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Are you struggling to write effective employee schedules? If so, you're not alone. Many employers find it difficult to create schedules that meet the needs of both their business and their employees.
Making a perfect work schedule is no child's play. Without a schedule, there would be no proper allocation of jobs to the employees, the managers would not be able to keep track of who is doing what, tasks would not get completed in time, labor costs cannot be controlled, and human resources would either be left fallow and wasted or overworked and burned out.
None of these outcomes are favorable for an organization and its business prospects. What's more, merely having an employee schedule is not enough. It has to be well-made to strike a reasonable balance between the requirements of both the employees and the organization. Better the employee schedule, better the chance for the business to succeed.
Imagine this- A restaurant manager spends hours trying to write employee schedules for the coming week. He writes. Cancels. Writes again. However, the ideal schedule stays elusive. He either fails to accommodate the weekly time-off of certain employees or gives certain others too many breaks. All this chopping and changing of the schedule by hand makes the manager weary. Then finally, after a long struggle, when he is able to get a modicum of control over the schedule, some new, debilitating problems creep up.
Two of the employees call to say that they would have urgent family work to attend to in the middle of the week, and would not be able to report to the office for a day. They are, therefore, to be replaced on those days with other employees, who would then need to be provided compensatory leaves sometime later.
Adding to the manager's woes, the day that the two employees had requested time off, is also when the final of a big sports event is scheduled. The event would be screened at the restaurant and demand is expected to go up. The manager was looking to approach the day with a full complement of employees, and here are two employees asking for a leave. Any manager having to face such issues would be at his wits' end. However, there are easier ways to build employee schedules that would make all stakeholders happy.
A schedule specifies which days of the week employees are supposed to work and also the number of hours they must work each day. The schedule also specifies in no uncertain terms the duties that the employees must complete in the allotted time. This ensures that everyone knows when the others are working or going on leave, and so, everyone can plan their programs ahead of time. Therefore, a team leader who knows beforehand that some of his key team members would not be available for the next couple of days may want to get a few highly sensitive tasks completed before those employees go on leave. Prioritizing the most time-sensitive jobs and completing them quickly would make the organization efficient and ensure that deadlines are always met.
A clear idea of the amount and nature of the work to be done would also allow employees to manage their work-life balance better. For example, if an employee knows at the start of the week that he would have a day off on Thursday, he can happily plan a long drive with his wife, who, as a matter of coincidence, had applied for a leave from her work on Thursday as well. An employee who can balance his work and life is a satisfied employee. He would report to the office fresh every morning, can manage his stress levels, and would be committed to his organization.
A schedule also serves as a ready-reckoner for the managers, who can make alternate arrangements when workers take leave or don't show up as a result of a sudden illness or an emergency in the family. A skillful manager would be able to juggle workers around shifts to make sure that all of them have their time off and yet the show goes on.
Employee scheduling done well helps to reduce labor costs. Labor costs make up most of the expenses of a business. In the case of a restaurant, labor costs are usually up to 35% of the revenue.
However, a restaurant may not require as many employees on quieter business days or let's say between lunchtime and dinnertime. During such periods of slow traffic, the restaurant can easily operate with a smaller crew, and make do by cross-training its staff. Moreover, when business is slow, the restaurant may also assign staff to split shifts or hire part-time employees.
During peak hours, on the other hand, employees who were benched during sluggish traffic periods must be brought back. The restaurant may make brisk business during lunch and dinner, Friday nights, at festivals, or while hosting lavish private parties. Employees, therefore, have to be scheduled keeping these requirements in mind.
Restaurant turnover rates are already high, and this has several negative consequences for a restaurant, including lost time and money.
Accommodating staff preferences as much as possible into weekly schedules would go a long way toward increasing employee satisfaction and lowering turnover rates. For example, an employee may feel at home working on busier weekends or may prefer a morning shift because he has to attend classes in the evening.
Furthermore, restaurant owners may ensure that the employees are able to earn a reasonable amount in tips by scheduling them on six-to eight-hour shifts. This scope for extra income would allow the employees to take care of their commuting costs and is another way in which employee satisfaction can be increased.
However, a manager has to guard against changing employee shifts frequently. Too many shift rotations would not allow employees to settle into a rhythm and would harm them physically and psychologically. Unpredictable shifts would also mean that the employees would not be able to plan their activities and commitments outside the office.
When working with people who have diverse demands and compulsions, schedule changes may need to happen even at the eleventh hour, and employees may call to swap their shifts with colleagues just before the schedule is finalized.
