6 Must-Have Capabilities to Look for In an Employee Scheduling System

At Connecteam, we believe a good scheduling system should streamline your entire scheduling process – from the initial planning stages up to ensuring everything runs smoothly throughout the actual shift. 

By giving busy business owners and managers full visibility and control, they’re able to save time, minimize mistakes, optimize communication, and ultimately improve their bottom line.

Let’s take a look at the must-have capabilities that make scheduling a breeze.

6 Must-Have Employee Scheduling Capabilities

One of the toughest aspects of scheduling is matching demand for work with available and qualified staff. Especially as demand and supply are often managed through different channels, lots of manual work is needed to ensure the right fit and alignment.

It’s, therefore, key to have a clear overview of demand and supply within your scheduling platform. This includes all required shifts or jobs, your employees, their qualifications, availability, work preferences, vacations, and any arising conflicts. 

The Connecteam app, for instance, by default, gives you a clear calendar view of your schedules with all the above-mentioned factors.

This way, you can easily assign the right people to the right jobs and ensure all shifts are covered while saving time, minimizing errors, and promoting optimal resource allocation.

We’re all human and mistakes are part of our nature, especially when juggling a myriad of factors in scheduling. If you’re relying on memory or doing this manually, errors are inevitable. 

Your employee scheduling system, on the other hand, shouldn’t falter.

Mistake prevention capabilities automatically highlight scheduling inconsistencies – such as double bookings and shift overlaps – making it easy for you to identify and correct any mistakes. 

In addition to flagging conflicts and inconsistencies, scheduling systems like Connecteam allow you to set custom limitations. This can, for instance, prevent admins from scheduling employees for too many weekly hours or users from unclaiming shifts last minute. 

This allows you to avoid costly mistakes and any unwanted situation, ensuring you always have the right number of qualified people on the clock, preventing budget overruns, and reducing compliance risks.

Beyond the date and time, a proper schedule should clearly communicate what is expected of each employee during their assigned shift or job. 

Without this clarity, employees waste valuable time searching for information or flood you with questions, causing delays and plain old inefficiency.

Your scheduling software should, therefore, allow you to add all the information your team needs to get right to it and perform at their best. Depending on your needs, this can include location, tasks, instructions, and client contact information.

Mobile-first scheduling solutions, like Connecteam, put all this information at your employees’ fingertips, no matter where they work from.

By making such information directly accessible in one centralized location, this must-have capability eliminates any confusion, misunderstandings, and unnecessary back-and-forth, promoting a more efficient and organized workflow.

Even if you have the perfect schedule- curveballs are inevitable in a dynamic business environment. 

Your scheduling tool should, therefore, offer enough flexibility to respond quickly to unexpected events or changes in demand, such as when an employee calls in sick, or a sudden job comes in. 

Connecteam does this by allowing you to instantly see and contact who is available to work that shift and assign it to them. It further gives you the option to allow your staff to find shift replacements with other qualified team members – so no need to call each employee to track down the perfect fit, just hit ‘approve’. 

Such schedule adjustment capabilities allow you to make swift changes, ensuring smooth operations and optimal staffing levels.

Great! You’ve shared the schedule with your team. 

How can now you ensure all assigned jobs, tasks, and responsibilities are actually being carried out? What if a client complains a job wasn’t carried out properly or on time while your employee claims he delivered his best work yet?

This is where real-time insight-gathering capabilities come in!

By gathering live data from your team throughout the workday, you can ensure everything is running smoothly, verify completed tasks, and monitor their performance.

As an example, Connecteam’s GPS time clock and live check-ins let you see all employees at the right place at the right time when on the clock. You can further ensure staff completes tasks to your standards with digital forms, checklists, and tasks, to which they can even add images of a job well done.

So no more time theft, no-shows, or incomplete work.

While all of the above significantly reduces back-and-forth regarding your schedules and daily operations, you will still need to quickly reach specific employees or all of them at times.

So, last but not least, opt for a scheduling platform that allows you to centralize all work-related communication.

This way, you can keep your team updated on any changes, stay in touch throughout the workday, resolve issues as they arise, and find last-minute replacements – zero phone calls or text messages required.

To accomplish this, you can instantly reach and share updates with individuals currently on shift, teams, or the entire company using Connecteam’s live chat and company feed. You and your team can also communicate directly from your schedule by adding relevant notes to shifts or jobs – keeping all shift-related information organized and centralized.

In a Nutshell

In today’s fast-paced and dynamic business landscape, robust employee scheduling systems have become paramount for successful operations. 

While many systems simplify planning, they often fail to cover the day-to-day aspect of scheduling – from sharing job information to handling last-minute changes – forcing managers back to traditional phone and text communications.

By embracing the outlined capabilities, you not only navigate the complexities of staffing, adapt to unforeseen challenges, and save valuable time and resources, but also position your organization at the forefront of efficiency.