard full of mathematics. Instead of having to redo the schedule on the whiteboard every time anything changes, you’ll have a real-time timetable on your computer that adapts to your needs.
Scheduling software eliminates the hard labour and frees your personnel for more critical tasks. If you don’t have a scheduling system, your office staff will spend much time informing technicians where they need to be and calculating their hours on a spreadsheet.
Employee scheduling software streamlines the process. With a scheduling feature, your office employees can spend their time and energy on things like marketing, client feedback and retention, and developing partnerships that create more money. Thus, you save money by saving time, but you also make money by using that time on other activities. The actual benefit of scheduling software is time-saving, freeing up your office crew to focus on building the business rather than the scheduling function.
Save money by Optimizing Your Resources.
Scheduling software not only frees up time but also assists you in making better use of it. You have a limited number of specialists, but their schedules do not bind you.
Scheduling software makes it simple for dispatchers to identify congested schedules or plans with holes. Schedulers can then re-assign current work orders or allocate new work orders to the appropriate person to ensure that assignments are well-balanced throughout the team.
This allows you to get more out of your personnel instead of overstressing a few. Energy Datametrics, situated in California, discovered that scheduling software enhanced company productivity by 15%.
Save Money by Preventing Unnecessary Overtime
Employee scheduling software also helps you save money on overtime. The complete picture of shift assignments provided by scheduling software can tell you which personnel should be assigned overtime and which already have too many overtime hours.
Overtime and scheduling rules can also be dealt with using scheduling software. It’s one thing to be astonished by a five-dollar increase in compensation for an employee. It’s quite another to receive a state or federal fine.
Employee scheduling software can also strengthen management-employee relationships. According to a study by the City of Seattle, employees were prepared to “accept a 20% salary reduction in exchange for one week’s early notice of their schedule.” Employees and supervisors alike like having a more consistent handle on their schedules.
If you want to know more, click here to read about our blog on the costs associated with overtime. As a company that has been providing employee scheduling software for decades, we have testimonials from various industries showing how Celayix was able to help them save money by reducing their costs.