A good manager tries to incorporate employee time-off requests as much as possible, allowing the employees some elbow room albeit within the precincts of the rules and regulations of the organization. Doing this helps to raise employee productivity.
Managers writing schedules manually or even with the help of basic spreadsheet software are bound to get cold feet when last-minute employee requests start to flow in. The answer to this rests with smart employee scheduling software solutions that allow real-time staff management and help in providing schedules well in advance.
The demerits of manual schedule-making had already been touched upon. The problem with rudimentary spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets is that presentations only include data that the user picks while leaving out other relevant information. Consequently, a complete picture of business operation cannot be attained. This makes decision-making difficult.
Moreover, even when protected by passwords, spreadsheets are vulnerable to information mishandling, data corruption, and hacking.
Creating employee schedules on a spreadsheet also requires a lot of manual effort, and takes up a lot of the manager's time.
Dedicated software and mobile apps are, therefore, a panacea for most of the scheduling woes that managers might face. Scheduling software employs cutting-edge technology for allotting shifts and duties to the employees. This is a significantly faster process than manual approaches. It also eliminates unintended errors such as scheduling an employee for two shifts on a single day. When a manager is using primitive manual methods and has to prepare schedules for a large number of employees, mistakes are common.
In spite of the decision about who should work which shift being still made manually, smart software ensures that the actual shift-making is largely automated, and it is possible for managers to auto-generate shifts if they want to place a given number of workers on specific shifts for a certain length of time. An employee scheduling app's auto-scheduling feature recalls previous schedules and accounts for staff overtime and time-off requests, making it extremely easy for managers to manage worker time off. Auto-scheduling is, therefore, a great boon for managers, who can save a lot of effort and time, and bid worries goodbye.
Thanks to staff scheduling software it is possible to streamline all messages and keep everyone in the organization, wherever they may be, abreast of all relevant information. Managers can rely on a single, consolidated source of information, which minimizes their workload and allows them to focus on key business operations.
Scheduling solutions allow managers the bandwidth to respond confidently and quickly to shift swap and time-off requests from the employees even ifthey arrive very late in the day. The software would immediately identify employees who may fill in for the individuals needing time off, and it would assist managers and staff in making alternate arrangements.
Scheduling apps ensure that managers don't have to spend time continuously revising and re-revising schedules. Also, the entire shift-making exercise is completely paperless and hence, hassle-free.
Staff scheduling apps, which can be accessed from Apple Play, Google Play, or the website of the app provider, let managers prepare and edit schedules on the go from any place and at any time of the day. Employees can check their shift timings as soon as the schedules are released, regardless of where they are or what they are doing. Modern technology, therefore, puts schedules at the fingertips of both the employers and the employees, who just need to glance at their smartphones or tablets to view the schedules.
Managers need not prepare schedules afresh every time, but save time by simply arranging shifts into staff slots. When shifts are updated, and requests are attended to, the employees are notified through push notifications.
A business can easily predict how many workers it would need in the future by integrating staff scheduling software with point of sale systems, and sales/demand forecasting solutions. This arrangement ensures that the business is neither understaffed to manage high-traffic events or periods, nor too overstaffed for periods of lull or slow traffic days.
Employee scheduling software, furthermore, helps in improving communication within the team with schedules being shared with the employees as soon as they are made, push notifications alerting the employees instantly when the managers tweak the schedules, and employees being notified when their requests are responded to.
The fact that the employees can lodge time-off or shift swap requests just by the click of a few buttons on their mobiles helps in making the communication between the employees and employers transparent, and it also gives the employees a sense of empowerment. Absenteeism reduces too. The employees are infused with job satisfaction, which is something that money can't buy. The employers are happy too as the management of human resources is made significantly smooth.
Moreover, automated staff scheduling ensures that organizations comply with local labor laws. They also let businesses avoid human errors, like allotting employees more working hours than necessary, which could lead to employee fatigue and even put their lives in danger.
Last but not least, several employee scheduling platforms offer the facility of self-service for the employees. Using this feature, the employees are able to manage their shifts themselves and can examine their schedules, swap shifts with coworkers, and also claim a shift that is unoccupied. This is a very useful feature, which gives the employees a sense of control over their work life. Managers stand to gain as well because they can now outsource simple and mundane tasks. Along with the auto-generation of shifts, the self-service feature allows managers to breathe easily.
The feature-rich Zip Schedules, which is available on the Hubworks app store, and also on Google Play and Apple Play, is perhaps the best employee scheduling software in the market.
