Technology has made our lives a whole lot easier. Just about every aspect of our life has benefitted from it. One of the ways through which it is helping us out is through employee scheduling software. When it comes to workforce management, it can be difficult to manage staff scheduling. It is crucial to build an effective process that helps provide the right information of the business as well as the workforce. To aid with staff scheduling, employee scheduling software has been developed. It is the future of employee management. The software combines the internal KPIs and Big Data to provide the ultimate solution to employers. Employees’ skills and availability are factored in to help create the perfect roster in real-time. It does not get better than this.
Gone are the days when manual scheduling using spreadsheet software was done. It did not leverage data and made it difficult for HR professionals to create a schedule for employees. It resulted in guesses having to be made about who should work when regardless of the familiarity of staff needs, general business trends, and the level of experience of staff. As more and more companies opt for employee schedule software, it just a matter of time until it becomes the norm. The introduction of sophisticated data analytics led to the scheduling process becoming streamlined. Now, companies can simply leverage business data to quickly make informed staffing decisions to put up a schedule.
Without the use of employee scheduling software, it can take around eight hours each week for HR personnel and managers to create a schedule for the coming week. It could take even longer when there is a large workforce or complex shift patterns. Moreover, the quality of work gets affected when scheduling conflicts start to occur. It can take more time to solve such issues. This is why the future seems to be pointing in the direction of scheduling software implementation as it helps prevent such dilemmas from occurring in the first place and offers plenty of benefits. Even though there are different types of scheduling software available and each offer their own benefits, you can easily select software to meets your requirements.
Should You Switch to Employee Scheduling Software?
Generally, companies that operate on a simple 9 to 5 schedule and which are closed during the weekend might not be able to see the benefit of adopting employee scheduling software. But, companies that operate over a much longer period containing various departments and have different schedules to work with will find the software to be just what they need. It would help make schedule a lot easier for them. Industries like hospitality, food service, medical, and retail where shifts vary widely will find greater benefit of using scheduling software. If you are having trouble deciding whether you should also adopt employee scheduling software, the following benefits of employee scheduling software will help you change your mind.
- Collaborative Schedule
One of the main benefits of using employee scheduling software is that it promotes collaborative scheduling. Thus, it allows employees to manage their shifts and set their own availability. This helps ensure that all the shifts are covered at all times and employee requests as well as input are welcomed by HR professionals and managers. Managers get to reallocate up to 80% of their time through sharing of scheduling responsibilities to do more productive tasks.
- Mitigates Availability Conflicts
If there is one thing that HR professionals have difficulty dealing with, it is availability conflicts. By allowing employees to have control over scheduling their shifts and availability, it enables them to collaborate on scheduling which in turn helps minimize the risk of scheduling conflicts. Moreover, employee satisfaction would increase as errors regarding time off requests would be minimized. Employees would finally be able to schedule work based on their needs.
- Higher Productivity Levels
Another reason why employer scheduling software is the future is because it helps boost productivity levels. Employers value productivity the most. It is an advantage offered by scheduling software that had been ignored for quite some time now. The key to achieving greater productivity is employee satisfaction and since employee satisfaction will increase due to control over scheduling shifts, it is finally possible to boost productivity levels. By allowing the staff to schedule and work on a day that they prefer, productivity gains are inevitable.
- Instantly Alerts You about Uncovered Shifts
The main fear that HR professionals tend to have is uncovered shifts. When you use a spreadsheet or a pen and paper, it is easy to make mistakes when creating a schedule. However, by switching to employee scheduling software, you will be instantly alerted about uncovered shifts. The software will even help reveal shifts that require more coverage. Thus, potential disasters would be diverted and the risk of the company being short-staffed would be minimized.
- Lets You Strategically Gear Scheduling
Since scheduling would be made easy with the use of employee scheduling software, it would be possible for you to focus on strategically scheduling employees in such a way to achieve cross-training through different departments. This would allow employees to gain new skills and grow within the organization. The software can even be used to identify times when employees can be assigned certain training tasks. Similarly, it would be possible to know when to take employees aside to teach them the latest skills. Therefore, the company would also get to benefit from an increase in the value of labour hours and would be able to invest in staff without having to hit the bank.
- Saves Valuable Labour Hours
As mentioned above, when you use scheduling software, the company would benefit from valuable labour hours being saved. The program can even carry over the schedules from previous weeks to alter and create a schedule for the coming week with minimal effort. With just a few clicks, employee names can be entered into a shift and shifts would be easily dragged from one week to the next. This would make it very easy to schedule which would result in a lot of time being saved. Besides, as the schedule would be saved on the cloud, there would be no risk of the schedule getting lost or deleted.
