Scheduling: The Devil Is In The Details
An airline or subway system could only operate with a schedule that ensures that the right vehicle is in the right place at the right time. Without schedules, transportation would grind to a screeching halt. Many businesses also rely on schedules to operate.
Imagine hotels, manufacturing plants, municipal governments, or a refinery trying to conduct business without having the right people in the right positions at the right time. While these organizational examples may seem obvious choices for scheduling, experts found that many other types of businesses can benefit from the use of schedules.
Unpopular Shifts
Let’s examine some of the less obvious scenarios that could be improved with the use of schedules. Consider organizations that operate 24/7. A large portion of these organization’s workforces must work nights and weekends; arguably less popular shifts than the standard 9-5, Monday through Friday work week. The goals for this type of scheduling should be fair distribution of unpopular shifts and the minimization of overtime costs.
A schedule manager must factor in employee preferences, the skill and experience level of employees for a particular job, and any union contractual obligations that must be fulfilled. Scheduling systems like EmpCenter’s Advanced Scheduler simplify these types of complex processes, which are required to get the right people in the right position at the right time.
Popular Vacation Days
Another scenario that is experienced by almost any organization happens when too many people try to take the same popular days off, including the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Many businesses continue to function on popular holidays and, in some cases, may become even busier. The scheduling goal for these organizations is to avoid business stoppages due to decrease labor while fairly distributing these sought after holidays to all employees. Additional complexity may be added when a union contract stipulates how the distribution of popular holidays should be applied.
Attributes including seniority of the employee, past vacation days, and schedule preferences are used by a schedule manager to build a good holiday schedule. Scheduling automation systems that track employee attendance points can also reward “good employee behavior” by factoring this into the vacation bidding process.
This otherwise time consuming effort of letting employees bid on vacation day preferences can be offered through a self-service web browser, so time and costs are minimized and employees have more flexibility over the process.
Managing Sick Leave
An average employee calls in sick six days per year. If a sick employee usually fills a unique or critical job, his or her absence may have a significant impact on the organization. Most organizations can find a substitute employee for an empty position, but it may be time consuming and large organizations need to find replacements as soon as possible. The goal of sick leave management is to fill the vacant position quickly.
Schedule managers will try to match a vacant position with available employees whose skills and experience match the needs of the job. They will also prioritize their choices by ranking those employees who wish to receive more work hours ahead of those that have not requested it, and if time permits, they will choose people who are not close to or have not already exceeded their regular pay for that period. All other factors being equal, a person who only has 30 hours of work logged that week is a better choice for an additional five hour shift than a person who already logged 39 hours the same week.
This is another situation where the organization tries to apply available work time fairly. A union shop may also have clauses in their contracts that help the organization prioritize who will be selected, but these rules and the size of the workforce only add to the complexity of the task.
A scheduling automation system like EmpCenter’s Advanced Scheduler can help speed the process and make it easy for a schedule manager to automatically generate a list of qualified employees in the order that suits the business needs. This type of automation also lets employees enter a sick leave request from home and automatically contact the employees who are eligible for substitute work until it finds a replacement.
Shift Swapping
Studies have shown that the more control employees have over their job, the happier they are. Being able to swap shifts with a co-worker is one way they are able to exercise that control, but improperly managed swapping can cost the organization. The goals for schedule managers are to control overtime costs and ensure supervisors inspect and approve the shift swapping that occurs.
The usual process for shift swapping is a pair of employees visiting the schedule manager’s desk and leaving a note. The schedule manager will check to see if the two employees have the necessary skills and experience; ensure that the swap will not increase overtime or shift-differential costs for the company; and will verify the change with the supervisors.
This time consuming and expensive process can be replaced with an automated scheduling system. Rather than visiting the schedule manager, employees use a self-service web browser to enter their requests. The system automates the shift trade approval process by enforcing rules that the scheduler would otherwise need to process manually.
The system will automatically verify that each employee has the requirements for the other shift and then request approvals from the supervisors. The entire process can occur in the same time it used to take an employee to walk the schedule manager’s office.
The Bottom Line on Scheduling Automation
An automated system is only as good as the data in it, so another consideration worth mentioning is the system’s capabilities to report on the information contained within it. About 90% of the reporting needs for a schedule manager should be built into the system, and the other 10% should be available via ad-hoc reports that managers can create on their own.
The system, including those reports, should be security sealed, so that the wrong information can not be seen by any employees that should not see it. Scheduling systems should also keep an audit trail of all transactions, so any grievances can be met with proof the rules were adhered to.
Products like the EmpCenter Advanced Scheduler can save organizations significant costs by shortening process times and reducing unnecessary overtime. It was designed for high-volume, large employers with demanding scheduling requirements.
For more information on the EmpCenter Advanced Scheduler, click here.
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