Employees significantly contribute to the success of a company. It is therefore hardly surprising that buzzwords like employee experience, staff satisfaction or flexibility in employee scheduling are becoming increasingly important. Shift work in particular often represents a great strain for employees. In addition to physical problems resulting from shift work, social and psychological aspects are key factors for the health and well-being of employees.
In this blog we will show you how you can easily optimize your shift systems by considering teams in your workforce planning, while increasing the motivation of your employees.
Balancing private and professional life
Different shift systems, rotation patterns or specific planning strategies are already widely used tools among staff planners to minimize the impact of shift work. Nevertheless, workers often criticize the problem of finding a balance among social contacts, family life and their job. The lack of flexibility resulting from complex shift strategies limits employees’ opportunities for involvement in the rostering process even further.
It is therefore essential to provide a pleasant working environment. Next to clear and predictable schedules, the social aspect significantly contributes to the satisfaction of employees. By working in teams, employees have the possibility to form friendships, processes can become routine, and employees can complement each other in an effective way. In addition to an increase in general work satisfaction and joy, another advantage for companies can be observed: Well-established teams usually work far more efficiently than constantly changing lineups.
Considering teams automatically
Automated planning tools offer shift schedulers various options for taking teams into account in their duty scheduling strategies. However, it is important to define company-specific goals in advance in order to ensure that shifts are assigned in the best possible way.
1. Rotating entire teams
Rotation cycles are already widely used in shift work. In addition to rotating individual duties, automated tools offer the opportunity to store clear strategies. For example, it can be defined that teams only rotate together to promote team spirit, facilitate work-life-balance while continuing to utilize the advantages of the existing collaboration.
2. Allowing work-contributions and time-off wishes for the entire group
In most companies the opportunity for work-contributions and flexibility in shift scheduling are rather limited. Nevertheless this is an area that offers a huge potential for improvement. Employees can use interactive software applications to submit work-contributions and time-off requests which are then automatically matched with available shifts in accordance with configured planning strategies and qualifications. The ability to allow entire teams to make requests and still schedule them together offers many benefits for planners and employees. In this way, not only flexibility and co-determination can be increased, but also planning reliability can be ensured.
Please read also our other blog posts on this topic:
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