Employees are the backbone of any company. Successful businesses can’t operate without quality personnel, but managing staff members comes with its own host of problems. This is especially apparent when it comes to scheduling and adjusting shifts. Without proper shift management, employees and managers may not know when they’re supposed to work. Eventually, this kind of uncertainty results in low morale and inefficiency, and these things aren’t good for your business.
For your business to succeed, employees must be consistently present and punctual. Moreover, managers and payroll personnel must have the tools to fairly and accurately track attendance and determine proper compensation. While such tedious tasks were difficult and time-consuming in the past, modern technology has made managing shifts and tracking attendance easier than ever. If you want to improve your workplace’s operational efficiency, then check out these 11 effective ways to simplify shift schedules.
How To Make Shift Schedules Easy and Efficient
Bolster Payroll Integration
Employees don’t work for free. They expect to receive fair and accurate compensation for their services. However, with outdated scheduling systems, managers and payroll professionals may have to spend a long time figuring out each employee’s attendance and payroll.
Therefore, your company needs to adopt the right scheduling solution to save time and money. Effective scheduling software will feature advanced payroll integration so that payroll staff members can quickly and accurately calculate pay for hours worked, overtime, bonuses, and special considerations. Such software also allows companies to track pay for freelancers, temp workers, and other non-regular workers.
Ensure Labor Law Compliance
Naturally, you want your company to follow the law. Failure to do so may result in severe fines and penalties, so it’s of the utmost importance that the company has the tools to comply with all relevant labor regulations. If a labor compliance issue ever comes up, then your company is going to need accurate records to resolve the matter. Shift management solutions store accurate records and organize them according to relevant labor laws to always keep your company prepared and compliant.
Implement Real-Time Tracking
Managers need to know what their employees are doing. However, even in a small company, it can be difficult to track who is late, who is working, and who is taking a break. This is especially true in more decentralized settings and for employers with remote workers. With the help of a robust scheduling application, managers can see what every employee is doing at any given moment. With this information, managers can effectively delegate tasks to the right people and address poor attendance and other issues.
Make Remote Check-In Easy
Not every employee works in one central location. If your employees have to visit certain job sites throughout the day, then it’s important to track their attendance and location. Some applications feature GPS tagging and geofencing to help managers ensure that everyone is in the right place at the right time. Moreover, remote check-in functionalities allow employees to accurately log their hours without having to waste time visiting the office.
Schedules Should Be Accessible to Employees
Is your company’s schedule taped to a door in the break room? Is it on some clunky website? If you answered yes to either of these questions, then you may have a problem. Employees are more punctual when they have quick and easy access to their shifts. Thus, any successful company should use quality software to make shifts accessible on any mobile device with internet access. That way, employees don’t have to go to the workplace or browse through a clunky interface on a computer to find next week’s schedule.
Calendar Synchronization
Most employees have smartphones, and most smartphones have calendar apps. With the right software, employers can synchronize shifts and workplace calendars with employees’ devices so that everyone can quickly track their shifts, meetings, and other important events. Employees with mobile access to the company’s calendar tend to be more punctual and are more prepared for important meetings and deadlines. In turn, they can more effectively perform their roles, and the company benefits in the long run.
Simplify Edits and Notes
Whether managers need to change the schedule or add notes to an existing shift, this process should be quick, easy, and effective. With shift management software, managers can edit information related to time entries in a single place. This includes shift times, dates, employee names, notes, employee positions, and more. Quick edits and notes allow managers to efficiently make real-time changes so that everybody is on the same page about their duties, schedules, and other pertinent information.
Export Data to Relevant Formats
Payroll information, schedules, and other important data and records are useful in many contexts. For example, members of the finance department may need access to payroll data to track seasonal trends. Shift management software allows users to quickly and easily export relevant data to make it more usable and easier to analyze. Because only 85% of Americans own a smartphone, it’s also important to provide more traditional means for employees to check their schedules. Luckily, with modern technology, managers can easily print copies of schedules and records for anyone to see.
Quick Approvals and Easy Communication
Sometimes, managers have to change schedules at the last minute. However, this is a problem when employees don’t get the memo. In an ideal world, managers would always remember to notify their employees about schedule changes, but people are often forgetful. Most shift management software includes streamlined notifications so that everybody always knows when their next shift is. On top of that, they allow employees to trade shifts, and managers can quickly approve or disapprove shift trades because of the convenience of real-time notifications.
Keep All Managers on the Same Page
Nothing is worse than when managers have conflicting information. When managers and leaders aren’t all on the same page, employees are unable to work efficiently, and chaos will ensue. Scheduling software allows users to make written records of all notes, shifts, approvals, and other shift-related data. Thus, when all managers are using the same shift-scheduling software, everybody can see the same information.
Moreover, trivial things such as shift changes, notes, and other information don’t have to be shared outside of the platform. Consequently, employees won’t have to waste time writing several emails or messages about trivial matters. Likewise, because relevant information is on a centralized platform, employees won’t have to waste time reading emails about insignificant operational details. As a bonus, the time that a centralized platform saves will allow users to focus on more important aspects of their work. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.
Better Visualization
Humans are visual creatures. Because of this, managers need to have quick and easy access to visual data. Software makes it easier than for users to navigate color-coded calendars and visualize schedules, meeting times, and other important information. The visual aspect of this data allows users to quickly spot trends and shortcomings that may affect short-term and long-term productivity.
For example, a shift manager at a restaurant can implement a color-coded schedule that assigns different colors to different positions. With the help of this functionality, the manager can see if there are too many waiters or two few cooks on a shift at a glance. Upon identifying an issue, they can quickly fix the schedule ahead of time so that the restaurant is better staffed for the shift.
Bring Operational Efficiency to a New Level
You want your business to be as productive as possible. However, that is nearly impossible without the proper system to track and schedule your employees’ shifts. Zoho Shifts make it easy to schedule shifts and communicate with employees and managers so that everybody is always on time and in the right place. If you want your company’s operations to run more smoothly, then contact Zenatta for a free consultation about dialing in Zoho Shifts for your business.
