What is employee schedule maker ?
Schedule maker is the tool that helps you to manage your employees' schedule seamlessly. It enables you to create and manage a wide range of schedules depending on the type of job or project assigned to your employees. It provides an easy interface for assigning work hours, set work days and dates, distribute shifts and more. You can also use this app as an app for managing vacation scheduling. If you are looking for a reliable employee scheduling tool, then schedule maker is exactly what you need!
6 Essential Features to Look For in an Automated Employee Schedule Maker-
Employee Scheduling- What's it About?
A sizable population in a business today is working remotely either from home or out there on the field. The employee scheduling tools become vital in this scenario as they are the only medium through which work schedule and shift schedule can be monitored while maintaining seamless communication within teams.
Employee scheduling manages staff work shifts with the help of a time tracker method that keeps the flow of the business running smoothly with transparency. It is mainly meant for managers that can allot work, create and manage their key performance indicators so that tasks are done in time. You can track employees' work and their presence in real-time with the help of geo-tracking tools that comes integrated with employee scheduling software.
Today's workplaces have become flexible and are target-driven and having a proper schedule in place lets managers manage employee shifts in a way that if an employee takes a leave another employee can fill in for the day. A great tool for every business especially for service industries where customers face employees directly.
What is Scheduling Software?
That time has long gone when work schedules used to be put on a pinboard, or at the end of the week, the staff gets emails for the next week's plan. With scheduling software, the managers can update employee schedules on the software mobile app which lets employees know about their schedules while they are on the go.
Besides assigning work, employers can track employee attendance, KPIs, leave, and overtime from one single software that benefits in procuring correct payroll slips without overpaying or underpaying employees. Employee schedules with the help of scheduling apps can be made with a drop of a hat as the software analysis past history of schedules and can generate auto schedules for each employee.
If you want to organize your office and create a disciplined work culture, then scheduling software is what you need. It manages shift planning and time off requests like no other tool. Before buying a scheduling app you must consider that it can handle different types of workers like work from the office, work from home, or field workers and manage their shifts and schedule accordingly.
You need to make sure your employees are working the hours they need to be, but you’re too busy to keep a close watch on them.
Don’t waste time, money, and resources on something you can easily automate. Find the right automated employee schedule maker and your job is done.
How Does Scheduling Software Work?
Scheduling software uses scheduling algorithms and intuitive software methods that make managing multiple employees' work schedules easy to appoint and track. It is a platform used for discussions regarding employee shifts, free time, time offs, work hours, and tasks at hand. Scheduling software is meant to manage employees by bringing transparency and better communication within the workforce irrespective of whether an employee is physically present in the office or not. Virtual communication has become seamless with better forecasting of tasks to be given. Allotting schedules takes much lesser time with the help of a predictive scheduling planner.
You can categorize employees that use scheduling software in two ways-
1. Work from office- There is not much to do for managers as far as managing shift is concerned. Office employees usually work on the same shifts every day, but they need scheduling software to manage their work schedules, time tracking, and payroll. Also, communication between employees has become seamless and everyone gets to know who's on leave, and which employee has done over time. Employees that are introverted or hesitant to speak openly can easily share their concerns through employee scheduling chat systems that are part of the software system.
2. Work from remote location- workforce management of remote staff is tougher as you cannot see them working physically. With scheduling software, the employers can track employee location through geofencing, and confirm whether an employee is really on the work location through tracking their IP address. Managing shifts also becomes easy as every employee schedule is openly available. You can check which employees are interested to do overtime, which one is going on leave, and so on.
6 Types of Employee Scheduling Apps
These days a single employee scheduling app has multiple features where one software can perform all functions related to managing the employee work cycle. But there are employee scheduling apps in the market that perform certain specific functions such as-
1. Employee calendar app- These types of apps are meant for making employee schedules only. The manager creates a calendar for each employee and adds them to their shift. Such apps work well for small businesses that have less than 10 employees.
2. Employee shift planning app- a great tool that is easy to use and neatly displays employee shifts. It becomes easy for the manager to allocate different shifts as the shift calendar clearly shows open, occupied to overlapping shifts that the whole team can see. The employees can also submit time off requests where the manager can either approve or decline, according to which the scheduling can either be blocked for time being or not.
