When scheduling your workforce, overlapping hours and different shifts make it seem like a mind-boggling puzzle. This is especially true if your business operates in the service or retail industry, where hourly shifts are all over the place and can comprise part-time and full-time workers alike.
Even though it may seem like a complex challenge, the intricacies of scheduling your employees are not impossible to manage. When you keep a few tips in mind, you can make your way through day-to-day scheduling with ease.
Here are 4 tips to get the most out of your scheduling activities to help you obtain optimal efficiency from your planning.
Table of Contents
1. Use a Scheduling Software
One of the easiest ways to prevent errors and ensure productivity is to use an employee scheduling system. These solutions allow you to track your employees’ hours, shifts, and availability side by side. As a result, you can easily organize schedules for team members that have very different work arrangements.
Unlike spreadsheets that depend on manual references, these solutions benefit from robust tracking. For example, the system may let your filter out employees by their requested days off, shift preferences, and overall availability. Ultimately, this lets you steer clear of human errors, such as double-booking.
As a result, you are able to make sure that the necessary roles are fulfilled at all times without any worrisome conflicts. You can also print these schedules and pin them to a corkboard for easier reference. Employees will appreciate having the ability to see their schedule in the break room and can easily find out who to talk to if they need to switch shifts.
2. Ensure Active Communication
No matter your industry, some of the most significant issues in your operations can arise from a lack of communication. Apart from frustrating employees, it can also impede your business goals.
This also holds true for scheduling activities throughout your respective business. Whether your employees are unaware of shift changes or if you remain in the dark about their unavailability on a given day, it can hamper your business and its ongoing operations.
The best way to resolve this issue is by establishing active communication between you and your team. Apart from ensuring that your employees can actively talk to you and vice versa, you can also buy a dry-erase schedule board to present current schedules to everyone. Make sure to update the board whenever there are schedule changes.
3. Be Confident in Employee Availability
With the work from home model gaining steam, many businesses are offering full-time or permanent remote working opportunities to their team. If your workplace belongs to this category, scheduling these employees may seem a bit unusual.
However, if your business depends on operating during select working hours, you should treat these employees in a similar fashion to their on-premise availability.
Whether the employee in question uses an Android tablet or an iOS device, you can send them email, text, or instant messages to inform them of their schedule. To confirm availability, you can request read receipts from them. This allows you to manage all types of employees in a worry-free way.
4. Have On-call Staff Ready At All Times
From managing staff that works from home to individuals who are required to be on-site every day, scheduling requires empathy and understanding towards every employee. In addition to preventing last-minute unavailability, this also lets you understand which employees are available for on-call opportunities.
While you should ideally hire workers specifically for on-call requirements, the shortage of staff or an inability to find the right candidates can get in the way. That is where your understanding of existing employees helps you find staff for last-minute or urgent situations. This ensures that your business keeps operating without a hitch despite such unforeseen issues.
As long as you keep in line with related regulations, the additional wages from these extra hours can also help your existing workforce.
The Bottom Line
By keeping these tips in mind, you can breeze through workforce scheduling challenges and maintain optimal employee availability at all times. This helps you fulfill the critical requirements of your business and allows you to take on any challenges that come your way.
