Many organizations, from higher education institutions to community recreation centers, need to schedule employees for shift work. The scheduling process can get complicated and it isn’t always perfect on the first try… or the second… or maybe even the third. Hey, no big deal – right? To your team members, it sure is. It is to your budget as well!
Let’s look at a simple example that happens across organizations that use basic Excel sheets to create manual schedules. Victoria is the scheduling manager of a community college’s dining hall. She has 20 employees, all of which are also students at the school, and therefore must ensure their work schedule doesn’t interfere with their class schedule. She’s been creating her schedules by hand for years, and it’s working out just fine.
Or is it?
How Scheduling Conflicts Cost You
Truth be told, Victoria’s efforts aren’t resulting in the perfect schedule when it’s initially posted live. More often than not, it has to be pulled offline to be fixed. This may not seem like a huge deal, but it’s costing her department more money than she realizes. Let’s look at a few ways this is doing so:
Absenteeism
Perhaps the most catastrophic result of the scheduling conflicts that come from manual scheduling involves employee absenteeism. Victoria needs everyone on her team to be working when they’re scheduled, not more and not less. If someone is working less on a consistent basis, this is known as “absenteeism.”
Scheduled vacations, occasional illness, and family emergencies happen to everyone from time to time and are not included in absenteeism. The issue arises when someone calls out on a regular basis and for non-emergency-related reasons. Chronic absenteeism has detrimental effects on your organization. These include lowered productivity, increased labor costs in the form of overtime (OT), and employee burnout. If a shift must be picked up by other employees, that creates more work for them, which can eventually lead to burnout for the more reliable team members. A hard-working employee may get burnt out due to the extra shifts, as well as angry at their team member calling off so often and Victoria for assuming they will always be there to cover shifts. Morale is dropping, and for good reason.
Because Victoria manually does the scheduling herself, she doesn’t see a pattern that one person is consistently calling off their shifts. She continues to put Natalie on for 40 hours, even though she calls off on a regular basis with very little notice and leaves the mess for Victoria to clean up.
Unpredicted OT
Let’s go back to the increased labor costs that result from OT. In her first attempt at the weekly schedule, Victoria has everyone under 40 hours a week. Because she forgot that Natalie always calls off after a night out on the town, Dana requested off this week, and Lindsey can’t work on Tuesdays, the schedule is pulled down and other team members are given more shifts. These unaccountacted for, additional shifts put some people well above 40 hours, leading to OT pay of time and a half. This boom in labor cost wasn’t planned for in the budget. What's even more frustrating is that you may not have needed an employee to work overtime in the first place; it's the result of a simple scheduling error.
Low Engagement
Let’s say Jeffrey has to cover shifts for Natalie, Dana, and Lindsey. He’s now working 60 hours, while he sees his coworkers at 35. He’s tired and a bit grumpy, and has good reason to be.
This isn't something to brush aside. Employee engagement is huge in the success of a department, and organization as a whole. An engaged team is one that works collaboratively, solves problems together, and is happier and more productive. Because of that, they're more likely to remain at the organization longer (more on this next.)
On the other hand, team members who aren’t engaged are going to do a poor job, show up late or not at all, give the customers in the dining hall a less-than-ideal experience, and cause Victoria a lot of headaches. Perhaps the reason Jeffrey doesn't put in much effort is because he was supposed to have Tuesday off too. His manager scheduled him anyway, so he had to cancel plans with his friends. As a result, he's disengaged and has started to wonder if a new job would care more about his work/life balance. This is sometimes called “quiet quitting.”
High Employee Turnover Rate
Victoria wants to keep her team intact for as long as possible. A high employee turnover rate is a killer to morale and productivity. A brand new employee will not be able to be as quick, efficient, skilled, and handle problems that arise the way a seasoned team member is able to. Her goal should be to keep her team members happy enough to stay on in her department for years to come.
Not to mention, hiring new employees costs money in and of itself. Running background checks, processing paperwork, Human Resources going over resumes, Victoria handling interviews, and paying other team members to train new hires all reflect money spent by an organization. This is all money that wouldn’t have had to be spent if an employee was happy enough to stay on board.
Additional Time From the Manager
On average, managers report they spend two hours each week dealing with conflicts in the schedule. Employees aren’t the only ones who get burnt out from working too much and slowly disengage. Managers do too! Victoria is tired and frustrated with how often she has to redo the same schedules, not to mention dealing with complaints from her team members and those in the dining hall who have to interact with rude staff.
This means she has little time to focus on other tasks, meaning they either aren't getting done or Victoria is working longer hours than she should be. In fact, a heavy workload and working long hours are the number one risk factors for burnout for employees at any level of an organization. She has every right to be burnt out, but there is something she can do to make a big change.
SubitUp’s Time and Attendance Software Solutions
Manual scheduling has a high probability of being inaccurate on the first attempt. A number of errors can lead to frustrating issues for everyone involved. By now, the problem is clear. Thankfully, the solution is as well – time and attendance software solutions.
For each and every problem mentioned above, SubitUp’s scheduling software is the solution. Not only are schedules going to be correct the first time, but they will also be done significantly easier and in a less time-consuming manner than the methods of the past. This means employees are happier, labor costs are reduced, and Victoria has the time to focus on other tasks at hand.
If you’re interested in learning more about what these solutions are and what positive changes can be brought to your organization, click the button below. Say goodbye to high turnover rates and ever higher disengagement, and say hello to time and attendance software solutions!
