If you think investing in employee scheduling software for your company is a good move for you, you are quite right. A great employee scheduling tool can help you eliminate wasted labor hours caused by over scheduling. It also gives you a dependable means of budgeting for projects as it gives you the means to project future workforce costs.
Finally, of course, it is also an excellent way to make sure your employees work when they are scheduled and can prevent them from coming in late or leaving early. What might not be as obvious is how effective employee scheduling software can keep your team happy as well.
Employee Happiness
One crucial aspect of a healthy team is a sense of fairness and equity. There are few things more morale damaging than one person on the team arriving late every day or leaving early. It can be disheartening to others to see one of the teams getting away with that. But it also presents a problem for management.
You’re forced to decide when to intervene and have a talk with the employee or when doing so could make matters worse. Will you be perceived as fair for doing so? Employees can get aggressively defensive when confronted about things like their schedule and being on time.
An employee scheduling tool gives you a distinct advantage. After all, it’s not you that the employee has run afoul of, it’s software that has found them in violation. You can even sound sympathetic while the system issues a correction about them. This is a more subtle way for you to correct employee behavior without confrontation. More importantly, an automated system will seem fairer to all your employees. Simply put, machines don’t play favorites, and they’ll recognize this.
Better Schedule Planning
Another advantage, both for management and employees, is that employee scheduling software makes for better team time tracking and planning. A common issue for management is employee burnout. This occurs when you rely on your best team members, excessively. It’s easy always to deploy your best people to work because you’re guaranteed a higher level of performance and consistency. However, you need to avoid working them too much, or you can destroy their performance levels and, worse, work them to the point where they might want to leave. An employee scheduling system helps you recognize when you’re over-utilizing someone.
Proper employee work schedule software will also help you identify when you’re not scheduling hours fairly between all employees. You’ll be able to see at a glance what everyone’s hours are to make sure they are assigned fairly.
Lastly, you can identify issues of burnout related to swing shifts. It is sometimes necessary to work people on a swing shift, having them work late one day and early the next. However, if it becomes a pattern, you risk wearing out your people and can actually jeopardize their health.
Scheduling and time clock software lets you identify when you’re doing this excessively.
Vacation Management
Lastly, you’ll find you can improve morale with a shared scheduling system that allows for vacation day reservations. A common issue is employees trying to schedule vacations far in advance. It can be challenging for management to track these requests and make sure they’re fulfilled.
Having software to manage a schedule means you can block out days that employees request far in advance to ensure they have the time they’ve requested while letting you know they’re going to be unavailable and schedule coverage while they are gone.
An Investment in Your Employees
As can be seen, employee scheduling software is more than an investment in your business; it’s an investment in your employees as well. Having a sophisticated system in place means fewer talks with employees about their hours’ commitment, less confusion when scheduling a vacation, and an improved sense of fairness to your whole team.