Emily Clarke

How to Optimize Your Employee Scheduling

Scheduling is one of the most important aspects of running a successful business. Failure to optimize your scheduling can lead to all kinds of problems, including understaffing and overstaffing. Additionally, your company's bottom line may suffer if you don't have the right people scheduled at the right times.

Perform a Historical Analysis

One way to overcome the challenges of scheduling is to perform a historical analysis of your business' productivity. By examining performance during specific times, you may be able to get a better sense of how many employees will need to be scheduled. You can also take a look at performance during different times of each day to understand when your business is at its busiest and when it experiences slower times.

Let Technology Handle the Hard Work

You can also use scheduling software for staff deployment to optimize your on-shift workers. Scheduling software for staff deployment can perform the aforementioned analyses in many cases, meaning you don't have to sit and stare at spreadsheets for hours to get an understanding of your staffing needs. Using software to deploy staff can also help your company avoid adding too many hours to any one employee's schedule.

Open Requests for Time off Early

If you offer paid time off during the year, it may be a good idea to open time-off requests for a limited amount of time at the beginning of the year. Doing this will allow your company to plan out the year's schedule in advance to avoid surprises down the road. It can also help to alleviate problems with employees requesting holidays off year after year.

Consider offering a rotating schedule whereby employees can request specific holidays off every other year. This lets everyone have the chance to have certain holidays off without leaving your company high and dry when everyone tries to request off for the same days. Keep in mind, however, that certain laws may pertain to providing time off for religious and other exemptions, so you need to be familiar with the laws that govern your business and how they affect your obligations.

Author Resource:-

Emily Clarke writes about employee management, benefits and payroll service. You can find her thoughts at payroll management blog.