Work scheduling forms the foundation of hassle-free business operations. An optimal work schedule ties together your company’s disparate moving parts while organizing your employees and your business. In sectors like hospitality, retail, healthcare and IT, employee scheduling enables a smooth transition from one shift to another.

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Scheduling establishes a framework for paid work while setting your company’s operational hours. You can use a range of methods like pen and paper, spreadsheets or automated techniques like employee scheduling software to construct efficient work schedules.

Statistics suggest that a thoughtfully constructed work schedule drastically improves employee satisfaction, reduces absenteeism and increases overall productivity. However, employee work scheduling is an arduous process as you have to keep in mind multiple variables like employee availability, business volume, staff requests, seasonal requirements and more.

Additionally, you need to ensure that your employees have enough challenges and variations in their workday to keep them engaged. According to a recent survey, one in every four workers is planning to look for new work opportunities once the pandemic threat has subsided. Keeping them engaged is one way to encourage retention. On top of that, engaged employees can enhance an organization’s profitability by as much as 21%, according to a Smarp study.

What is a Work Schedule?

A work schedule refers to the hours per day and days per week you expect your employees to work per their employment contract. The schedule an employee works impacts their payments, responsibilities, benefits and labor law requirements. You can create a universal schedule for your employees or schedule them in shifts to meet the demands of your extended hours.

Benefits

There are many benefits provided by effective employee work schedules, including:

Establishes Consistency

Your work schedule-making strategies will standardize daily processes by offering you an accurate picture of the staff you will work with, allowing you to manage your employees efficiently. Once your processes become consistent, you will want to delegate work scheduling tasks to other senior employees in your team.

Saves Time

Optimal scheduling procedures can drastically reduce the time you spend making adjustments and figuring out logistical details. Free from the taxing mundane jobs, you can focus more on growing your business.

Ensures Compliance

Well-structured employee work scheduling helps you stay compliant with state and federal labor laws. You need to be aware of the different labor rules that apply to full-time, part-time and hourly employees while allocating hours each employee week.

Boosts Customer Satisfaction

Designing employee work schedules that boost your organizations’ productivity is no child’s play. You will want to schedule employees based on their skills and the jobs that they perform the best. Your organization’s customer services witnesses a jump when you allocate shifts based on employee skills.

Improves Retention

Thoughtfully prepared work schedules boost employee morale while improving retention. Employees feel frustrated and disrespected when work schedules perpetually undergo last-minute changes and don’t consider their prior commitments. Streamlined employee work schedules that require minimal changes promote a culture of respect and positivity.

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Types of Work Schedules

Let’s take a look at some different types of work schedules:

Full-Time

A full-time work schedule requires employee commitment of at least 40 hours per week. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) doesn’t describe full-time schedules; most companies implement these as non-altering shifts. The most common shift timings are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday.

In some industries like retail and hospitality, employee shift timings might change, but the weekly hours will still add up to 40. Due to long working hours, full-time employees are eligible for various benefits like PTO, sick leave and health insurance.

Part-Time

Any schedule less than full-time is a part-time work schedule. This arrangement offers employees greater flexibility to cater to their responsibilities outside work. Part-time employees don’t get the same benefits as their full-time counterparts, and their work schedules can change every week.

Fixed

A fixed schedule consists of the same number of hours and days per week for the entire employment period. Your employees agree to work for defined hours, days and work timings before starting their jobs. A typical example of this arrangement is Monday through Friday 8.30 a.m to 5 p.m.

Flexible

As the name suggests, this arrangement is about flexible work hours. Employers and employees determine the daily or weekly work hours together. Based on your work policy, you can set a mandate for minimum daily work hours or ask your employees to be present at certain time blocks, like during evening meetings.

Rotating

Rotating schedules are necessary for businesses that operate for extended hours and seven days a week. Here, you rotate your employees between the morning, afternoon and night shift cycles. You can follow daily, weekly or monthly rotational patterns and schedule your employees accordingly.

Rotating cycles provide you ample shift coverage for all shifts while breaking the monotony of permanent employee work schedules. Rotations fairly distribute work among your staff so that no one feels stuck with less appealing hours like the night shifts. The rotational arrangement is typical for industries like healthcare, armed forces, construction, manufacturing and more.

Split

Split shifts involve employees completing their shifts in two parts. The pattern allows employees to work a part of their shifts, clock out and return later to finish the remaining parts. Such schedules are a norm in industries like hospitality, food and beverage and transportation.

On-Call

On-call schedules are for employees that are available to work for specific hours. On-call duties are common in industries like healthcare, where employees perform their regular shifts while taking up on-call during emergencies.

