Sometimes the difference between a struggling business and one that flourishes is in how they use the resources they have. It isn’t always about trying to hire the perfect new employees or figuring out a unique marketing trick to help you stand out. Finding success can be as simple as truly mastering the fundamentals of running a business.
One of the most important skills for managers is resource management — being able to schedule your employees effectively.
A work schedule is what you make of it. You can slap your employees down on the same schedule week after week with mixed results on their attendance and a slow build-up of burnout. Alternatively, a work schedule can be a tool that you tweak and optimize, playing to the strengths of your team members to deliver better service to customers and maximize your profitability.
In this post, we’re going to show you how to make the most of your employee scheduling with 12 tips to streamline your operations.
Why effective scheduling is important
When it comes to achieving success in your business, you shouldn’t underestimate the criticality of efficient scheduling.
Creating efficient schedules allows a business to forecast its labor costs better. By doing so, they can plan their budget more efficiently. Inaccurate scheduling, in many cases, is the number one reason why businesses lose money.
Underscheduling and overscheduling shifts are just two examples of inefficient scheduling. Both of these scheduling inaccuracies can cause a business to lose a lot of money over the years.
A great schedule helps make sure that every shift has the proper amount of employees so things run as smoothly as possible. Understaffing can lead to substandard service and damage your business’s reputation — both of which can contribute to decreased profit margins.
An efficient schedule will ensure that no employee will suffer burnout or get into an accident while at work as a result of exhaustion. Overworking can demoralize your workforce, lower productivity, and can lead to poor employee retention.
Alternatively, a great schedule can prevent disorganization and wastefulness. It can boost productivity and improve profit margins in the long run.
What makes for a great employee schedule?
An effective employee schedule is ultimately going to depend on your unique business needs and the specific traits of your staff members. That said, there are a few qualities that make for a great schedule.
It takes your staffing needs into account
Your staffing needs can change from week to week or with the seasons. What’s your budget? How many shifts do you have to fill? Figure out the resources you have at your disposal and aim to make the most of them week after week.
You’ve analyzed part performance
Do you know when your busiest days tend to be? How about your busiest times of the year? Have you been comparing the foot traffic of your business over the years?
Make sure you’re constantly taking into account the trends of your business over the course of your operations. This is useful data you can then use to optimize. You never want to be caught in the trap of running your business on autopilot.
Your team is happy with the schedule
Are employees genuinely enthused about their working hours, or is it more of an obligation? Furthermore, take into account each team member’s specific circumstances and foster a work environment of open communication.
Imagine a scenario where a team member has something going on in their personal life, but they’re too afraid to say it. Instead, they come to work distracted and deliver subpar customer service.
If you’ve established a communicative managerial style, this team member could feel relaxed enough to openly admit this personal scenario to you, resulting in them taking a day or two of paid leave off.
On the opposite side, if your team members are comfortable enough to come to you and ask for more work, you’d instantly know who’s the right employee to slot into the schedule to take over a team member’s hours temporarily. Open communication makes it easy to trade shifts as needed to address scheduling needs.
You’re in compliance with federal, state, and local laws
You don’t want to end up facing fines or worse by making the simple mistake of not checking laws surrounding employee scheduling.
For example, predictive scheduling laws (also known as Fair Workweek laws) are laws designed to help workers avoid dealing with abrupt shift changes. These laws require that employers provide schedules with advanced notice so that team members are always aware of when they’re expected to work.
These laws also tend to clamp down on clopening, which is when a team member is expected to both close your business and then open your business the next day.
It’s error-free
Did you type all employee names correctly? No mix-ups between Samantha and Sammy? Even if you believe you’ve scheduled everyone exactly as they need to be, make sure to double-check, especially if you’re scheduling employees manually.
Human error is bound to strike at some point when employee names are being written or typed by hand, which is why many employers prefer to use the automatic features in employee scheduling software.
Furthermore, how easy to read is the schedule for employees at a glance? You want to make sure that names, shifts, and days are readable and clear. An employee not showing up because they thought they were scheduled for a different day could lead to overwork for present team members trying to pick up their slack.
The overall takeaway here is that making a great employee schedule requires intimate knowledge of your business: your resources, your trends, your employees, and the law.
Things to consider when creating a work schedule
To create an efficient schedule, you must take into consideration several factors. This includes an employee’s skill set, availability and time off.
Skill sets and experience
If you want to make sure that each shift has an optimized team of workers, skill set and experience are two factors you should take into consideration or your scheduling.
