Digitalization In Shift Planning
Employee scheduling software is new on the market and a massive advantage for any business.
It's designed to simplify the scheduling process by managing appointments, creating planners, and finding a fitting employee for each task.
Accordingly, employees can access their scheduling apps with their mobile devices, set their own availability preferences, request absences, swap shifts, and much more.
Notifications permit a real-time overview of upcoming changes, allowing workers to plan in advance.
The bottom line is, integrating a mobile app with shift planners like these help drastically decrease the amount of time spent on tedious procedures and permit businesses to focus on the more important matters at hand.
Flair's shift planner is the ideal tool and designed to save you hours upon hours. Especially, when it comes to creating scheduling templates and making them visible for every employee. Improved flexibility and time-effective planning is guaranteed!
5 Best Practices To Schedule Retail Staff
With the instability of the retail industry, effective scheduling does not come easily.
If you do it poorly, you lose revenue, have dissatisfied employees, and have bad customer service. Done well, it'll reduce turnover, maximize profits and boost employee morale.
Here are some of the best five practices that'll help you cleverly meet scheduling needs.
Make Use Of Templates
Excel spreadsheets have long become obsolete and are not the perfect method for effective scheduling.
Predefined templates will significantly reduce the amount of time managers spend on creating schedules for employees.
Predictive Scheduling Is Key
Consistency is vital when scheduling shifts. So be sure to create schedules at least two weeks in advance.
This will allow employees to balance their personal lives while still planning for work. Also, forecast peak times and adjust schedule changes in advance, instead of leaving them to instinct.
Finally, after creating an achievable shift calendar, stick to it and notify employees ahead of time if changes should arise.
Allow Shift Swapping
A part-time workforce is prone to volatility, which is why it's essential to allow shift swapping.
Rather than losing precious time during last-minute changes, trying to find an available employee, permit co-workers to indicate for themselves when they'd like to swap, i.e., with the help of automated shift planners.
Avoid On-Call scheduling
Customer demand is unpredictable, especially in retail, which is why some industries utilize on-call scheduling. As we discussed earlier, it requires the employee to be available at any time during their shift, often leaving workers stressed out.
Retail workers have repeatedly been complaining that this tiring practice makes it hard for them to plan their personal life, which is why several retailers, including Urban Outfitters or Victoria's Secret, have stopped this practice entirely.
Be Transparent And Communicate
Again it's important to emphasize that a clear, streamlined process for communicating shift schedules to your employees is necessary.
With the right scheduling tools, employees can see who is available at what time and be notified about shift changes.
A nice bonus would be to boost employee morale by giving out positive feedback or allowing employees to join in with comments and likes to build a healthy company culture.