Shared calendars, hard-to-track spreadsheets, and lost emails make it hard to manage employees and stay on top of your company’s schedules. That is where employee scheduling and rostering tools can help.
Here are seven benefits of sophisticated tech solutions for employee scheduling.
Simplifying Sudden Shift Changes
Leave management is daunting, especially when unexpected changes to employee schedules occur. Using spreadsheets to manage employee schedules and communicating with them via email can be time-consuming. You need to update shifts and manually inform each employee about the changes you have made.
That is where cloud scheduling software helps. It allows you to monitor employee time and attendance. When sudden shift changes occur, you can see which employees are available and send them the request automatically. Employees can swap shifts and find quick replacements on the go.
Focusing on Employee Preferences
The scheduling tool memorizes employees’ preferences. For example, if a staff member can work every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 8 AM to 5 PM, the software will schedule their shifts for those days and hours and create the rest of the schedule around them. That allows you to meet employees’ expectations and boost their performance.
Managing Time Off
Managing time off can be challenging for both managers and employees. Without an appropriate shift scheduling tool, employees need to send emails or call their supervisors when they need to ask for a few days off.
By implementing advanced time & attendance systems into business operations, your staff members can submit leave requests automatically. When a manager approves or declines their requests, employees get an instant notification.
Employee scheduling tools also streamline your job. They reduce the need for emails and spreadsheets. You can now take care of leave requests on-site or via a mobile app.
Most importantly, these tools help you reduce the abuse of your leave policies. For example, managers can monitor leave balances in real-time. During the peak seasons, they can set up black outs to limit the number of leave requests.
Measuring Employee Performance
One of the simplest ways to track, analyze, and incentivize employee performance is to record their work hours. When using emails, daily surveys, and spreadsheets, measuring employee performance is imprecise and time-consuming. You will often encounter gaps between the actual and registered working hours. That may result in employee frustration and disputes.
Scheduling software solutions ensure that all work hours are accurately registered and logged on the system. Employees can clock in and out via multiple devices, using scanning and facial recognition.
Automated timesheet approvals and record-keeping activities reduce error-prone paperwork. Above all, they eliminate the need for tedious back-and-forth emails, phone calls, or spreadsheets.
Offering Employee Self-Scheduling Functionalities
With cloud employee scheduling tools, your staff members can stay on top of their schedules and rosters. Most importantly, they can monitor their coworkers’ shifts. That gives them a chance to communicate with their team members more transparently. For example, in case of emergencies, they can swap shifts on their own, behind the scenes.
While this does not sound like a big deal, self-scheduling can boost employee morale. That way, they can make decisions about their shifts and schedules. Most importantly, it improves collaboration in the workplace and indicates that you trust your employees.
Reducing Costs
One of the most obvious benefits of employee scheduling solutions lies in automation. By streamlining many aspects of employee scheduling and rostering processes, you will reduce the number of people needed to complete a given task. Instead of hiring an entire team to plan schedules, this process can be done by a single person.
The right tools will also help you boost employee productivity. According to a 2017 survey, 49% of employees admitted to committing time theft. That can cost companies more than $11 billion. With the right tools, you can track employee performance and work hours, which will motivate them to perform at their best.
Overtime is another opportunity to reduce costs. Scheduling tools will show which staff members clocked too many overtime hours, allowing you to reduce unnecessary overtime.
Boosting Employee Communication
Employee communication and collaboration are the nerve center of your company. That is where cloud software solutions can help.
For example, with the help of scheduling software, employees can communicate via multiple devices in real-time. Most employee scheduling software solutions also offer project management features. They allow you to set deadlines, delegate tasks, and share files in real-time.
Ready to Improve Employee Scheduling?
Technology can improve employee scheduling on multiple levels. It helps you automate many manual business operations and, in that way, saves both time and money. You will handle leave requests and overtime far more efficiently. Scheduling tools can also improve workplace transparency and employee communication, letting employees manage time and activities.
Do you use employee scheduling to boost workplace performance? We are listening!