You should make sure that every shift has at least one fully qualified and highly experienced worker to guide and mentor the rest of their team. You can classify your employees based on their skill sets to make it easier for you to find a replacement in case of an absence.
Off seasons and slow periods
When creating schedules, you should also take into consideration off seasons and slow periods. This will help to ensure that your customers get the attention that they deserve. Understaffing can cause you to lose your customers while overstaffing can lead to unnecessary labor expenses.
Holidays and time off
Create a policy that requires employees to request time off weeks in advance. Then, make sure that you’re accounting for time off when creating your schedule.
Employee availability and preferences
Each employee has a different shift preference and availability. Some workers prefer weekend shifts. Others enjoy working nights. Some don’t have a problem working overtime to earn more money if needed.
By taking these preferences into account during your scheduling process, you can reduce tardiness and absences. You can also boost employee morale and productivity in the process.
Emergency scheduling
You will inevitably have workers who don’t show up for a shift at all. In such cases, it is best to have a prepared list of workers who don’t mind working at the last minute. This way you will always have someone to call upon whenever another employee fails to show up for a shift or has a personal emergency.
How to schedule employees effectively: 12 essential tips
Knowing what you need to do to schedule employees effectively and actually being able to do it are two completely separate challenges. Here are some of the best employee scheduling tips you can follow to make sure you’re making the most of your capabilities.
1. Verify laws around scheduling
Before you dive into crafting work schedules, you’re going to want to look into any laws that might be relevant for your business, city, and state.
Here are some laws you may want to consider:
Clopening Laws
Clopening is when an employee is assigned to a closing shift and the opening shift immediately afterward. For example, an employee working at a retail store has to close at midnight and is then expected to show up to open at 8 a.m. Clopening laws, also known as right-to-rest laws, restrict this practice, protecting an employee’s ability to take time off from work and recharge before having to come back in.
Collective bargaining agreements
Collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) are agreements that employers reach through negotiating with employee unions. These agreements determine many aspects of employment from pay to benefits and work hours. As such, many CBAs also define rules around the scheduling of the workday, workweek, and shift schedule for employees, so you’ll want to make sure you’re in compliance with any agreed-upon guidelines.
Penalty payments
Scheduling penalty payments, also known as predictability pay, are law-mandated payments where if an employer cancels or reduces hours within 24 hours of the scheduled shift start, you have to pay your employees half of what they would have earned during their shift.
Predictive scheduling laws (i.e., Fair Workweek laws)
As we touched on in an earlier section, predictive scheduling laws — also known as Fair Workweek laws — are laws dictating that you need to ensure any schedule you make is posted for your employees in advance. The size of the business required to obey these laws, as well as the number of days in advance that employees must be alerted, varies wildly by location, with 14 days being an average number.
These laws most typically impact employers in the retail and food industries, as they were designed to provide employees with support where irregular schedules are more common. It’s worth noting that some states outright ban the ability to pass these predictive scheduling laws, such as Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Iowa.
Overtime laws
Some states have their own specific rules for how overtime pay is meant to be applied to hourly employees. Be sure to check your state’s rules here to ensure you’re in compliance for times when you need employees to work additional hours.
2. Identify your business needs
Improving your scheduling begins with a conscious effort to understand what it takes to run your business on a daily level. Take a day, or a week, to simply observe what happens over the course of a set time period.
- How much work gets done? And by which employees?
- How productive are they at the start of the week compared to the end?
- Do some staff members work better together than others?
The point of this is to identify what exactly it is you’re going to be addressing when you start implementing new methods of efficient employee scheduling. Otherwise, it’s impossible to tell if you’re making productive changes, making negative changes, or making changes that are simply different, but not actually impactful.
Here are some employee scheduling concepts to consider:
- Seasons. What season is it, and how does that impact your schedule? Does your business see more traffic at a certain time of the year, or a certain day of the week?
- Budgeting. Have you stabilized your business’s spending, or are you currently experimenting in other fields (such as marketing/ads) which might change the demands of your business on a day-to-day basis.
- Events. Are you currently planning on hosting some sort of event? A special circumstance, a special sale, etc. How will that impact your business?
3. Learn employee preferences
Who on your team is eager for more work? Who is fine with their current workload? Who wouldn’t mind less? Consider asking your team members face-to-face or sending them a no-pressure email about their work scheduling preferences. Your goal here is to create separate lists that identify the feelings of your team members. You’ll be using these to handle the changing needs of your business.
For example, let’s say Jake is currently working part-time at 20 hours per week, but he lets you know he’s more than willing to take on more work when it’s available, especially on the weekends. Now that you know that, you’ll be able to sub him in whenever one of your more stable full-time workers needs to take time off.
