Creating employee schedules and ensuring that your workforce sticks to them is imperative to the growth and success of a business. The last thing any business owner or manager wants is to be understaffed, making scheduling an incredibly vital business function that should not be neglected or put on the back burner.
In today’s article, we take the hassle out of scheduling and offer you 6 tips for simplifying your scheduling. Grab a cup of coffee and read on to find out more!
Harness The Power of Technology.
One of the greatest things you could do for your business and your scheduling process is to harness the power of technology. Scheduling software has come a long way in recent years, with thousands of businesses around the globe relying on it to simplify their scheduling processes. Not only can you manage your clients and bookings, but some software even offers features like team management that can help you manage your staff scheduling needs. Scheduling software is a fantastic way to streamline the often slightly frustrating process of manual scheduling and offers both managers and staff instant access to their schedules via smartphone, tablets or laptops.
2. Prepare Schedules Months in Advance.
One of the key factors to successful scheduling is ensuring that schedules are prepared months in advance. Your software will be able to generate this for you, allowing managers to post schedules up to weeks in advance. Advanced scheduling is recommended especially during the holiday season when various employees may be looking to take time off. By giving fair notice of schedules, employees are given the choice to make changes in their scheduling sooner rather than later, thus greatly reducing the chances of absenteeism or understaffing.
3. Track Overtime.
Tracking overtime is an essential component of efficient scheduling. If a manager or business owner doesn’t pay attention to overtime hours, they may find themselves in a pickle, having to pay excess overtime fees that can prove to be detrimental to the financial health of a business. Using your scheduling software to track overtime and limit the number of overtime hours each employee can clock in is a fantastic way to ensure that you’re not overpaying and that employees are not overworking.
4. Analyse Historical Data.
The best way to ensure that your scheduling is on point is to refer to historical data. By analysing past data, you are able to look for trends during certain periods of the year. Do you notice that, in certain months, there is an increase in demand for shifts? Perhaps other months tend to be a little less demanding. By understanding and studying this data, you will be able to efficiently handle your scheduling processes much more.
5. Simplify Shift Swapping.
One of the beauties of utilising scheduling software is that it makes shift swapping a piece of cake. Manual change of shifts and schedules often take up a fair amount of time and can add a significant amount of overhead expenses for the business. By allowing employees to make their shift swaps via your scheduling software, you can be sure that alerts will be sent out to all your staff members instantly. Instead of having to go through various chains of communication, shift swaps can be handled remotely in a matter of minutes.
6. Smart Shift Distribution.
Lastly, part of simplifying the scheduling process involves fair shift distribution. As a manager or business owner, it is important that you remain objective. Employees may get disgruntled if they find that certain workers are getting better shifts than others. In order to combat any internal drama or tension, it is important that you practice smart shift distribution. Doing so will ensure that different skills and experience are put to the test for all workers and that no one gets bored or too cosy in one specific routine.
Simplifying the scheduling process is a relatively easy task that allows managers and staff to work more efficiently and effectively. We hope that this article has given you some insight into the ways in which you can streamline the scheduling process.
