5 Ways employee scheduling software can improve your business

5 Ways employee scheduling software can improve your business

The way you schedule employees can have a big impact on your business. For instance, employee scheduling can impact productivity, profitability, and growth potential. While there are many good reasons to use an employee scheduling software, we will present what we believe to be the top five.

For starters, what is the impact of poor employee scheduling, and how does changing it begin to improve your business?

Impact of poor employee scheduling

The impact of poor shift scheduling on your business can be wide-ranging, and if you're not careful, it could seriously damage your business’ growth and negatively affect your reputation as an employer.

For example, it can lead to:

High Employee turnover

Bad employee scheduling can lead to higher turnover rates. Employee schedules that aren't accurate, or adjustable (e.g. allowing staff to swap shifts), or constantly changing frustrating staff who eventually quit and seek employment elsewhere.

Lower productivity

Bad employee scheduling creates more work for supervisors and managers. When employees aren't given the correct number of hours, or employee availability isn't accurate, supervisors have to do the same job twice, swapping shifts and trying to find cover at the last minute.

This takes them away from their other responsibilities, meaning they're less productive in the role they're actually hired to do.

Poor Employee morale

Poorly scheduled employees will get frustrated when they're working extra hours at the last minute, or when they do not receive enough hours to pay their bills. This kind of scheduling, over time, will lead to low morale among staff members who feel that they don't have control over their time at work. Gradually, this dip in confidence can negatively affect performance because workers begin to feel devalued or undervalued.

Decreased Employee engagement

Employees who aren't happy at work tend not to engage with their jobs as much as those who have a healthy work life balance. They'll be less likely to go above and beyond for the company, potentially resulting in productivity issues down the line when you need them during busy business periods, such as the Christmas holiday season. 

Lower Employee retention rate

If your staff members are unhappy because of scheduling issues, it gives them a reason to consider leaving your company. And in a tight labour market, you want to consistently retain employees.

The importance of employee scheduling

Employee scheduling software can help you manage your business by avoiding employee availability conflicts, preventing payroll errors, and improving collaboration and communication.

Employee scheduling software will make sure that your employees are assigned to the right shifts based on current availability. This means no more double-booking of workers or last minute shift changes with employees having to cover for one another.

In addition, employee scheduling software also helps you avoid payroll errors by accurately keeping track of hours worked for each employee, helping ensure they are paid properly.

Employee scheduling software allows managers to plan ahead with confidence, knowing automatically who exactly is working and when. Furthermore, the software serves as a communication tool that bypass mistakes, often, made when manually entering information into spreadsheets.

Employee scheduling software

Employee scheduling is often a matter of balancing work hours with employee availability. Most businesses have a set number of shifts to be staffed, but not all employees are able to work every shift. Scheduling software can help you dodge this problem by allowing you to see when your employees want to work, and when they're available.

Employee scheduling software is a tool that helps managers and employees create schedules, as well as see how many hours each employee has available and how much time they need to work, so managers can easily see which days have enough employees to work all of the shifts, or which employees are unavailable on certain days.

5 benefits of employee scheduling software

Employee scheduling software can be a great investment for your business; not just for your employees, but also for your customers and your bottom line. That's because scheduling software helps you create more efficient schedules, which means that you’re able to get more work done in less time, and save money by reducing overtime.

But that's not all.

1. Increased productivity and motivation

Employee scheduling software is an efficient and effective way to simplify employee scheduling. It allows you to save time, improve communication, and ultimately increase productivity and motivation for your employees.

Planday, for example, is a cloud based software that can be accessed from any device with an internet connection, which means that you'll always have access to your schedule from anywhere at any time. This will allow you to view employee shift schedules quickly and easily. And because it's available on mobile phones, employees can check their shifts on the go.

2. Empower employees with flexible schedules

One of the biggest advantages to using scheduling software is that it allows your employees to have flexible schedules.

Employees can quickly and easily request time off, or indicate when they are unavailable in advance. They can also work with managers to ensure that their schedule matches their availability and preferences, which helps increase employee experience, employee satisfaction, and employee retention rate, while also improving overall business productivity.

3. Helps avoid employee availability conflicts

Scheduling problems can be one of your business’s biggest headaches. Relying on back-and-forth between managers and employees to determine availability and schedule shifts is stressful, timely, and results in missed shifts.

With employee scheduling software, you can schedule employees so they’re always available when you need them. With this feature, you avoid availability conflicts whether you’re working with a team that has multiple shifts, or you're only organising one shift.

4. Reduces payroll errors

Employee scheduling software can help reduce payroll errors, improve employee satisfaction, and help you stay compliant with government regulations.

With the right software, you’ll get real-time access to your employees’ schedules and attendance data. Scheduling managers can easily make changes and view what impact those changes will have on other employees' schedules. The system automatically recalculates overtime hours as well as missed shifts so that no one is left out of pocket at the end of the pay period.

With this kind of overview of who's working when and where, there's no room for human error or misunderstanding about whether a person was available for a shift, ensuring that there are fewer mistakes issuing paychecks or sending invoices out late due to confusion over who was scheduled at what time, and where they were supposed to be working.

5. Improves collaboration and communication

Whatever type of business you run, collaboration and communication are crucial to its success. Employee scheduling software can improve how your team communicates in a variety of ways:

• It keeps everyone informed about their schedules and on the same page by making shift swapping and schedule changes easier to manage.
• It streamlines communication between employees and managers. Managers will be able to see what's going on with their employees' schedules at all times, so they know when someone is free or busy before they ask questions or make requests.
• It allows employees to communicate with each other more easily than they would if they were relying solely on email or text messages. This increased ability for teams to share information quickly means that mistakes happen less often because everyone has access to the same information at once.

Choosing the right employee scheduling app for your business

What should you look for in an employee scheduling app?

Easy to use

The best employee scheduling apps are easy to use—both for employees and managers. They should have an intuitive interface that makes it simple for people to navigate their way around the app, and they should be easy to learn. After all, no one wants to spend hours learning how to use a software tool when they could be getting things done.

Planday provides a better way to manage and collaborate with staff, helping you build an employee schedule faster and more accurately, by taking into account staff vacation, availability, payroll costs, among many other things. .

Integrates seamlessly with systems you already use

When you're looking for an employee scheduling app, it's important to make sure that the software integrates with your existing systems, so you can make better scheduling decisions.

Planday connects to your ecosystem of integrations, giving you a complete view of your business, so you can get the information you need in real time, from anywhere.

Packed with all the features you really want

When you're looking to invest in staff scheduling software, it's important to make sure it will work with your business.

With so many options available, it can be tempting to choose the first one that catches your eye. However, considering what you really need from the app is more important than just choosing something that looks good.

Planday, for example, is packed with all the features you need (and want):

• Staff management
• Employee scheduling
• Communication
• Punch clock
• Reporting
• Integrations

At Planday we have your shift plan covered, which can enable you to collaborate with the team during the scheduling process, allow staff to set availability, and shift swap without managerial input.

Planday: the best employee scheduling software

Employee scheduling software is an effective tool for businesses seeking to save time, money, and improve communication. Planday allows you to create schedules for your employees quickly and easily; it gives you complete oversight of employee availability and shift schedules, while also boosting employee experience by empowering staff to manage their own shifts. It also improves communication by allowing staff to see their scheduled shifts on the go via the mobile app or email notification.

No matter what your business does, Planday will make your day work. To find out more about Planday's workforce management platform, get in touch with our friendly team and try our product for free for 30 days.