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Employee shift scheduling challenge ranks among the top difficulties that HR managers face. It contributes significantly to job dissatisfaction and increased employee turnover. Often, businesses such as hospitality, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and others face employee shift scheduling problems.
Whether it is a customer support process for a manufacturing unit or a mid-sized healthcare facility – each requires a round-the-clock availability of personnel.
Floor managers and supervisors are primarily responsible for allocating shifts to employees. They in turn ensure that productivity levels are maintained, work life balance requirements are met and morale is not affected. Moreover, they need to take care of resource utilization, risk management, roster allocation, absenteeism, rescheduling and skill balance. They are further required to fix problems and improve productivity.
It has been seen that manual workforce scheduling creates problems:
- » Managers spend 20% of their time on scheduling tasks inefficiently
- » Manual scheduling errors lead to a 174% increase in employee turnover
Our sales team recently came across a customer support desk organization where the floor managers were facing challenges in allocating shifts manually.
Pain Points of a Floor Manager in a Customer Support Desk
A mid-sized customer support desk managed support across multiple time zones for its large customers. Its employees were scheduled in 3 shifts – starting at 10 am, 6 pm, and 2 am. Each shift was 8 hours long and required 200 seats to manage all the operations.
Cost control was a constant concern for the management. Overstaffing was causing financial losses whereas understaffing resulted in missed opportunities to do sales – one of the key goals. As a result, the inefficiency in shift scheduling adversely impacted operating costs, productivity, employee turnover, and soaring grievances – as well as an unhappy customer.
It was the responsibility of the Chief Operating Officer to ensure that the facility ran 24×7 and that the operation was adequately staffed, even during the night and wee hours.
Floor Managers spent long hours on shift allocation, striving to optimize shifts and work schedules just right. While preparing schedules, they had to consider time-off requests, labor rules, and the availability and preferences of the workers. Additionally, they needed to stay compliant with laws by carefully managing overtime (without paying unnecessary overtime bonuses).
Moreover, last minute reschedule requests were a huge issue as well. Managers were looking for a way to give flexibility to the employees without causing serious disruption.
21% of managers consider this a top challenge.
Managers often rely on spreadsheets, calendars, and paper to handle employee scheduling across multiple shifts. This may be a familiar approach, but often results in many employee scheduling challenges.
Firstly, manually managing shift allocations can be inefficient, as it often involves time-consuming processes that require constant adjustments. Secondly, the manual method can negatively impact overall performance, as some employees may be overworked or underutilized. Thirdly, cost management is negatively impacted. Ineffective employee shifts allocation lead to unnecessary overtime and understaffing ending up with more spent on labor costs. Lastly, work-life balance suffers when scheduling is not well- managed. It may even lead to burnout and dissatisfaction.
Is your organization stuck in a similar situation where employee scheduling issues never seem to end? Are your managers spending too much time in manual employee shift scheduling?
HR managers must design shift patterns that along with employee needs. They should further establish clearly defined work schedules to maintain an efficient and satisfied workforce.
Creating an effective employee shifts schedule, communicating schedule changes to employees, and ensuring adherence is thus important. Let’s look at a solution that will help an organization achieve these goals and more.
Most organizations now use cloud-based employee scheduling software to automate shift allocation and rostering, facilitating last-minute changes and saving time.
How a Web-Based Shift Management Solution Overcomes Scheduling Issues at Work?
With numerous vendors available in the market, it’s essential to choose the best solution tailored to your organizational needs. A highly configurable shift scheduling software, Empxtrack, offers flexibility and robust features to meet these employee shift scheduling challenges. It offers powerful employee scheduling features, enabling shift managers to make informed decisions on staffing requirements, overtime and on-call hours, labor costs, and more.
The software helps in managing shift schedules for the week in less than 15 minutes. It’s intuitive design ensures that managers can quickly adapt to last-minute changes, minimizing disruptions and maintaining productivity.
Empxtrack assisted a global mining company by implementing a workforce management solution that addressed employee shift scheduling problems efficiently. As a result, the company was successfully able to optimize resource utilization, increase operational efficiency, and reduce financial losses. Moreover, the availability of multiple reports empowered the company to analyze issues in real-time and take proactive corrective measures.
In short, Empxtrack provides control on shift scheduling at a granular level, while allowing managers to focus on workforce scheduling with minimum supervision.
