Our focus in this article is employee satisfaction and its role in business success. This blog post is aimed and business owners and team managers, guiding them on how to better the performance of their staff by improving their happiness. We will explain how employee rota software is a great tool for this purpose.
Most businesses are laser-focused on ensuring their shift employees deliver the best experience to the clientele. However, they are nowhere near as attentive when it comes to ensuring the said employees also have a positive experience working. It is almost as if most organisations can’t see the correlation between the two. To put it shortly - unsatisfied employees will never be as passionate about their job. Not only does this lead to declining customer satisfaction, but also to burnout and high staff turnover rates. In fact, the problem is so deeply seated it’s evolved into a full-blown staffing crisis.
From the employer’s perspective, they can’t see why would their staff be unhappy as long as they’re being paid - and that’s the critical mistake. If you want to see the bigger picture, as well as explore the solutions, you should read this article. Today’s technology makes it easier to build healthier workplaces, and there’s no excuse for you to miss out on that.
Staffing Crisis
There is undeniably a staffing crisis for shift-based positions in every industry. While some sectors such as hospitality had a bit of a breather during the pandemic, others, like hospital staff, experienced stronger effects of it. However, now that the job market is getting balanced out, we are back to square one where every shift model industry is struggling. In fact, we are pushed even further behind by factors such as Brexit, leading to nationwide labour shortages and high turnover rates.
Unfortunately, there is no single solution: the problem is far too complex and individual for every business, let alone industry. However, what every employer could do to begin addressing the issue is turn their attention to the staff. It’s not a secret that businesses running on shift model are some of the least-employee friendly places of employment, which is often the reason for high turnover rates. Breaking this stereotype by beginning to improve the employee experience through consistency and flexibility can be your contribution to tackling the problem.
It Starts with the Mindset
Actions are driven by thoughts, and therefore if you want to change how you go about things, you first need to change the way you think. Most industries utilising shift workers are not too flexible when it comes to changing the mindset. This itself lies within the foundation of the staffing crisis. So, let’s see what parts of your business should you re-think first.
Invest in Employee-friendly Shift Patterns
When put together manually, shifts are created with the workload in mind. The person putting a rota together normally knows whether the day is expected to be busy and where staff needs to be placed. However, what’s often left out of the equation are the workers and how they are affected by the said rosters. To understand the best settings for metrics like employee engagement, fatigue, productivity over time and other metrics, a lot of experimentation is needed as there’s no one-for-all answer. Simply put, with all they already have to consider when building rota, managers have no time to think of such things.
An automated shift scheduling software, on the other hand, is designed to run such operations. Not only can it determine how much workforce will be needed at the shift, but also assign the best-suited workers. Alternatively, it would grant the staff a level of control too by making it simple to swap shifts or find coverage if they are unable to come to work. This adds overall flexibility to their experience, therefore serving as a good countermeasure to burnout and being chronically overworked.
Think and Inform Ahead
It’s in your best interest to publish schedules as far ahead as possible. However, no one is a prophet, especially when it comes to predicting how busy will your business be. But if you base your estimates on data collected by shift scheduling software rather than on a hunch, the probability of the right choice will grow. Doing so will allow you to prepare for your busiest days in advance, inform the staff to plan accordingly and reduce the possibility of last-minute issues.
In addition to that, this will provide your workers with plenty of time to either book time off or report a predicted absence. You, on the other hand, will also be given fair notice to consider their requests, find someone to fill the gap and inform the rest of the team of possible schedule changes. All in all, when you start thinking ahead and using software for both forecasting and communicating, you are bound to make better decisions. Additionally, you start offering your staff more transparency and flexibility, two things many shift workers rarely experience. Not only do they make you appear like a caring employer but are likely to work wonders for your team’s productivity.
Revenue-driving Benefits
Not only does an employee rota software make it easier to better the communication between you and your staff, but it can also become a solid source of ROI. Businesses often don’t identify the major drains of their money; such as high turnover rates and decline in performance due to burnout. When automating your scheduling process, you can actually address these areas and ensure they stop bleeding money. Let’s explore how that works.
Growth of Employee Satisfaction
There is a direct connection between employee satisfaction and productivity. This, in turn, leads to better revenue generation results. You have most likely experienced first-hand that when you’re either stressed or generally unhappy, every task becomes as twice as challenging. At the workplace, this often leads to burnout, lack of interest or passion at work and can severely affect your employee’s performance. This is often reflected in lower standards of customer service, missed deadlines and declining work quality. In other words, unhappy employees will lead to unhappy customers.
Thought-through work distribution and good work-life balance are some of the areas you should focus on to ensure your staff are happy. An automated scheduler is a perfect tool for that. Not only does it take into consideration the foreseen leave, but it can also make it easy for the employee to find quick shift coverage if their availability changes at the last second. Additionally, when the roster is put together and distributed a month in advance (instead of a Sunday night), they have a better chance to build their outside-of-work schedule around it.
Reduced Turnover Rates
Employee satisfaction also has a big role to play when it comes to staff turnover. It is a metric that’s historically high in shift-based industries, mostly due to how miserable shift workers report being. Naturally, no one wants to stay long at a place where they don’t feel they are treated right, and very often shift employees are taken for granted. If you want your business to be successful, this mindset needs to go.
Every employer knows that it’s cheaper to keep an experienced worker than to hire and train a new one. Additionally, a high turnover rate may affect how your business is perceived by both, potential new talent and clients as it will be perceived as not a favourable workplace. In terms of revenue generation, high employee turnover is likely to slow it down. For example, if you have long-term clients, the ever-changing personnel won’t be able to provide them with the personalised experience they expect. The level of service and the communication they receive will also be different, therefore leading to a negative experience and very likely loss of business. Your employees are your most valuable asset - and you should treat them as such.
Everybody Wins
The true beauty of an automatic shift scheduler is that everyone in the company benefits from it. While, clearly, the workers and the managers will have the most use of it, other departments will also be utilising the tool, alas in different ways. In other words, even parts of your business that aren’t directly involved with shift scheduling will be using the software. In fact, they might not even know its role in their day-to-day lives.
No More Admin Headache
Managers are prime sufferers of admin hell in shift scheduling. From double checking staff availability to frantically calling to find coverage and handling shift swaps, they have to shoulder it all. Not only does it cause headaches to them, but also puts them in a line of fire for other departments that get affected by the changes. For example, payroll may be displeased over having to calculate a lot of overtime fees, whereas HR might be getting complaints over uneven work hours distribution. In other words, what starts as an annoying manual task to a manager, can swiftly snowball into a series of inconveniences for everyone.
Employee rota software smoothens the experience by eliminating most of the hoops a manager has to jump through. Instead of having to make changes and risk mistakes, all is handled by the software. With the right set of integrations, it would all be based on data collected from other solutions. It would also be effortlessly exported to the said solution, again reducing the amount of admin work across the departments.
Summary
Industries running on a shift model are in a deep staffing crisis. It is, unfortunately, caused by employers who would prioritise income over their workers. Lack of focus on employee satisfaction leads to high staff turnover rates and burnout, both of which can kill a business if not addressed quickly and accordingly. And while you can’t ensure every day at the workplace is merry for your employees, there are multiple things you can do to better their overall experience.
Start small - with employee rota software. Instead of last-minute schedules and the headache of trying to find coverage, the such tool will offer your staff flexibility and a reasonable work-life balance. It will also serve as a transparent communication platform between team members, as well as their communication with the management. Happy employees are proven to be more productive - so your success depends on how well you take care of them.
Don’t let this opportunity slide you by. Let’s talk.
