Especially during the summer months, optimal workforce planning is anything but easy. Whether vacation days or problems with childcare during the school holidays – shift planners are particularly challenged at this time. In addition to considering the needs of your employees, the efficient operation of the company is an essential factor.
But which employees are sufficiently qualified? Who can take over a shift at short notice or which employees need the afternoons to look after the children? To help staff schedulers have a relaxed summer, we’ve put together a few of the most important tips for reliable and fair shift planning!
Avoid bottlenecks: Plan for the long term
Employees are an important resource for companies. Since different tasks and activities often require a variety of qualifications, it is important to analyse which employees are suitable for use for certain areas right from the start of the planning process. By storing skills and allocation preferences, planners can ensure that appropriate workers are assigned according to their individual capabilities.
Particularly automated shift scheduling tools enable a clear collection of planned vacations, saved employee information and individual strategies. Through the central database, staff planners can also access important information at any time to ensure optimal planning.
Work-life balance: employee participation as an important factor
Parents often find it difficult to balance their changing shifts and schedules with family commitments. In order to be able to reduce short-term absences, involving employees in staff scheduling is a valuable thing. Through various scheduling strategies, HR managers can decide for themselves whether e.g. open shifts should be posted on a first-come-first-served. In this way, in addition to employee satisfaction, individualized shift planning is also made possible in a very straightforward manner.
Responding to unforeseen events
Rotation cycles are also common in shift work. It is therefore essential, even in the case of short-term absences, to take working time regulations and any service agreements into account. Intelligent planning tools support personnel planners in finding an available replacement within a few seconds. A match between qualifications and duty times is automatically reconciled by the system, which means that reliable and uncomplicated duty scheduling can be implemented.