How Employee Scheduling Software Saves Time
Struggling to reach your potential with your workforce? Managing an organization’s workforce scheduling and availability starts out as a simple task. Usually, it involves managing the small number of initial employees using spreadsheets and emails. However, as the business grows, the number of employees increases & employee scheduling begins to take up more and more time. To help the owner/partner, typically organizations will move to hire an individual whose responsibility becomes managing employee scheduling and availability. This job includes accepting employee availability, creating a schedule, and then communicating it out to the workforce. However, the scheduler’s responsibility is usually just one part of the overall duties this new role will be responsible for. The ultimate goal is to allow the owner to focus on growing the business.
In addition to creating the schedule, there is further complexity as employees call in sick, show up late. Gathering the necessary info for payroll can be very time-consuming. This causes this new role to quickly become a full-time scheduler role. It’s very easy to see that an important component of any organization, especially a growing organization, is having accurate scheduling. This ensures that you retain employees for as long as possible. Encourage growth into more senior roles rather than spending unnecessary time training new employees. Managing employee schedules can be a time-consuming and tedious necessary process that significantly impacts how management and staff operate.
Online workforce management software is instrumental in automating scheduling processes and freeing up staff time, to focus on more important responsibilities. In addition to the software allowing individuals to self-schedule their own shifts if needed, it can also automatically send out notifications, collect availability, maintain and store employee information (contact, qualifications, etc.), allowing employees to see their schedule in-app or via the web and much more. Why waste time doing all of these manually, when you could be focusing on maximizing your workforce potential.
How to Measure Workforce Potential
Before an organization can decide to move to an online workforce management solution, it must determine if there is a problem. Here are some questions to ask yourself in order to measure your workforce potential!
How Do You Communicate with your Employees?
A large amount of time can be spent communicating shift details, changes, and availability in non-ideal formats. If this is the case, there are automated tools available to reduce the time spent communicating this info.
Do changes to employee availability cause pain?
When an organization is small, the time spent on scheduling is relatively small. However, as it gets larger, scheduling becomes much more complex requiring capturing availability, keeping track of qualifications, and ensuring shifts are allocated properly based on company rules and government regulations (i.e. – overtime or qualifications). The time spent does not necessarily increase linearly. As you hire more people, the interrelationships increase including contacting employees with new and updated schedules as well as quickly filling shifts when there are last-minute changes. These increases make it more difficult for your workforce to reach its potential.
How high is your Staff Turnover?
If employee turnover is higher than expected, companies need to understand why employees are not staying. There may be a feeling they are not getting enough shifts, maybe they feel that communication is lacking or there is a lack of transparency. Remember that the cost of hiring and training a new employee can be anywhere from 30-50% of their annual salary meaning that it is very expensive and time consuming to bring in new team members.
Are you paying overtime?
Having employees work overtime can be very expensive for an organization. Although in some situations it’s unavoidable, a company needs to question why they are paying overtime. Is it due to not understanding demand? Do they not having enough qualified workers? Is it due to scheduling issues or employee availability? Once the problem is understood, solutions can be put in place to mitigate this cost.
How do you Track Attendance?
Although some organizations have physical time capture devices used to track employee check-in/out and breaks, most organizations do not. In the case where there is not a time capture device, how is the data being captured? Are all employees showing up on time and staying for their whole shift?
When a company is small or only a single location, the problem can be managed. However, as the business grows, this becomes much more difficult. Customer contracts are potentially at risk because employees show up late or don’t show up at all. As well, you end up paying employees for hours not worked (often referred to as “time theft”). Though some organizations may move to physical time capture devices, with today’s technology smartphone apps or web applications can allow your employees to check-in/out with ease allowing an organization to keep track of work time. By using software that automatically captures this information, you are one step closer to realizing your full workforce potential.
Our Methodology
Celayix Software’s Cost-Benefit calculator takes into account some of the common items to consider when choosing whether or not your organization should invest in software. It helps you to estimate your recoverable expenses from the six most common costs related to inefficient scheduling and time & attendance;
- Excessive Time Managing Schedules
- No-Shows, Sick-Calls, and Absences
- Unbillable Overtime
- Payroll Fraud
- Staff Turnover
- Payroll Errors
Conclusion
Advancements in technology have made it much easier to find affordable and effective employee scheduling solutions. Today’s software applications make it easy for companies to make a start and easily scale the business leaving no excuse for not having accurate and efficient workforce management processes in place. Embrace technology as a means of maximizing potential.
Online workforce management solutions make it simple and convenient for companies to create schedules and communicate with their employees providing information as it becomes available.
In fact, solutions can extend to where employees can be self-sufficient and do their own scheduling, and maintain their employee records. This allows company leaders to reallocate these resources to other, more productive areas and focus on growing the business while getting the most from their workforce. With today’s technology, there is no excuse for not automating, streamlining, and improving the way you manage tedious and burdensome tasks. If you’re interested to learn more about how Celayix can help you reach your workforce potential, request a custom free demo here!