4. Identify your needs per shift
What tasks need to be completed per shift? For example, if you’re the owner of a gym, you’ll want someone knowledgeable working at reception to handle guidance and signups. You want a few working the floor to clean up machinery and rerack weights. This may or may not be the same person handing up more custodial duties such as mopping floors, cleaning windows and mirrors, and emptying out trash containers.
That’s 2-3 employees you want scheduled.
Breaking down what you need to be completed per shift allows you to better understand how to delegate to your employees. For example, if you’ve established a norm of having three employees handle the above tasks in your gym, but Bianca calls to let you know she’s sick and needs a few days off, you have enough knowledge to make a choice.
You can divide the tasks you need to complete, contact your two remaining employees, and ask them if they can handle the split workload between them. If yes, you’ve got those days covered, no problem. If not, you can then contact an unscheduled employee (like Jake) and ask if they can handle Bianca’s tasks for a few days.
Changing factors that may impact your shift needs
- Days of the week: Some businesses are busier on certain days of the week, such as weekends.
- Time of day: The time of day can be huge for your business. If you’re running a restaurant, you can expect to be busy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
- Seasons: For example, Gyms explode in January due to the number of people making fitness part of their New Year’s resolutions. Spirit Halloween, a retailer specializing in Halloween decorations, costumes, and props, tends to only open for 60 to 90 days per year.
Know when your business receives the most foot traffic and use that knowledge to plan your hours, shifts, and open days.
5. Reflect on past schedules
It’s easy to get so caught up in constantly working in the present and planning for the future that you forget about the past. But the more you look back at your past experiences with scheduling, the more you can optimize your time and effort for a smoother future. Take the time to reflect on what your experiences and data tell you.
- Which of your team members is more productive during early shifts? Which ones are able to work well through closing shifts?
- Which employees performed the best during last-minute changes?
- What scheduling methods did you try that didn’t work out?
6. Understand shift differentials
Shift differentials are when employees are paid extra (usually 10-15% more) to work a shift outside of the standard 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. workday. Shift differentials are different from overtime hours because hours set at odd times do not necessarily have to exceed the standard workweek. Overtime hours also result in a higher pay rate, going up to one and a half times the regular rate of pay. That said, you can have both.
Shift differentials are useful tools that you can use in conjunction with employee preferences. Let’s say you need to accelerate road construction to meet a deadline, and you’re considering adding on a few night shifts to make use of your part-time employees. If you know Jake has no issue working nights, he’s an easy fit for a late-night shift differential.
7. Allow advanced notice for schedules
Whether you have to take this step will depend on your state and local laws, but in any case, you’ll want to make sure you’re giving your employees plenty of future notice for work schedules.
This enables your team members to make the preparations they need to ensure they’re ready to present at work physically as well as mentally. They can ensure their personal business is handled and any plans for unwinding after work are settled. These little touches help improve employee satisfaction and reduce the chance of no-shows, as well as also help with retention.
8. Collect feedback
Due to the administrative burden that usually happens in management (without the right tools, of course), scheduling decisions can often happen quickly and using only intuition. Why not make the process more collaborative — especially since it’ll benefit you just as much as your team members?
By creating a process of collecting and implementing employee feedback on your scheduling, you might be surprised to find that some of your best workers are interested in more shifts, working holidays, or even want to take the initiative to learn a new skill — all of which leads to increased loyalty and retention.
9. Communicative the schedule clearly
We’ve touched on this point a bit throughout these tips, but it’s worth highlighting on its own. In fact, this attitude of clarity and emphasis is the exact mentality you want to have when it comes to alerting your employees of their work schedule.
Ask your team members about their least favorite aspect of scheduling. You’ll likely hear complaints about not knowing their schedule until the last minute or, worse, when they’re already at the end of a 45-minute commute and finding out they aren’t needed.
Your team needs to plan their life, and they also need to be alerted when work circumstances change. Make sure you’re using a method to give them real-time notice of the schedule as well as any changes to it.
10. Be mindful of work-life balance
Your employees have entire families and complex personal lives that are kept separate from the workplace. You’ll want to consider the wellness of your teams while you’re crafting a schedule.
Which of your workers are parents? Who’s had some turbulence at home they’ve mentioned recently? What religious holidays do you need to schedule around? Have you been balancing team scheduling, or are some employees in danger of overworking themselves?