Features of Empxtrack Workforce Scheduling Software
- » Generate work schedules automatically using industry-specific shift patterns or user-definable schedule plans
- » Schedule adequate staff with the right skills in each shift successfully
- » Allocate shift patterns for a group of employees with start and end dates
- » Define non-working days, start and end shift times, and applicable weekdays for each shift
- » Capture employee check-in and check-out time accurately
- » Allocate shift patterns for a group of employees with start and end dates
- » Monitor overworked and understaffing conditions based on skills, position and assignment
- » Publish work schedules and calendars easily in multiple formats, or even email work schedules to the employees
- » Define employee preferences, including availability, desired work hours, daily work hour constraints, and time off requests
- » Get alerts on availability conflicts, overlapped shift assignments, duplicate shift assignments, and conflicts with scheduled time off, as per company rules
- » Assign relievers in case of emergencies or when fixing last minute reschedules
- » Set overtime policies where employees work overtime and pay accurately
- » Get reports on tasks for cost control and payroll purposes
- » Ensure company rules are abide by all employees
Effective Employee Scheduling Can Help an Organization Grow. How?
Decrease in quality of work and productivity, low employee morale and workforce turnover, are the results of ineffective employee scheduling.
With capabilities to manage shift schedules effectively, managers can save on time and effort, track attendance and time accurately, improve employee communication and boost accountability among staff. Employee work life balance can be enhanced. Thus, a reduction in employee turnover and an increase in overall profitability of the company.
Impact
An effective shift scheduling process:
» Optimizes resource allocation
» Increases employees’ job satisfaction
» Decreases absenteeism and employee turnover
» Improves business returns
» Increases overall productivity and improves team collaboration
» Enhances work life balance and increases flexibility
» Minimizes overtime costs and reduces burnout
Scheduling demands are constant in companies that operate 24x7x365. The bigger question is – Are your employees ready to meet customer requirements and increase profits? All you need is to – have a well-structured shift management process in your organization to embark on the new journey. This will ensure that your team is prepared, responsive, and capable of delivering exceptional service around the clock.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. | What are common employee shift scheduling problems? |
| Ans. | Some of the common employee shift scheduling problems include:
Addressing these problems typically requires a more efficient scheduling system and improved communication strategies. |
Q2. | Which software can help with employee shift scheduling problems? |
| Ans. | Empxtrack is a powerful tool designed to address employee shift scheduling challenges. This software automates the workforce scheduling process, allowing managers to quickly create and manage shifts while minimizing errors. It offers real-time updates, enabling quick adjustments for last-minute changes and optimizing staffing levels based on employee availability and workload. With its user-friendly interface and customizable features, Empxtrack enhances communication and efficiency, ultimately improving overall workforce management. |
Q3. | How can I improve communication regarding changes in employee shifts? |
| Ans. | It is recommended to use automated scheduling software for real-time notifications, conduct regular team meetings, leverage multiple communication channels, encourage employee feedback, and provide an overview of upcoming shifts. This ensures everyone stays informed and reduces confusion about changes in employee shifts. |
Q4. | How can you efficiently address workforce scheduling issues? |
| Ans. | To efficiently address workforce scheduling issues, consider implementing the following strategies:
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Q5. | How workforce scheduling software can help? |
| Ans. | Workforce scheduling software helps by automating shift schedule creation, reducing scheduling issues, managing last-minute changes, optimizing staffing levels, and providing data-driven insights. This leads to improved efficiency, lower labor costs, and better work-life balance for employees. |
Managing employee schedules for organizations operating beyond regular hours can be quite the challenge. Efficient shift management is crucial to balancing productivity, employee satisfaction, and cost control. For instance, a customer support desk managing multiple shifts and time zones often struggles with overstaffing or understaffing, leading to financial losses and missed opportunities. Tools like Empxtrack Shift Management software can streamline this process, allowing managers to create schedules in minutes, reduce manual errors, and improve overall operational efficiency. If your organization is facing similar scheduling nightmares, adopting such a solution might be the key to turning things around.
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The challenges outlined in manual shift allocation resonate with many businesses, especially those operating 24/7. Empxtrack Shift Management software seems like a tailored solution, offering automated scheduling and skill-based allocation to streamline operations and improve efficiency. Transitioning to such a tool could significantly enhance employee satisfaction, reduce absenteeism, and boost business returns.