Free Employee Schedule Templates- How They Work and Where to Get Them

What is Employee Scheduling?

Employee scheduling is a procedure for anticipating labor requirements, managing employee demands and interests, and ensuring shift coverage. It also entails controling labor costs and adhering to compliance guidelines to optimize production.

An employee schedule acts as a link between the company and its hourly employees. As a result, creating an effective employee schedule is critical, as it enhances employee retention, satisfaction, and overall experience. Employee work schedules are critical in industries such as restaurants and manufacturing to achieve a variety of corporate objectives.

What is an Employee Scheduling Template?

When it comes to managing employee schedules, time can be the scarcest resource at any company. Scheduling employees is a key part of managing employees. An employee scheduling template is a set of instructions that include all the necessary details to schedule a specific employee. It's a list of all their work times, locations, and days of the week. It can help you manage employee schedules and keep everyone on the same page.

An employee schedule template essentially lists all of your restaurant's employees and the hours they are expected to work. You can create and add details in an employee schedule template easily, allowing all employees to keep track of their working hours and stay organized. The template model is determined by the industry. Some templates are scheduled according to time, such as weekly, bimonthly, or monthly, while others are scheduled according to work hours.

Keeping your workforce organized and on the same page is key to maintaining productivity in a business. But what if you could do it without spending a fortune?

Free employee schedule templates are an economical way to do this. Here's where you can get them.

Download now!

How Does Employee Scheduling Benefit a Business?

A restaurant or any other business can benefit from employee scheduling in many ways. It can help them keep organized, schedule employees, and track time. When employees are scheduled and know when they're working, it also helps them to focus more on their work.

Scheduling employees is also an important factor in employee retention. If employees don't like their schedule, they are more likely to leave in favor of another job opportunity. Collaborative planning, smart workflow management, and employee engagement are just a few of the benefits of employee scheduling. It helps businesses achieve several goals- maintaining staff and customers, working smarter, and fostering a culture of camaraderie and trust. If you're not sure where to start, here's a list of the top benefits of employee scheduling.

Reduced employee turnover
As a restaurant manager, your primary goal is to ensure that your staff' schedules are managed well. As a result, there will be fewer obstacles to their working hours, and they will be less likely to hunt for work elsewhere. Maintaining trust and fairness with employees in their schedules is critical for a happy workplace.

Ensures smooth operation
When you schedule the right employee for the right job at the right time in your company, you ensure that everything runs smoothly. For example, to run your restaurant effectively and profitably, make sure the best and most effective employees work during peak hours.

Control costs
Overstaffing and understaffing are eliminated with a well-organized schedule. Managers can limit labor expenditures and increase operational efficiency by optimizing shift schedules. Workforce scheduling helps to reduce errors that could lead to costly solutions.

Where to Get Your Free Employee Schedule Template

When it comes to getting your company organized and running smoothly, there's no doubt that employee scheduling is a challenge. With so many different schedules, time slots, and tracking methods to keep track of, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed. Luckily with a well-crafted employee schedule template, the challenge of employee scheduling can be minimized and optimized for maximum productivity. Whether you're just getting started with employee scheduling, or you're simply looking for a few new tips and tricks, read on to know where you can get your hands on a free employee schedule template.

If you haven't yet created a shift schedule for your employees, you can start by using a simple Microsoft Excel spreadsheet as an employee scheduling tool. It comes with essential schedule templates for putting together a work schedule. You can use this Excel-based workforce schedule template and make any changes until you are ready to install workforce scheduling software.

You can create a schedule template by the following steps.

1. Create a blank Excel spreadsheet
2. Insert column titles
3. Add employee names
4. Make a note of work timings
5. Save the document
6. Share the work schedule with your team

A Better AlternativeScheduling Software

When it comes to managing your time and workload, you have one of two options- you can keep track of everything yourself and hope you don't miss anything, or you can outsource the task and focus your attention on the things that matter.

As a manager, scheduling software can help you manage your scheduling time and workload more efficiently by allowing you to access your tasks and appointments from anywhere, as well as assign them to the employees who need to know about them. Spreadsheet-based workforce scheduling is prone to errors as it involves manual work. It is advisable to use scheduling software to manage work efficiently.