Freelance and Seasonal

Freelance work schedules are for employees associated with businesses to fulfill a particular project but are not part of the regular workforce. Freelancers receive payments for specific assignments rather than the number of hours they work.

Seasonal work is temporary employment for a particular season. The arrangement can be full-time or part-time depending on weather conditions in settings like ski resorts or pools.

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How to Create a Work Schedule

Creating an effective work schedule isn’t child’s play, as you have to juggle multiple variables at once. The following is a step-by-step guide to help you optimize the process while minimizing your time spent scheduling:

Step 1: Identify Resources

Identifying your staffing and financial resources is the first step in creating an optimal work schedule. You will want to outline your wage budget while determining how many hours you can afford to pay your staff every week. This way, you can avoid pitfalls like paying overtime, which your initial budget didn’t consider. You will also have to factor in additional costs like hiring contractors for staff support.

Step 2: List Shift Requirements

It is essential to consider workforce requirements for a schedule’s shift categories. You will want to decide whether your staff requires a shift supervisor or they can manage independently. At this stage, it is crucial to consider factors like employee shift swaps, managing time-off requests and the work schedules that will suit you the most.

Step 3: Anticipate Demand

Here, you can determine your organization’s peak hours by analyzing sales history. If your volume ramps up in the evening, schedule more employees to discharge unhindered customer service. If your business demand typically goes up during the holiday season, you’ll want to schedule your staff accordingly. You can project your staffing needs using past experiences while noting demand fluctuations on a calendar.

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Step 4: Gather Employee Preferences

As a healthy practice, you can collect employee shift preferences in advance while keeping a transparent record of their availability. This method will give you a fair idea about employees who are flexible about their shift preferences and those who aren’t.

You can keep a master calendar to jot down employee availability while verifying significant gaps. For example, if you have more people to work on a Friday but almost none on Saturday, you will need to make some modifications.

Step 5: Review Past Schedules

Your past employee work schedules give you a clear view of what works and what doesn’t. Notice patterns like the employees that often switch shifts and those who end up working late. Compare your original work schedules to the modified ones while finding out the reasons that prompted those changes. Reviewing past schedules can help you create an accurate and workable schedule on the first go.

Step 6: Make Room for Replacements

Your business policy should give employees wiggle room to find replacements if they are unavailable or sick. However, to maintain order, you will want to determine whether employees need prior managerial approval or can trade shifts independently.

Step 7: Compliance

While preparing employee work schedules, you need to ensure that you follow the rules and regulations. Not following state and federal labor laws can attract hefty penalties.

Step 8: Post the Schedule

Post the new work schedule on a specific day every week so that your employees know when to start planning their week. Allowing enough time for the employees to go over the schedule and raise concerns helps transparent communication.

Step 9: Use a Schedule Maker

Since manual schedule creation is a cumbersome process, you can automate the job using employee work scheduling tools. These solutions streamline work schedule creation processes while making it easier to manage shifts during unforeseen change periods.

You can start by downloading free employee scheduling software to try out their features and offerings.

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Best Practices

Following scheduling best practices help reduce errors while ensuring little or no modifications. The following tips will help you design work schedules to enhance your operational efficiency while promoting a healthy work culture:

Define Scheduling Rules

Your company policies and regulations should be the defining factors while constructing work schedules. Ensure that your employee handbook and hiring contracts include these rules and regulations for employees to refer to in case of questions.

Take Feedback

Creating employee work schedules in a vacuum without any employee participation can do more harm than good. Taking regular employee feedback boosts employee productivity and engagement.

Staff input is also crucial to segregate mundane tasks from meaningful ones. According to a Citrix study, 87% of employees believe that the companies will automate rote tasks using technology soon to focus on meaningful work.

Set Clear Expectations

Setting clear expectations from a job role makes your life easier in the long run. When filling employment gaps, you need to ensure that your vacancy announcements for a position carry clear requirements like “should be able to work occasional weekends and night shifts.” The move will allow you to recruit people who will be able to make such commitments.

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Final Thoughts

Work schedule creation is crucial for every business setup. When done correctly, it improves employee engagement, drives up customer satisfaction and increases overall productivity. The trick is to adopt flexibility while constructing optimal work schedules.

Following a step-by-step process will help you build workable schedules for your business with minimal changes and rework. You can also consider using technology to assign work schedules with maximum efficiency to improve your organization’s work structure. You can use our detailed employee scheduling software comparison guide as your starting point.

How has effective employee work scheduling helped your organization? Tell us in a comment down below!