Do they prefer to work morning hours, evening hours, full time, or part time? Instead of reinventing the wheel every week, you can simply copy the previous week’s schedule.
Unhappy staff are less engaged, which can lead to more no-shows, poor productivity, and high churn (meaning less experienced staff, more money spent on hiring, and more time spent on training). Poor scheduling can also lead to chronically unhappy staff who subsequently have to manage inconsistencies with their work schedule. A lack of staff could hugely affect your success; a 2022 Zendesk report found that around 61% of customers would switch to a new brand after just one bad customer service experience. When it’s time to sit down and schedule for the next week, month, or quarter, the formatting, shift slots, and other relevant information are already there. Mixing some of your best employees with some of your newer employees is a great way to create stability across all shifts.
Technology isn’t just about making our lives easier; it’s about providing us with invaluable insights. When used effectively, scheduling software can offer a wealth of data on your workforce. Data insights such as who performs best, which shifts are most productive, and where scheduling bottlenecks occur are all available instantly, enabling you to make adjustments where needed. Imagine being able to access and update your schedules from anywhere, at any time. Just whip out your phone, make a few swipes, and your schedule is updated instantly.
Look at your staff
Read more about Employee Experience here.
Shift swapping
By freeing up more time for your employees, it gives them chance to prioritize tasks that need their attention moreso. This will only benefit the business more when your employees are more productive in their working day. It also helps reduce the chances of certain staff members trying to take advantage of those who have to pick up the slack. Requests for holidays can also be managed more fairly, particularly in the case of those who are wanting to take time off at the same time.
Final thought: Everyone wins with transparent scheduling
You may want to put some ground rules in place — for instance, requiring at least 24 hours’ notice for non-emergencies. Irrespective of whether your hourly staff is in retail, restaurant, nursing, or any other industry, effective communication is essential to the success of your business. When scheduling retail employees, consider that 31% of all workers are aged 24 and under and 29% of retail jobs are part-time. Therefore, it’s highly likely that some of your retail hourly employees will be students and will need time to organize work around their studies.
Scheduling conflicts often arise when employees have overlapping shifts or when their preferences clash with the operational needs of different locations. These scheduling problems not only lead to frustration among employees but also compromise productivity and customer experience. Because of that, you should find the right balance between preferences and business demands when doing employee scheduling for multiple locations. When we talk about scheduling conflicts, we don’t just mean things like double bookings and preventing them. You should also think about how to strike the perfect balance between employee availability and their preferences.
Web-based scheduling services provide the manager with superior means of analyzing employees’ attendance. Rather than constantly checking up on them, a manager can export an attendance report and use tangible data for further planning. With regular reports, a business manager can track employee activities at any given moment and determine the distribution of the workload through the day, changing the approach to shift planning. You may be able to add notes to each technician’s profile that makes it quick and easy to see whether or not they’re suitable for a particular job. In addition, scheduling software can pull data from each employee’s calendar so you can easily see if the technicians you have in mind are available for shifts.
Create and maintain a list of these employees and their availability so you can offer them extra shifts when work is available. This also makes it easy to know who to call if your planned schedule has to change suddenly because of illness or emergencies. Check historical sales data in your POS system to make sure you’re adequately staffed during your busiest and quietest times. Use this information to think about whether you’ll need more staff for weekends, late evenings, or the holiday period. Below are nine employee scheduling techniques to help you schedule employees fairly and fill your business needs. Consider replacing your system with an efficient, proven scheduling software solution.
The software helps to avoid scheduling conflicts by ensuring everyone gets real-time updates. Another great feature is the ability to assign shifts to specific locations. This can come in handy if a company operates multiple locations or manages a distributed workforce. Some employee scheduling platforms integrate with mapping software so employees can see where they’re working each day and get directions. One thing that can drain a company’s budget quickly is overtime pay.
The software not only lightens the load of the person scheduling the work, it uses various components in maximizing the use of available time. When you are able to maximize the use of available time you in effect streamline the operation of that business. All scheduling through this kind of software is done electronically and provides you will the means to adjust anything manually to best fit your needs and the needs of your employees. All you have to do is tailor a scheduling process to suit your business needs.
