There are many ideas about how to schedule staff effectively. Because industries are different in operation, it is important to be flexible with how you schedule.
In the last article, there was a basic overview on how to schedule employees.
This article is going to focus on the ways new business owners do scheduling with computer software.
The three shift planning software for creating schedules:
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft Word
- Time Clock Wizard
Depending on your budget, time and willingness to learn, making schedule and shift planning will sharpen your skills as a employee manager.
What are common Employee Schedules?
Even human resources industries pay well for talent managers to go out into the field to find employees just to manage inputting schedules efficiently. The real logistic challenge start with how are you going to create and record the type of schedule you want.
Types of Employee Schedules:
- 8 hour shifts are typically 5 days to full time. The most common.
- 10 hour shifts are good for 4 days. The extra closed day of the office saves on utilities.
- 12 hour shifts for 3 days give 36 hours (for when you need just less than full time.)
- 16 hour shifts for 2 days is 32 hours per week. This is good for nursing or weekend shifts.
- 24 hour days are typically reserved for on-call jobs. One per week is recommended for high-stress jobs.
How do you Make a Schedule on Excel?
This video in Excells Fun channel is about the functions you need to build the base of an employee schedule. This channel is a terrific resource for employees to learn Excel.
Do not forget to use Freeze Panel to be able to flip through records quickly in an organized fashion. The End of Month function really useful for organizing schedules per month. Also, you might even want to know the first day of next month for organizing schedule by month.
The functions in excel are not intuitive nor user friendly. People who choose this option for making employee schedules really are brand loyal to Excel or do not realize that there are better alternatives.
How do you Make a Schedule on Word?
There are people who find that Excel is really difficult to use. They prefer using Word to get the job done. In this video, by MizAshly, she shows how to make a daily schedule with Word.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5pTFJ7dRLo
In order to do this for employees, each employee would have their own schedule.
Basically, you would make a stock schedule, fill in the blanks for each employee, and print it out. This method is very time consuming and many managers find this method extremely frustrating.
Some managers prefer this method so that employees can write their own work schedule at the end of each week. as many labor professionals have pointed out: this method is easy for employees to abuse and exploit.
It is better to have a system that calculates the actual hours worked in real time anywhere where there is internet access. That is what Time Clock Wizard is terrific for. Read more about why a good recording system matters and the benefit of standard operating procedures.
How do you Make a Schedule with Time Clock Wizard?
Decide on the style of schedule you want. Time Clock Wizard has an intuitive interface for making staff schedules. This video (narrated by Melissa Ruy) is an overview of some of the features of Time Clock Wizard’s scheduler.
Time Clock Wizard is t he best value for managers who want to schedule employees in an efficient manner. This is much easier to learn that Excel spreadsheets and are more usable than Word documents.
The truth is that technology has excelled to assist management and human resources manage the core aspects of employee management in one place.
Now, after learning more about what the scheduler can do for your business style, you can try the service free.
How to Schedule Staff with Different Software Options for Shift Planning
In this article, the basic pros and cons of these software were mentioned:
- Microsoft Excel (or similar spreadsheet software)
- Microsoft Word (or similar document software)
- Time Clock Wizard (online software as a service)
- Our Free Printable Employee Schedule Templates
After deciding on the type of software and schedule you are going to use, the next step is the “plan schedule management process“. You can use the forecasting tool within Time Clock Wizard to help with this or look back at the last 90 days scheduled to notice patterns.
The goal is to learn how to schedule staff in an efficient as well as economical manner. Again, here is a link to a free trial of Time Clock Wizard – a robust online shift planner and more.
