Creating an employee schedule that works for everyone is one of the toughest parts of being a manager. If you get it wrong, you’ll lose productivity from your team.
Lost productivity isn’t the only issue, either. A survey found that lousy scheduling was one of the most common reasons for quitting. Bad scheduling will most likely cause you to have high employee churn.
Are you still struggling to learn how to make a work schedule? The five tips below will help you get your scheduling done right.
1. Use Technology to Help
Technology isn’t only for the people who sit behind a computer all day. It can help everyone that works for you.
You can make use of scheduling software to move your employee schedules to the cloud. Scheduling software gives your team access to their schedules whenever they like. It also allows them to change shifts, request time off, and see how much they’ve worked during the week.
2. Have an Availability Chart Available
If you try to create a schedule without a backup plan, you’re asking for trouble. What are you going to do when someone calls in sick? You’ll scramble to find a solution if you don’t prepare.
An availability chart can save you in these situations. It will tell you who is available to work throughout the week. Just call one of your available employees to fill in for the absent team member.
3. Anticipate Your Staffing Needs
Sometimes a rush happens that there is no way to predict. The best you can do in these situations is look to your backup plan.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t predict when you need more staff.
Look through your company history to find trends. When you can identify periods where you have a high chance of doing more business, you’ll be able to schedule your team more effectively.
4. Get Employee Feedback
At the end of the day, the scheduling for your business is up to you. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore feedback from your team.
Take the time to talk to your employees to see what you can do better about scheduling. There may be problems that you don’t know about.
5. Know Who You’re Working With
You can’t do shift planning in a vacuum. You need to understand what the personalities are like of the people you’re scheduling. The last thing you want to do is create a schedule that has people working together who don’t get along.
Take some time to learn about your team. If you don’t have time, have another manager help you understand the employee relationships. When you get the right people working together, you’ll have a more productive team.
Now You Know How to Make a Work Schedule
By now, you should know how to make a work schedule. While the tips above are a great place to start, there is still plenty to learn about employee scheduling. Make sure to keep learning and experimenting so you can continue to make better schedules in the future.
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