Improve Employee Scheduling to Reduce Workplace Friction

Employee scheduling is one of the most demanding processes since it directly impacts employee performance and satisfaction. It also eats up a lot of your time, especially if you are still using paper schedule templates or Excel spreadsheets. 

Fortunately, you can automate and simplify employee scheduling by investing in the right cloud-based scheduling tools. Let’s see how they can help you! 

Without mobile-friendly scheduling technologies, employees need to log into the on-premise scheduling platform or keep refreshing their spreadsheets. The lack of transparency in communication often results in confusion, frustration, and chaotic last-minute change requests. 

Modern scheduling tools are cloud-based. They come with responsive mobile applications. Managers and employees can manage and monitor schedules, irrespective of their locations and devices. When someone creates a new shift or updates the existing one, everyone in the team will receive a notification. That way, they can respond to schedule changes faster. That eliminates delays, increases transparency, and ensures connectivity anytime and anywhere.

Leave management is stressful. When communicating with employees via phone calls, spreadsheets, or email, managers need to update schedules manually. Finding a quick replacement may also be daunting, as they would need to call each employee and ask for availability. Apart from eating up a lot of your time, absence management is also prone to errors.

Cloud-based time and attendance software allows you to track schedule changes and manage time and attendance in real-time. In case of unplanned shift changes, managers can see which employees are available and get the request out to them. All parties are notified about the update. That allows your employees to accept unfilled shifts on the go, preventing overstaffing and understaffing.

With cloud scheduling tools, employees do not need to use annoying spreadsheets or call their supervisors whenever they need a few days off. They can submit a leave request directly from the tool. Once a manager approves or rejects the request, they receive an instant notification.

That also facilitates managers’ jobs since they do not need to review leave requests manually. They manage approvals directly from a website or a mobile app. Both managers and employees can track leave balances and accruals in real-time. When managers know they cannot approve a leave request, they can set up blackouts to limit the number of requests during the busiest times.

With a cloud-based scheduling tool, employees can track their schedules and rosters. Staff members can connect with coworkers behind the scenes and rotate shifts on their own. 

Self-scheduling gives staff members greater autonomy. They now have the opportunity to collaborate and make decisions about their schedules. That will boost their collaboration and satisfaction, as well as simplify managers’ jobs since employees can manage and tweak shifts by themselves.  

One of the easiest ways to measure and reward employee performance is to record work hours. However, when using spreadsheets, that process is time-consuming and unreliable. There is often a discrepancy between the actual and registered working hours.

A scheduling tool simplifies the process of verifying hours. It ensures that all hours are accurately registered and logged on the system. That is particularly important to HR teams since the tool eliminates disputes with employees. It also facilitates the employee rewarding process and payroll.

Effective employee communication and collaboration are critical to your company’s success. That is where scheduling tools can help. They perform as a reliable communication platform, allowing your staff members to communicate via multiple devices in real-time. As mentioned above, when their shifts are updated, they receive real-time notifications. 

Employee scheduling tools offer project management tools that help managers keep the right headcount and qualifications on every shift, as well as manage resources, tools, and equipment. 

Project management tools allow managers to get the most out of each project. With it, teams can break work down into multiple projects, to-do lists, and tasks. Above all, managers will declutter employees’ inboxes and invite them only to the projects they are contributing to. Employees can stay on top of their deadlines and prioritize tasks in real-time.

Say an employee can work every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9 AM to 6 PM. The scheduling tool remembers their preferences, schedules the for those shift days and hours, and builds the rest of the schedule around them. That way, it saves managers’ time and helps them cater to employees’ needs faster than ever.

As outlined above, the most significant benefit of employee scheduling software is automation and time-savings. It allows managers to streamline many repetitive aspects of their jobs and make informed decisions. Most importantly, employee scheduling tools improve employees’ communication, performance, and satisfaction. 

How do you use employee scheduling tools?