- Offers Labour-Management Tools
When it comes to managing labour, the more tools you have the better. Labour is one of the biggest expenses for companies. Hence, managing labour in the most efficient way possible is always the goal. By using the scheduling software, it is possible to synchronize scheduling to help manage labour.
When you use labour-management tools to manage labour, it would allow you to optimize scheduling even to a minute to minute basis. Therefore, the company would be able to benefit from full utilization of employees. It means that no dollar would go to waste.
- Offers Sophisticated Staffing Information
There are certain scheduling software programs that you can use to collaborate with other business and HR data to gather sophisticated information about all the staffing needs of the company. It would help prevent the business from having to deal with scheduling unnecessary shifts and paying overtime. Besides, you can also use the software to find out whether the business has met its required labour percentage. It would also help you achieve all the scheduling goals.
- Provides a Template
When you use employee scheduling software, you also get a scheduling template which you can use for making changes to meet the business goals. This helps save a ton of time which would have been spent pencilling in shifts. Moreover, you can make use of templates to easily utilize feedback to improve shifts in the future and avoid previously encountered scheduling issues.
- Allows Employees to Access Schedules Remotely
Most of the scheduling software programs provide mobile accessibility as they have their own app which employees can use to access schedules remotely. This means that employees will be able to view their personal schedule remotely whenever they want and from wherever they might be. Employees can use it to set up the shifts. Thus, it would be no longer possible for employees to misread the schedule or forget their shifts. This would allow employees to benefit from downtime and the business to function seamlessly.
- Instant Scheduling Communication
Employees tend to base their lives around work. Hence, work schedules play a huge role in their day to day life. By having scheduling information in advance, it would help achieve instant scheduling communication. This would help ensure that there is no miscommunication and that employees get to communicate instantly with the HR personnel to resolve any issues that they might be facing. Besides, it can be quite disruptive to communicate with each individual employee over the phone and discuss their shifts with them. The app would reduce scheduling mishaps and headaches by offering an official communication channel.
- Increases Employee Contentment
Finally, since employees would have access to scheduling information in advance, they would be able to easily work their schedule around it. This would boost employee contentment. There are many ways through which employee scheduling software increases employee contentment.
Depending on the features available, it is possible for employees to offer feedback regarding scheduling preferences and other information. For instance, the company would be able to appoint those employees to work late shifts that already have a preference for it. This would also help boost employee contentment. Similarly, employees that want to work extra shifts will also be able to let the company know if they want more work. Thus, employees would live a much happier life.
Where to Find Employee Scheduling Software?
One of the companies that have introduced its own employee scheduling software is Snap Schedule. Its software assists with scheduling, employee self-service, and just about everything that is required in work scheduling. The innovative features offered by the company help you promote a better work-life balance, boost productivity, and save time.
The ultra modern user interface of Snap Schedule will allow managers to quickly manage their workforce from just about anywhere and on any device. Every aspect of workforce management is covered by Snap Schedule. Whether you are running a company at physical premises or remotely, you can use the scheduling software to easily communicate with employees and ensure that no shift is unfilled. Some of the features available on the software are mentioned below.
- Auto-scheduler
- Multi-view schedule maker
- Task scheduling
- Shift assignments
- Schedule conflict warnings
- Shift pattern optimization
- Split on-calls, time off, and shifts
- Time and attendance tracking
- Track best-fit employees and their substitutes.
- Employee communication
By using the employee scheduling software offered by Snap Schedule, you to provide employees with access to scheduling and ensure self-service. Thus, employees will be able to access the schedule from anywhere, shift their schedule, update contact information, provide information about availability, and even request some time off. Besides, employees will be able to look up schedules of co-workers and view time card information as well as assigned tasks.
In addition to the above, the automated shift callout feature of the software program will help improve productivity, ensure compliance, offer reliable ways to communicate, and let employees know when a shift is available.
Labour Cost Controls
There are plenty of labour cost controls that are also provided by the scheduling software such as labour cost calculations, time sheet data for payroll, incentive pay, shift data, and on-call pay. You can also use the program to gain access to valuable employee data to form teams, learn about different positions, and skill level of each employee.
A great thing about the software is that it can work with unlimited number of employees. Stay up-to-date regarding the availability of employees at all times with the software. Moreover, you can also use Snap Schedule software to generate important reports. The software offers extensive reporting capabilities which you can take advantage of to ensure employees optimization.