If you’re scheduling nurses and notice that Mary has been unusually quiet and dragging her feet returning from lunch breaks, maybe you find space in the schedule to give her a day or two away from work. Upon her return, ask how that little minibreak treated her and how she’s feeling.
Suddenly she’ll know you were responsible for her “coincidental” two-day break: the critical time she needed to decompress, even if she didn’t realize she needed it.
It’s far too rare for managers to remember that employees have plenty going on after they clock out. By keeping this in mind when scheduling, you set yourself apart — and set your team up for success.
11. Have a backup plan for emergencies
All the management tips in the world won’t stop life from happening. Employees have sudden emergencies and need to call out. Contractors experience equipment failures. Inclement weather means some of your team members can’t report to a job site.
You always want to have a backup plan that you can rely on when you need it. Maintain a Rolodex of former employees, independent contractors, and even part-time team members or flex workers who are ready and able to spring into action. A good manager can adapt to even the worst possible scenario.
12. Make use of employee scheduling software
It can be tough to make use of all the previous tips week after week. Even if you’re making use of a schedule template, having to modify and verify spreadsheets is time-consuming and leaves you open to human error much more than other more modern scheduling tools.
That’s why we recommend that business owners make the switch from manual methods of scheduling to using digital scheduling systems, like Buddy Punch, as soon as possible.
Creating effective employee schedules with Buddy Punch
Buddy Punch comes with many powerful employee scheduling and time-tracking tracking features, but we’re going to narrow in on how simple and effective it makes it to create work schedules.
It all starts with our drag-and-drop function. Simply open the weekly schedule and click the cell where you want to add a shift. A popup will appear asking you to fill in the important details: which employees are working the shift, when the shift will start and end, any break times, and more.
You can also set it so the shift repeats for employees that have a set schedule, and you can specify the location where the employee will be working and the specific role they’ll fill, plus add any notes you have.
You can also:
- Color-code work shifts.
- Quickly edit start times/end times.
- Edit the schedule by dragging and dropping the shift to different days/times.
- Set up repeating shifts.
- Assign department codes and locations.
- Add notes for a shift.
- Visualize scheduling conflicts.
Additionally, Buddy Punch allows employees to set their availability to share when they are and aren’t available to work. You can then easily use this data to build schedules quickly.
Once your work schedule is set, you can configure Buddy Punch to send a notification to all relevant team members.
Finally, even when you think you’ve made the perfect schedule, life can happen, resulting in team members being unable to come to work. Thankfully, Buddy Punch lets these team members take control of finding a replacement. Employees can choose which shift they’re unable to show up for and put in a trade request with a coworker. If the coworker accepts, the schedule automatically updates to reflect the change.
Common mistakes to avoid when creating work schedules
Even when armed with these tips, there are still some gaffes you may make that could result in some subpar scheduling. Here are a few common ones to watch out for.
Not giving enough of a heads-up to team members
The perfect employee work schedule is completely useless if your team members aren’t aware that they’ve been placed on it. Make sure you give an employee ample time to absorb when they’re scheduled and adequate notice (via text messages, email, etc.) that they’re on the schedule.
Many employee scheduling tools have this built into their functions, and some of them even automatically notify employees when you publish their schedule.
Too many hours/too few hours
Here’s an issue that small business owners often underestimate: scheduling your team members for more hours than is necessary to complete their tasks. This is usually born out of fear of understaffing but can result in the exact opposite issue if you’re not monitoring your staffing levels and how they’re connected with overall task completion.
This is why it’s important to understand your team’s working hours as well as their task completion while on the job. Certain apps have job-costing features to help illuminate this. On the other hand, scheduling too few hours will mean team members don’t have enough time to complete tasks, which can hurt your business if they rush through and do something improperly or leave it outright incomplete.
Not playing to team members’ strengths
Putting a team member on tasks they’re not suited for can result in them taking longer than necessary to finish them. Identify (or simply ask) which team members are best for each job you have, then use that to inform how you assemble your work schedule.
Unfair hours and distribution
As you’re playing to team member strengths, don’t fall into the trap of giving too many hours to certain employees over others. Beyond the fact that other team members may grow jealous in this scenario, the team members constantly being scheduled week after week may gradually grow to feel burned out. If you’re leaning too heavily on them, and suddenly lose them to overwork, it’ll be harder for you to adjust.
Like with most things, balance is key.
Related Reading:
- The Best Employee Scheduling Software for Small Businesses
- The 16 Most Popular Types of Work Schedules
- Common Scheduling Challenges and How to Fix Them
- How to Create a Work Schedule
- Free Employee Scheduling Templates
