How to Handle Staff Scheduling Like a Pro: The Ultimate Guide for Start-Ups

There’s a difference between a great team and a team doing great things; the measurement is business productivity. Tools for staff scheduling and workflow management make a world of difference and are therefore considered essential components of any successful business.

Both systems help organizations to plan and manage their workforce more efficiently and effectively. Remember, improving your staff’s productivity will be realized throughout the business, from more products created and sold to better customer service and more profit.

What is Staff Scheduling?

Staff scheduling allows organizations to determine the correct number of employees needed for each job or task and which staff will perform better on projects.

What is Workflow Management?

On the other hand, workflow management helps businesses streamline their processes and ensure that tasks are completed promptly. With the help of these tools, companies can maximize their resources, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction.

How To Use Staff Scheduling Systems

Here is another explanation of workflow management. For more information on staff scheduling, continue reading this business blog post.

1. Better Hiring

Scheduling employees is about more than clever organization. In fact, the best scheduling starts at the very beginning.

Specifically, you need to examine your recruitment and hiring strategies. Make sure you look at personality and passion in addition to their education and accomplishments.

Your employee scheduling is a lot easier when everyone works well together. And by honestly examining things like personalities and hobbies, you can create an office that gels together as a team.

As a leader, you should have a vision for your company’s future. Hiring people powered by their own vision and ambition is vitally important.

2. Build Around Strengths

One of the hurdles in scheduling employees is figuring out who to schedule at which points. Our advice is to build around employee strengths.

For example, some workers may be chronically late for the morning shift. But they are rock star employees in the afternoon.

Such an employee should be scheduled for when they will be at their most productive. And as a bonus, scheduling around employee needs in this way can help to build staff loyalty.

Keep in mind that scheduling is an ongoing process. The more you learn about strengths and weaknesses, the more you may need to fine-tune your schedule.

3. Present Schedules in Person

Technology has made it very easy to create digital schedules. In fact, we are particularly fond of how easy an employee schedule maker can make running a business.

However, it’s still good to present schedules to employees in person. This builds goodwill and actually saves time.

Your employees can voice any concerns about the schedule to you right away. This is always preferable to creating a small mountain of back-and-forth emails.

And, once more, accommodating employee needs will build staff loyalty. This goes a long way toward ensuring you get the most out of each team member.

4. Open Communications

To improve scheduling management, you need to have open communications. And “open” actually goes two ways.

First, you should have an open-door policy about scheduling. Employees should feel free to voice their questions and concerns to avoid conflicts that may happen down the line.

However, communications must also be open, as in “easily accessed.” There should be quick and efficient ways for everyone can gather and share the most essential information.

This might include something as formal as a CRM or something as informal as Slack. How employees communicate is less important than ensuring they have an easy way to do so.

5. Mix Things Up

With any luck, you’ve hired some of the best employees. But even among the very best, some will be better than others.

Create two lists for your employees. The idea is to sort out the most efficient and competent employees on one side and the less motivated and consistent on the other.

Next, make sure to have a mixture of employees, so you get the best of skillsets and strengths for every shift. This makes sure your workplace isn’t imbalanced.

Mixing the teams allows the employees to learn from each other’s strengths and improve, ultimately making the workplace more efficient.

6. The Two Week Rule

Schedules are a great way for everyone to know who is working and when. However, that leaves a big question: how far should the schedule extend?

This is a classic Goldilocks-style dilemma. Schedule it too far in advance, and the inevitable changes can mess up all your plans. Schedule it for the very near future, and people won’t have enough time to make their future plans.

Our recommendation is to create schedules two weeks in advance. This is the “just right” amount of time to let people make plans and not have small changes become big problems.

7. Demonstrate Leadership

There is a lot of overlap between management and scheduling management. One of the most significant examples is the need to demonstrate leadership.

To employees, there is a big difference between “manager” and “leader.” A manager is someone who tells them what to do. A leader, however, is someone who shows them what to do.

For example, show your willingness to work some less popular shifts. And demonstrate a “hands-on” attitude when it comes to solving problems.

The heart of schedule management is getting the most out of employees. And when they show how much energy you pour into your job, they will be inspired to increase their efforts.

8. Use Software

If you have a small enough staff, you may be able to create a schedule yourself. Pretty soon, though, you’ll wish you had used some good scheduling software instead!

Scheduling software makes every aspect of scheduling a bit easier. For instance, you can automate much of the process, which frees up countless hours.

And interactive scheduling software makes it easy to update as well. Changes can be made and shared in real-time, so no one ends up coming in at the wrong time or on a bad day.

You can always return to the “old school” way if things don’t work out. But we’re sure you’ll fall in love with scheduling software immediately!

Staff Scheduling: The Bottom Line

Now you’ve learned more about the art of staff scheduling. But do you know how to take your business to the next level?

Here at Business Blogs, we bring you the best information about how to grow your business. To experience the difference, come check out our management blogs today!