Still manually scheduling? Top reasons to switch to an online scheduling tool

Planning shifts is an essential task, but it’s also a source of frustration for many businesses. Manually scheduling a workload can be time consuming, vulnerable to mistakes, and involve complex reworks if anything changes.

If you’re still using a spreadsheet or other basic system to create staff rosters, here are 7 valuable reasons why switching to an online scheduling tool makes shift planning simpler and more accurate.

1. It’s quicker to plan and edit staff rosters online

Time is a major currency for busy companies, and your senior managers and team leaders hold so much value for your organisation. Why waste their time on an admin task like creating and updating staff rosters?

With an online scheduling tool you can build shift plans in minutes and share them directly with your workforce. More importantly, if you need to make a change – for example, someone books time off – it’s much easier to edit your schedule online than update a manual spreadsheet, and your roster is less prone to human error.

2. You can plan shifts by strength as well as numbers

Getting the right number of people for each shift is important for managing operational overheads. However, shift optimisation is more than a matter of getting the right staff quantities; you need a good mix of strengths and capabilities to ensure work runs smoothly.

An online scheduling tool will enable you to plan shifts by competency, skill and seniority, so you’ve got the perfect mix of people working day-in, day-out. You can also map schedules to demand, creating shift templates to use throughout the year as customer activity ebbs and flows.

3. Staffing gaps are highly visible (and can be filled easily)

One major advantage of managing your staff schedule online is that you can set rules around exactly how many people need to be assigned to each shift to meet minimum staffing requirements. And your online scheduling tool will highlight any gaps – so you don’t end up under-staffed.

You can then use your cloud-based shift planning system to fill that gap, sending out an open shift opportunity alert to available staff who may want to earn overtime.

Online scheduling tools can also help you to manage the overtime process. You can see each team member’s total assigned hours, to allocate overtime fairly and stop people burning out. And if you decide to pay additional hours as time off in lieu, some online scheduling platforms on the market (like WhosOffice) will allow you to add that time to employees’ annual leave entitlements, as a separate leave allowance.

4. You can integrate shift plans with your holiday calendar

Planning shifts is complicated enough, but it becomes even more complex when you factor-in people’s time off. One common shift planning mistake is rostering someone who’s away on annual leave – and some companies don’t discover this error until that person doesn’t turn up for work.

Choosing an online schedule tool that can also manage staff leave (like WhosOffice) will allow you to run the two programmes hand-in-hand. When someone requests time off (either annual leave or TOIL), their time off is logged on the system and highlighted when you’re putting rosters together.

You can also set rules around who can book the same days off, so you’re not left planning shifts with minimum staff availability. And those rules can change throughout the year; for example, placing additional restrictions around who can take time off during peak trading.

5. Everyone gets access to an online scheduling tool

If you’re still manually scheduling employees, updating and sharing the work rota is difficult to manage. Not everyone needs to see your master schedule, yet it’s difficult to extract the relevant data for each team member.

With an online scheduling tool you can give everybody access to the shift planning tools they need to do their job effectively – and nothing else. For general staff, this means a list of their upcoming shifts. If your cloud-based scheduling tool has an integrated holiday calendar they’ll also be able to view their annual leave entitlement and request time off.

Meanwhile team leaders, managers and HR can be granted access to additional administrative features that allow them to plan shifts, send open shift opportunities, manage TOIL and approve annual leave. Keeping your company running smoothly without the fear of oversharing sensitive information.

6. You can manage tasks within each shift

While managing shifts via a spreadsheet might enable you to set staffing day-to-day, an online shift planning tool will ensure those team members are working productively – and that all your key tasks are being covered by the right people.

To achieve this, make sure you choose an online scheduling tool with integrated task planning and management capabilities. This will allow you to build a set of core tasks, specify how many people they require (and any specialist skills needed to complete them), and assign them to relevant team members working that shift.

Another thing to look for is whether your scheduling system includes a staff mobile app for Android and iOS. This will make workload management data accessible via employees’ mobile phones, so they don’t have to return to a set location to check task lists throughout the day.

7. You generate valuable data on your business performance

It’s easy to think you’ve got your staff scheduling down to a fine art – but are you backing up that gut feeling with data? A market-leading online scheduling tool will include reporting and analytics features that allow you to substantiate staff activity and identify key trends.

For example, WhosOffice shift planning software allows you to view:

Summary of assigned shifts/hours worked at company, department and individual level
Breakdown of total overtime plus additional hours worked by team/employee
Staff annual leave entitlement and how it has been used (including how many leave requests have been declined)
Workforce skills and competencies
Employee sickness rates

With this data in-hand, you can develop effective people management strategies that build a happy, motivated workforce while managing productivity and staffing overheads.

Make staffing simpler with WhosOffice’s online scheduling tool

Detailed reporting isn’t the only feature WhosOffice offers. Our online scheduling tool makes shift planning easier – from creating, editing and sharing schedules, to integrating roster data with employee availability and leave.

WhosOffice also includes built-in modules for coordinating annual leave and TOIL, planning/managing tasks and HR and document storage. So you can easily control your business operation through one web-based platform.

Book your free WhosOffice trial to see how moving to an online scheduling tool will benefit your company.