“Tis the season,” whimpers many a manager while sipping cocoa and
contemplating the 10 different requests for schedule changes this week. It’s enough to turn any manager into the Grinch. Now that the holiday shopping season is in full swing, most businesses are deluged with shift swap requests, requests for time off and tasked with incorporating seasonal employees that are still learning the ropes. This is a busy time of year with holiday parties, final exams for students, and travel. If you are still planning your schedules on an excel spreadsheet, you can spend hours each week between now and January 1st just trying to re-arrange schedules. If this sounds like the challenge you face, give yourself the gift of staff scheduling software this year. For those who have not tried online employee scheduling software, you can reduce the amount of time you spend scheduling by 80%.
One of the ways staff scheduling software can help you survive this busy holiday season is by enabling electronic shift swapping. With a few taps on their mobile device, employees can request a shift swap or drop. The system will then notify you, as well as other staff members, of the request. Other employees can easily add the shift with a couple of taps, then the staff scheduling software will automatically adjust all schedules, which are conveniently stored online. For busy managers, the time savings in communications alone will make your life easier.
Concerned about enabling shift swaps? With flexible approval options you can place employees in groups that are automatically approved for specific job functions. You can also have the system check each employee’s maximum hours before approving, or use a manual approval setting to ensure you personally review and approve each scheduling change. With flexible rules, SubItUp also lets you select settings that exclude employees without the necessary training from picking up these additional shifts.
Another key to de-stressing your shift planning this holiday season is selecting a staff scheduling software that enables conflict-free auto-scheduling. What does this mean? SubItUp’s staff scheduling software has a unique feature to ensure you never double book your employees. If the employee did not mark the hours as available, or if they are scheduled to work in a related department, the software will not allow you to schedule them for the shift. For example, if you schedule employees working in the gym, and your colleague creates the staff schedules for the attached childcare center, SubItUp’s unique design can check all related departments to ensure that employees are never double booked. During the holiday season, many people pick up extra shifts and this feature can be critical to easing your holiday stress level.
For experienced staff scheduling software users, you know that you can replicate the schedule from previous weeks to save time, but did you also know that staff scheduling software can allow you to quickly modify the duration of shifts to accommodate extended hours? You can also quickly add additional shifts and message your staff to announce new shifts if you need additional support during a busy week. With a few taps, your employees can pick-up the new shift and you may have time to attend a couple of holiday parties this year.
Another challenging aspect of staff scheduling is vacation requests. These requests are especially difficult during the holiday season, which is also final exam time for students. Fortunately, a good staff scheduling software can handle these requests as well. In fact, SubItUp’s request for time off functionality removes the risk of leaving a shift uncovered or not having enough employees. We use intelligent analytics that enables each manager to see the effect the employee vacation request will have on the staffing load as a whole. It also checks whether there are enough hours available from other employees to cover the gap without exceeding weekly hour limits and incurring expensive overtime. By pulling this information into a simple report, SubItUp’s request for time off function can save you hours of time compiling and analyzing data for vacation requests.
This holiday season, consider giving yourself, and your employees, the gift of staff scheduling software. We offer a FREE trial of our online scheduling software, so you can be signed-up and creating schedules in minutes. See for yourself how SubItUp makes life easier for managers and employees, ensuring a less stressful holiday season, as well as a happier new year.