Zip Schedules provides a self-implemented system. Features such as simplified onboarding, free mobile app, and a straightforward interface make the software easy to operate. Favorited schedules may also be stored as templates so that new schedules can be easily and quickly created. You can even alter a prior week's itinerary to generate a new one to adjust to changes. Shifts can be dropped into employee slots which does away with the need to prepare schedules from scratch every time. This saves a lot of time and effort for the managers.
Zip Schedules helps in making communication within the team and also between the managers and the employees transparent and smooth. With the help of Zip Schedules' internal messaging system, managers are able to instantly inform the employees about news and events related to the organization.
Schedules are sent to the employees the moment they are published, and managers can take swift action based on the employees' requests for leave, or their acceptance of shifts offered by their colleagues. Managers can have a complete idea of the availability of employees, their time-off and shift swap requests, and when a shift is opened up with the help of the Zip Schedules software.
All these pieces of critical information are readily available and can be viewed by the employees and employers just by glancing at their phones. The Zip Schedules app lets employees, who need time-off, quickly identify co-workers to replace them. A manager operating a Zip Schedules mobile app is able to accept or decline employee requests anytime, anywhere, in a matter of seconds, just by the click of a button. This is significant progress when you consider that dealing with employee requests in the earlier times was a long-drawn-out process.
Zip Schedules, therefore, makes the regular process of preparation and editing of schedules extremely easy. However, not just that, it makes schedule-writing even smarter. It has a built-in forecasting enginethat allows you to forecast your sales and transactions, and schedule your staff accordingly to prevent understaffing or overstaffing. Daily forecasts are generated on the basis of historical sales data.
Zip Schedules is priced at $19 per month per location for organizations with 1 to 20 employees and $39 per month per location for organizations with 21 to 50 employees. There is also a custom edition for businesses that have more than 50 employees. All three tiers provide a free mobile app and free support. There are some employee scheduling solutions with robust free plans available in the market too. These include the likes of HomeBase, 7Shifts, SocialSchedules, FindMyShift, and Sling. These are particularly useful for small businesses and startups that don't want to spend too much on technology and want only those features that they can't do without.
A small firm can take advantage of various free plans that offer basic staff scheduling solutions. If an organization needs more features, it would need to migrate to a higher subscription level.
Some services charge a fee per employee. Others charge a per-location fee. Services that are employee-based are offered at a per-employee cost of $1.50 to $4.50. The price of per-location subscription options ranges from $14 to $199.
Applicant-tracking services may accompany employee scheduling solutions. Extra services could cost you $50 every month. Additional human resource services may be included in the package or may be purchased separately.
Once, an effective employee schedule is made, it has to be ensured that the schedule is implemented well and the employees follow it diligently. This involves effective time and task management.
It is possible to integrate employee scheduling solutions with staff time-tracking software to make sure that the employees are adequately productive. Time-tracking solutions help in avoiding unnecessary overtime and make payroll management frictionless. Data on overtime hours, absenteeism, and patterns of attendance allow employers to make stronger decisions.
What is, therefore, effective time management? It entails planning and controlling the time devoted to specific tasks. The emphasis here is on smart work instead of just hard work. Better time management allows employees to be more efficient and achieve a better balance between their work and family lives. A sophisticated tool like the Zip Clock time-tracking software, which is also available on the Hubworks platform, makes time management easier to achieve, and lets team leaders manage staff schedules better.
Accordingly, when an employee fails to show up for work, Zip Clock's shift management screen shows all the information needed to immediately find a suitable replacement. When an employee is approaching a daily overtime violation or a break, Zip Clock allows you to propose breaks or clock-outs so that labor law violations can be avoided. With a single glance at the phone, managers can see and monitor real-time staff time punches. Managers are also alerted when an employee misses a shift. Furthermore, the employee performance report provided by Zip Clock allows managers to track the performance of the employees over a specified period in terms of labor law and schedule infractions.
The employees need to manage their allotted tasks well too so that the purpose of making schedules is fulfilled. The Zip Checklist software, which is another sophisticated technology solution available on the Hubworks app store, allows task lists to be prepared for managers, supervisors, and employees alike. The software ensures that tasks are allocated evenly. Managers can also easily distribute checklist tasks among the employees.
An organization, which is able to prepare great employee schedules consistently every week, and can supplement that with time-tracking and task management software, ensures that the employees are happy, and the managers are relaxed and confident. This translates into quality customer service, and healthy revenues, and that is what counts in the end.
