Good schedules can do many things. They can help reduce labour costs, they can keep customer satisfaction high and they can generate more sales.
But can they make your employees happier? The answer, is, categorically, yes. Before we tell you why, it’s important to understand what life can be like for shift workers who rely on weekly or monthly schedules to see when they are working.
Rarely do shift workers have control of their schedules and, more often than not, they only get, on average, three days notice of the next week’s schedule. This can have a huge impact on their lives outside of work. It makes it highly challenging for them to plan their lives, with everything from family commitments to leisure time affected.
For part time workers, or people working in the gig economy, this also greatly increases the challenge of working multiple jobs and makes it incredibly difficult for them to calculate their income, as their hours can fluctuate wildly.
It’s a far cry from creating a positive culture and working environment where employees are engaged and willing to go the extra mile. The solution? To use a scheduling model that’s automated and gives employees choice and control while empowering them and engaging them.
Whether it’s employee-led scheduling, preference based scheduling or schedule bidding, there are numerous ways to optimise the scheduling process. In fact, the most advanced business optimisation tools and workforce management software will allow you to create bespoke rules for your business, so you can always ensure the right people are in the right place at the right time.
And here are the four main ways, mentioned above, your staff will benefit:
Empowerment
The simple act of being able to manage when they work, managing their leave and seeing the hours they’ve worked (especially when it can all be done through an app) is empowering for staff who have, historically, felt like they haven’t been heard. In a recent study, 95% of part-time workers strongly agreed that using an app makes it easy for them to adjust their schedules in order to fit their needs.
Choice
Let’s face it, no one likes being dictated to and the ability to choose (or at least request) the shifts they’d like to work gives employees a far greater choice than they have with traditional scheduling methods. It also makes it much easier for managers as everything is in one place. What’s more, the best systems are able to optimise and automate the rotas accordingly, based upon both the needs of the business and the employees.
Control
Control for employees is a big deal. And feeling like they are in control of their lives is one of the biggest impacts better scheduling can have. Belynda Maquis-Mondesir is an Aviation Security Officer at London City Airport, who use a workforce management solution for their scheduling, and she says:
“It had a massive impact on me and my life. I feel like I’m in control. I can organise a shift swap through the app on my phone and then, bing-bang-boff, it’s there and we’ve done it. Since using it I haven’t missed a birthday, a social event or family time, and you can’t put a price on that.”
Engagement
The result of all of the above is much higher levels of employee engagement. This means your business will be more profitable, you’ll have less sick days, you’ll have better staff retention and you’ll have higher levels of customer satisfaction. What’s not to love?
Happy employees and happy customers make for a happy business. If you’d like to find out more about how you can optimise your business with workforce management software then we’d love for you to join us on Thursday, March 22, for a free webinar where we’ll be discussing how to cut labour cost, without cutting staff. You can register through the link below.
