Complex formulas, missing interfaces or special requests from employees – all of these factors make it difficult for schedulers/dispatchers to work with Excel. While rostering in Excel still seems quite manageable when teams are small, problems soon occur as complexity increases. Let us show you the 5 main advantages of automated scheduling solutions:
Focus on employees
The registration of time off requests and rescheduling of rosters using an Excel model is often associated with an extensive communication and planning effort. Modern scheduling solutions – on the other hand – enable direct communication between employees and the software, allowing all possible options to be considered. Even more, exchange requests can be sent with just one click, without the need for manual changes.
Qualifications and optimization criteria are always taken into account
Compared to the Excel method, dynamic planning with the support of a specialized software enables optimal staff scheduling in a matter of seconds. By assigning suitable workers to the optimal schedules, an increase in efficiency and employee satisfaction can be achieved. At the same time, the software system guarantees compliance with legal regulations and individually stored planning strategies. In addition, schedulers have the possibility to manually customize their rosters.
Transparent and fair
Equality and fairness are central elements of good employee scheduling. Therefore, ensuring a fair and transparent distribution of unpopular shifts is even more important. Intelligent planning systems like the Sheepblue software automatically take these factors into account.
All important issues at a glance
Only those who have enough information can make optimal decisions. While in the traditional planning environment, important information is usually scattered in a multitude of tables and folders, innovative programs offer a variety of interfaces for optimal integration of existing systems. Thus, employment contracts, time regulations and individual qualifications can be stored centrally. At the same time, vacations, overtimes and off times are always visible to staff schedulers and third-party systems.
Time is money
Shift planners and managers spend a lot of time creating and modifying duty rosters. By automating the creation of schedules using digital planning tools, the individual planning effort can be reduced by up to 75%, freeing up important personnel capacities for other activities. Especially the reduction of sources of errors provides an enormous advantage compared to planning in Excel. Additionally – by improving employee satisfaction – an increase in efficiency can be observed and idle times can be significantly reduced through optimized planning.
Please read also our other blog posts on this topic:
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