Properly scheduling your employees takes a lot of work. It’s not just assigning people hours and hoping they show up. There are several different considerations to make, all of which impact your employees and your business. Manual scheduling has many problems associated with it that cause companies to lose profits and productivity.
Luckily, with the help of modern employee scheduling software, you can get control over your scheduling process and ensure that you are only scheduling based on need and skillset.
Frequent Over or Understaffing
Manual staffing means that there are often errors in the number of employees scheduled in any one place and at any time. Not using employee schedule software can lead to frequent staffing issues. Staffing issues are most common in workplaces with multiple departments or sectors; there may be too many employees on the schedule in one department, while another department may be understaffed.
Additionally, manual scheduling makes it difficult to correct these issues quickly. Covering for outages or moving employees around to cover gaps because nearly impossible if all scheduling is done manually. The time it takes to identify the mistake and then make the necessary corrections is time-consuming and inefficient.
With web-based employee scheduling software, you can get a bird’s eye view of who is scheduled and where they’re scheduled on any given day. You can reference historical data to accurately staff for busy or slow times of the year. If any changes need to be made to the schedule, this can be done with just a few clicks.
Unchecked Labor Costs
A problem that often goes unforeseen with a manual employee scheduling system is that labor costs are not monitored carefully due to keeping hours and employees on schedule. These duties often fall to lower management, department heads, etc., who are interested in getting hours or scheduling certain people.
This leads to entirely unchecked labor expenses. This is extremely costly to a business that has to budget in their labor costs on a job by job basis, such as a construction company, where overages like this can be disastrous for the bottom line of a job.
Construction employee scheduling software allows you to understand better your labor costs based on location, a specific task, or by an employee. You’ll easily be able to tell if you’re scheduling too many people on a job and make changes to ensure you remain within your labor budget.
Issues Adhering to Labor Laws
One of the more significant issues that come out of manual scheduling is the lack of oversight regarding labor law compliance. Manual scheduling can allow employees to steal time, not punch out for mandatory breaks or lunches, and work unscheduled hours. These issues would then fall onto the employer to address.
Employers can also try and cheat the system by manipulating hour totals to avoid paying for overtime. Any of these actions can constitute a labor law violation and result in fines and the eventual suspension of a company’s ability to operate. Both of which can mean the end of business for a company.
Employee scheduling software can help you remain labor law compliant by ensuring that employees have ample rest time between shifts, are taking mandated breaks, and receive accurate pay for their hours worked.
Ignoring Employee Preferences
Ignoring your employee’s needs or preferences is the fastest way to a poor work environment, low employee morale, and low productivity. Manual scheduling often does not accommodate employees’ needs or preferences since there isn’t an effective way to track this information.
Not scheduling based on employee preference allows managers to schedule employees with nearly complete impunity. This can lead to employees feeling abused or undervalued. In these cases, they may feel inclined to commit time theft, show up late, or be absent from work to fulfill other obligations. It may even lead to conflict between workers who they feel are being given preferential treatment or show favoritism.
With employee scheduling software, employees are allowed to enter their availability preferences. Scheduling managers can then reference this information to craft schedules that meet the business’s needs and the employee’s wants. It’s a win-win situation for both parties.
Not Scheduling Based On Need
The fastest way for a business to lose profits is by not scheduling based on need. Being short on staff during a rush period can result in lost sales. An understaffed crew on a particular job can lead to costly overages, or not correctly staffing areas that are behind will only lead to more losses.
Manual scheduling makes it difficult or nearly impossible to adjust to business in a fluid situation. It makes businesses much less efficient overall due to the time delay and inability to make rapid changes. Survival in a modern business environment requires the ability to be flexible and adapt to a changing situation.
Cloud-based employee scheduling software allows you to review historical data to see where you needed a larger workforce and schedule accordingly. If there is a sudden shift in the business workload, schedules can quickly be updated to reflect those changes.
In the end, an employee scheduling tool can improve business operations and make the workplace much more enjoyable for employees when they’re being scheduled based on preferences. There are many different employee scheduling software available, so it’s essential to choose one that meets your business needs and is easy to use for employees.