3. Spreadsheet app- with the help of a schedule template creating a spreadsheet for weekly scheduling is no more a hassle. The app's work schedule maker creates intuitive spreadsheets based on past employee shifts and schedules. It is cost-effective and gets things done if you are running a small business and want to resolve scheduling problems.
4. Book meeting app- such apps are free employee apps that can be used to manage your daily, weekly, or monthly meetings from a single app. Booking meeting apps help in showing your vacant hours, busy hours, and hours fixed for meetings. You can keep it public so that if your employee wants to keep a meeting they can see your vacant hours to discuss work-related issues.
5. Time-clock app- Can't keep track of employee hours and work done in a day? The time-clock app will solve all your queries related to employee attendance and work commitments. It lets employees mark in and out work timings while they are working from remote locations.
6 Features of Efficient Scheduling Software
The overwhelming task of managing Employee Scheduling can be simplified by adopting scheduling software that comes with staggering features-
1. Easy integration with payroll, performance, and time-clock software-Scheduling software can be integrated seamlessly with your existing software that helps in generating correct employee data related to payroll, salary, attendance, and leave that in hindsight restricts overspending as every step of employee work can be tracked.
2. Employee self-service increases employee ownership- When an employee can manage shift swapping, attendance, time off requests on their own, it leads to less escalation and grievances problems, and HRs are not loaded with employee problems anymore. The employee knows where he stands as far as their KPIs are concerned and accordingly works to achieve them.
3. One tap schedule updates- Managing employee shifts is vital for a restaurant or other service industries as there are days when customer orders are bustling but the staff is low in number. The manager can drag and drop one of the employees' shifts from a busy day to a low staff day shift and automatically gives a day off for the busy day shift.
4. Automated scheduling- the majority of employees work on the same shifts so while planning the schedules the software automatically updates their schedules with the same timings. This saves managers time to allot each employee a separate schedule and only needs to work on those that change shifts.
5. Easy team communication system- The in-built chat system within the scheduling software app makes real time communication within the team possible. This leads to faster problem-solving and a thriving Company Culture.
6. Shift swapping made easy- The employee can swap shifts with another employee in a time of urgency or otherwise on their own with the help of the shift scheduling feature. The manager and the employer gets alert and notification whenever employees swap shifts. This way they know every employee's action without wasting their time to manage employees swapping themselves.
Managing your employees' schedules is a time-consuming task and it isn’t easy.
An automated employee schedule maker will help you set up your employee schedule quickly and easily with minimum error. Here’s how it’s done . . .
5 Best Employee Scheduling Software Solutions for Restaurants
- Zip Schedules- It is an affordable, intuitive, and cloud-based software that reduces labor costs and increases the revenue of your restaurant business. Zip Schedule software easily integrates with existing software and has easy to use interface.
- When I work- it is meant for large enterprises that manage employee scheduling and align it with time-clock software. Business grows faster as staff becomes more efficient as the granular level of scrutiny can be done through When I work software. Their mobile app helps managers do visual planning as every data of their team members is available on their mobile phones.
- Jolt- it is an operations platform that improves team productivity in restaurants. Besides providing employee scheduling tools, it enhances employee accountability regarding food safety and compliance. With one tap you can view multiple schedules with a drag and drop user interface. Smart alerts and caution alerts are also integrated into the system. The jolt software charges $89 per month for their standard plan.
- Shedulefly- It comes with a simple and easy-to-use mobile interface and caters to small businesses. It monitors labor costs, internal text messages for communication, staff availability, and information and staff schedules. Schedulfly's basic subscription plan starts at $30 per month for employee strength less than 19.
- 7Shifts- It is a great tool that does workforce management like no other. It forecasts staff needs by comparing sales and demand reports. Its drag and drop schedule templates come in handy and create schedules quickly. Their manager logbook is a unique tool that stores all customer feedback and helps managers to rectify those problems mentioned in the feedback quickly. 7Shifts is known for its accurate reports on staff schedules and labor costs. Their paid plans start from $17.99 to $69.99 per month.
Scheduling Software FAQs
- How visual planning helps save time with scheduling software?
- How to reduce making scheduling errors with scheduling software?
With in-built features like warnings and alerts, the employee can instantly correct their schedules that may have been overlapped with other person's shift timings by mistake. Through communication chatbots, the employees are well informed about new schedules and shift timings.
It's hard to find the time to manage your employees' schedules, and you want it done right.
There are a lot of employee schedule makers out there, but not all are created equal. This article will help you find the one that will work for you.