There is more than meets the eye when it comes to software. In this article, written for business owners and ops personnel, we will be talking about more in-depth benefits of scheduling and time tracking software. This piece can be used as a means to sway your stakeholders.
In our highly technology-driven world, there’s little wonder that almost every business process can be automated. Shift scheduling is one of them. Curiously, while the software to achieve that isn’t relevant for businesses that don’t run on the shift model, even those that do are on the edge about adopting it.
There is a common misconception that such software offers exactly what its title would imply. It is therefore not perceived as an ROI-driving solution, especially for smaller companies to whom the creation of a roster isn’t as time-consuming as it would be for organisations with a bigger head count. However, such thinking can be the very cause why these companies are unable to scale as quickly as they’d like or at all. Not to mention, this might be the reasoning behind high turnover rates and costly workforce imbalances.
Why Invest in Employee Scheduling Software?
There are multiple reasons why employee scheduling and time tracking software is something a shift-based company should invest in. The most are obvious: saving time, reducing double-booking, avoiding overstaffing/understaffing and so on. However, there are few other less-obvious benefits such solutions have to offer.
As it becomes a centralised location for your team communication, insights and file sharing, the roster-building software is more powerful than it's given credit. If you’re on the fence about whether your business needs a such solution, we would like to introduce you to some less obvious reasons in its favour.
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Automated Time Off Requests and Approvals
When it comes to time off, it’s often a frustrating ordeal for both the employer and the shift worker. Surprisingly, many companies are still not utilising a designated holiday management system, handling time-off-related affairs via emails, calls or instant messengers. It’s little wonder that leave requests tend to get forgotten unless they’re pinned down in a centralised location. The good news is that if you get a shift scheduler, you won’t be needing to invest in a separate system for holiday management moving forward. Since time off is a crucial factor in scheduling worker shifts, most solutions come equipped with holiday management as a module.
What’s more, some tools will allow you to build a customised approval process. For bigger organisations, this is crucial as leave requests will often need to go do different approvers. Not only will save time by taking employee absences into consideration when building a new rota, but also provide a digital record of requests. Aside from lengthier leave, the system can aid you in managing sick leave and last-minute cancellations. Speaking of the latter, it will also make it easier for you to find a replacement and therefore avoid being understaffed due to short notice. But let’s talk more about that in the next section.
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Quicker Shift Coverage
Every employer working on a shift basis has experienced the pain of having to call up every available worker when the one who’s been scheduled informs of being unable to make it just a few hours prior. Not to mention it’s an inconvenient and time-consuming way of covering the shift, it’s not always effective either. Scheduling software makes it a little more streamlined, and, depending on how you set yours up, you may not need to be involved in the process at all.
First of all, you’d be instantly notified when the scheduled employee requests a short-notice leave. From there you can easily allocate another worker to take over, triggering a notification being sent to them. Alternatively, you can program your solution (if such an option is supported) to notify all workers who are not working that day about a vacant shift. They can then log into the platform and claim it as theirs. While this does not guarantee you will be able to find coverage, both of the ways make it significantly faster and less involving to cover shifts and therefore avoid being understaffed.
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Reduced Lateness and Absenteeism
There’s another side of the coin when it comes to short notices. Employees receiving their schedule just a day prior to their shift is something many businesses do although this is in no one’s best interest. The last-minute schedule can break havoc within the organisation as it's the major reason behind employee dissatisfaction which then bleeds into lateness, absenteeism and loss of interest in the job. Simply put, you need to practice what you preach. If you release shift schedules the night before the job needs to be done, you can’t expect your workers to let you know of their absence weeks in advance.
When you automate the schedule creation, it’s created and distributed on the same day, building a consistent experience. Additionally, instead of worrying about whether you’ve sent out the latest version of an edited schedule to everyone, the software will notify your workers if any changes occur. Depending on the solution, you might even be able to connect it to your time tracking tool, this way sending the employees alerts when they don’t clock in for whatever reason.
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Smoother and Better Communication
As you must have figured out from the previous points, utilising automated employee scheduling and time tracking software removes many bottlenecks when it comes to communication. You won’t have to chase your workers across different platforms to ensure they know when they’re scheduled in nor will you stress over whether they’ve received the latest version of the roster. In addition to that, you won’t have to frantically call every employee for shift coverage upon running into short-notice absences.
A centralised platform won’t only improve communication between yourself and the workers, but also within the team itself. Having visibility of one another’s availability, your employees will be able to better communicate their personal circumstances and therefore build schedules accommodating the needs of their colleagues. It will also give them more control over the rota building, deciding among themselves and implementing changes such as shift switching and others.
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Evenly Distributed Work Hours
When putting a shift schedule together manually, it’s very easy to accidentally assign some employees more hours than they should be given. It’s not too harmful as a one-off occurrence, but if it happens constantly, the workers asked to contribute more work time may grow fatigued and start expressing symptoms of burnout. It can also become breeding grounds for dissatisfaction among staff that, oppositely, are not getting enough hours - especially if they are paid hourly. All in all, balance is everything when it comes to putting together a roster, alas it’s incredibly difficult to achieve and be timely with it when it’s done manually.
An employee scheduling and time tracking software is not just capable of generating a schedule within seconds, but it’s also equipped in striking the perfect balance every time. It takes into consideration all data that’s fed into it - from the minimum/maximum hours required per employee to their availability. Not to mention, shift schedulers often also utilise the data they collect: when your business is the busiest, when it requires less staff on site, the best performance patterns on certain days and many more.
Summary
Although no one will argue that employee scheduling and time tracking software is beneficial for businesses, it is often underestimated how many companies can benefit from it. The reason is that very often the bigger scope of features it has to offer isn’t in plain sight. However, to achieve success and constant growth, as well as to adapt to the ever-changing business landscape, organisations need to look at the bigger picture.
There is so much more an automated scheduling solution brings to the table than simple convenience. Even that, as well as the time a tool can help businesses save, is extremely valuable. Upon a further investigation we’ve bought you up in this article, we hope you’ve learned that some of the software offerings aren’t always as clear to see because they bring long-term gains. Always approach digital solutions with an open mind and, before you know it, they will change your business.
Ready to make a move? Let us help open your eyes.