Employee scheduling software automates the process of creating schedules, resulting in better outcomes lower labor costs, higher productivity, and higher employee satisfaction. Owners and managers use it to schedule shifts for their hourly workers. Auto-assigning shifts, establishing auto alerts for new schedules, shift changes, clock-in and -out features, time card production, and payroll file import are all major features of employee scheduling software.

Keeping track of your employees' schedules can be a headache.

Use free employee schedule templates to stay organized and save time.

Download now!

Top 3 Employee Scheduling Software for Restaurants

ZipSchedules- If you are looking for employee scheduling software that can help you create schedules in just a few minutes, you should opt for ZipSchedules, available on the Hub Works app store. ZipSchedules is an intuitive, user-friendly workforce scheduling tool that simplifies the process of creating work schedules.

This self-implemented Workforce Management system includes features such as fast onboarding, a user-friendly design, and free mobile apps. It's simple to use and allows you to save preferred schedules as templates. When only small modifications to a week's schedule are required, you can modify an existing template to create a new one using its preferred schedules feature.

ZipSchedules also provides a mobile app that allows managers to save time by quickly finding employees to cover shifts. Managers can use the app to approve schedule changes, manage shifts, and get notifications. Pricing for ZipSchedules starts at $19 and can be customized with added features.

7Shifts- 7Shifts is a restaurant scheduling software that contains industry-specific features to meet the demands of a restaurant owner. The 7Shifts user interface is similar to that of a pen and paper format and an Excel spreadsheet. 7Shifts offers drag-and-drop navigation, auto-scheduling, and configurable shift plates.

Staff scheduling is made easier by basing it on weekly shift requirements and employee availability. Via instant notifications on the free mobile app, restaurant owners can inform their staff of assignments or changes. 7Shifts is free for single locations. If you have more than one location, its Entree plan is available at $29.99 per month per location. It also has a whole restaurant team management solution available at $69.99 per month per location.

Hubstaff- Hubstaff allows you to manage every step of employee scheduling. It helps assign tasks and even tracks employee productivity. Using Hubstaff, managers can add schedules to staff, check for availability and time-off requests, clock-in and -out times, and automate payments.

Hubstaff has an innovative time tracking and task management feature that tracks the team's time with detailed timesheets. Managers can view detailed reports, send invoices to vendors, and even pay staff as per their working hours. Hubstaff is also a good option for remote work scheduling as the manager can schedule work for employees in any location.


Hubstaff offers three plans- The Hubstaff Desk plan is free and only allows for one user per location. Time tracking, timesheets, restricted reports, and activity levels are all available in this plan. Its Desk Starter Plan is $7 per user per month and includes additional features such as single integration capabilities and 24-hour customer support. The Desk Pro Plan is $10 per month and includes unlimited integration, timesheet approvals, invoices, and payroll management features.

WFM Software FAQs

Q. How can you automate workforce scheduling?
A. Artificial intelligence can be used to automate scheduling and create work schedules. It eliminates the need for guesswork and human error. Start by integrating your employee shift scheduling software with your restaurant's POS system. The software makes judgments based on sales data from the restaurant's POS system, which advises staff scheduling.

Q. How can I prevent employee time theft?
A. When an employee is paid for the time they haven't worked or for tasks they haven't completed, it is known as Employee Time theft. Time theft is most common in firms that operate on a shift schedule. You can track an employee's shift time in different ways. For example, ZipClock's employee performance reporting features helps prevent it.

Q. How can I track an employee's work during a shift?
A. Managers can use a digital logbook to track an employee's work during a shift. They can avoid the pen and paper method in favor of a digital logbook where they can jot down significant shift highlights. Managers can utilize Zip Shift book, one of the best digital logbooks, which is available on the Hub Works web store, to exchange information with other managers and keep track of their employees.

Maintaining a schedule can be tough. It’s hard to keep track of everyone’s schedule, and someone is always forgetting to put in their availability.

Free employee schedule templates are a great way to make your life easier. You don’t have to worry about keeping track of everyone’s availability, and you won’t have employees complaining about not being able to balance their personal and work lives.

Download now!