Whether you're an eCommerce business with a distributed team, an international corporation with a global workforce, or an SMB with a few satellite offices, scheduling is tough. Not only do you have to juggle employee availability and double check shift assignments to make sure everyone gets the right amount of hours, but you also have to factor in employee time zones.
And since most businesses don't have a way to automate time zone conversion, managers and employees are often left doing math in their heads and hoping everyone is clear on where they should be and when.
However, by relying on global workforce scheduling tools, you can make scheduling easier and more enjoyable for everyone involved. Keep reading for the breakdown of 4 awesome benefits that global workforce scheduling tools offer businesses.
Before remote working and distributed teams, companies only had to worry about one time zone. They could set normal business hours, break each week into shifts, and assign those shifts to employees who shared the same 24 hour schedule.
But today, the story is very different. Many businesses rely on employees in different parts of the country -- and in some cases, other countries around the globe to get work done. As a result, scheduling has become an arduous process of back and forth, cross-checking, and conversion to make sure people are clear on their schedule and available to work it.
Global workforce scheduling tools eliminate this unnecessary complexity, by automatically converting schedules in the time zone of the viewer. All you have to do is assign each employee a time zone. The tool handles the rest.
This means you only have to focus on one time zone, instead of dozens, as you schedule. And if coupled with automated scheduling tools, these global workforce features can virtually put your employee scheduling on autopilot -- freeing you up to focus on important management and supervisory tasks.
When your employees don't work on a standard time zone, there's a lot of room for communication error. It might come in the form of employees absent-mindedly thinking the shift schedule they receive is in their time zone instead of yours. Or, it might come as the result of a time zone conversion mistake.
Whatever the case, miscommunication can impact your employees' ability to arrive for their assigned shifts on time. And this, in turn, can harm both your customers' feelings toward your business and the morale of your employees.
But with global workforce scheduling tools, all of this goes away. Managers can schedule employees at their leisure in the business' designated time zone, and employees can automatically see it in their own. No more missteps, miscommunication, or confusion.
Time zone conversions are agonizing -- for managers and employees. Managers have to use them dozens of times in a sitting to make schedules and assign shifts, and employees have to use them to mark their availability every week. And any mistake on either end can land an employee with an unwanted 2 AM shift.
Global workforce scheduling tools can fix this, by allowing employees to mark their availability in their own time zone. Once the information is there, the tool will automatically convert the time zones for you, making sure everything is crystal clear.
While it may not seem like a big deal to post schedules in a standard time zone and expect employees to convert it themselves, it can be a major hassle for employees. But for many businesses, it's the lesser of two evils. Either you can have your employees convert their schedules into the right time zones or your managers will end up doing it.
But with global workforce scheduling tools, you actually have a third option. With the click of a button, you can automatically convert staff schedules into their designated time zones and send them directly to your employees.
That means, managers can create schedules in say, Eastern Standard Time, and your employees in California will see it in Pacific Time. Regardless of where people are located, everything is tailored to their 24-hour schedule.
As an added bonus, your employees can clock in and out in their own time zone too -- which makes the overall user experience a lot nicer.
The reality is, with remote work on the rise and teams spreading farther and wider across the globe, it's important to have a global workforce scheduling solution. Not only does it make a huge difference to your managers and employees, but it also increases accuracy and efficiency in the scheduling process.
Interested in learning more about how a global workforce scheduling tool can help your business? Reach out today! We'll show you exactly what SubItUp can do.