What is Employee Scheduling Software?

Introduction

Employee scheduling software enables you to automate the procedure of creating, tracking, and maintaining staff schedules. The solution can boost team collaboration and productivity, and provides greater visibility on enterprise-wide bandwidth. These platforms track sick days, vacations, and other personnel leaves. Leading employee scheduling applications possess functionalities like automatic alerts that help to avert scheduling conflicts. They collect scheduling data over time, which can be imported into financial tools like payroll applications. The software also offers analytics capabilities to assist in the coordination and management of tasks.

However, employee scheduling software typically does not offer the robust features of a core HR management platform. These systems are used in retail and other sectors to schedule staff shifts. They automate the production and maintenance of schedules, and offer visibility on employee tasks.

Features of Employee Scheduling Software

Schedule Template

You can use a template as a foundation for your future schedules that you can refine based on your shift needs. Plus, you can save the template from your past schedules to minimize the time utilized on producing new formats especially when schedules are repeating or static.

Shift Swapping

This feature makes it simple for the staff to utilize available shifts or swap their shifts. It helps to avoid double-booking on a particular shift, while remaining compliant with your enterprise’s overtime regulations to avert unplanned overtime expenses.

Auto-Assign Shift

This capability speeds up the time-consuming process of delegating shifts. It automates the procedure of matching a staff member with their relevant role in a methodical manner. Thus, the main job of employee scheduling software is automating shift delegation and expediting the process.

Real-Time Communication

Employee scheduling solutions combine their functionalities with mobile technology to offer 24/7, real-time access to your staff via mobile apps, emails, and text messages. This ensures all employees get timely alerts on all changes, updates, and announcements.

Work Management

This facility allows you to manage your projects and tasks by non-billable and billable work, employee workloads, meeting schedules, budget allocation, and portfolio management to boost efficiency and productivity in your company.

Schedule Overview

This capability enables you to view monthly, biweekly, and weekly shifts to get insight on your staff’s schedule such as coverage gaps. You can filter the information based on roles, specific shifts, and location. In addition, you can see who is assigned work at a certain location and time.

Benefits of Employee Scheduling Software

Reduce Labor Expenses

You can optimize labor coverage by effectively using historical info to determine labor requirements for each shift. In addition, you can forecast the demand which helps you to delegate shifts in tune with your requirements for a given situation or time. This assists you to control unplanned overtime expenses and track overall staff costs versus the allotted budget.

Adapt to Alterations in Staff Availability

You need a buffer to manage schedule changes to prevent scheduling conflicts. For instance, if an employee wants to avail leave from an assigned shift, they can look to find a replacement worker to cover for them. The shift-swapping feature facilitates this as the available worker can accept the changed schedule in real time. Managers get the option to automate this process or manually approve the changes.

Enhances Staff Communication

Businesses need to stay in touch with their staff to ensure they attend their assigned shifts without fail. They can send group notifications and alerts to all workers or to a select group when new schedules are delegated to them or if there is any alteration in their assigned shifts. This feature also helps managers to quickly find an available worker if an assigned employee wishes to take leave.

Ensure Compliance

Your business needs to supervise your staff’s store credentials, expiration dates, and documentation. Therefore, it’s essential to track credentials and make sure they comply with pertinent regulations and rules. If employees have upcoming credential expirations, the system will alert them before the due date. Workers with expired credentials will be automatically blocked from getting a shift to reduce the time spent in monitoring each staff member.

Minimize Staff No-Shows

Sometimes, employees need to take unplanned or emergency leaves which can create an issue for the company. Employee scheduling software helps to resolve this issue by creating a small pool of workers who are willing to take up last-minute shifts. They can be contingent staff, part-time workers, or full-time employees who are willing to work overtime. This feature can also come handy in managing seasonal demand swings when businesses need to raise or lower the number of employed workers.