Employee scheduling can be a real headache. Communicating shift updates, fielding changes triggered by constant employee requests and balancing labor vs. need can eat up valuable hours each week. Improving your policies around schedules and time-off requests combined with some integrated tools will save you time and improve the relationships you have with your employees by giving them more predictability in their work schedule.

If you’re looking to improve scheduling processes, it’s important to look at the process you are currently using to identify weak spots in policies and the tools you are using. We’ve broken down things down to four areas you should focus on when optimizing your employee scheduling process.

Vacation/time off requests

How is your vacation/time off policy communicated to your employees? Is it clear to them how and when they must put in for special time off requests? If your deadline for submitting requests is consistently happening after the date that schedules are confirmed, then you probably have a lot of change requests to manage. It’s simple to change that policy.

Is there one clear point of contact for these requests or are employees going to multiple shift managers to make requests, which then have to be passed on to the manager responsible for the schedule? Having a single point of contact is crucial for successful communication.

Labor management

Are you currently tracking sales volume and then mapping it to predict busiest times/days? Sometimes having employees who don’t work efficiently together can cause a shift to appear chaotic and busy when sales numbers tell a different story. Find a process to track the numbers, such as reports in your POS, and talk to managers about the stress level on each shift to identify problems.

Communication

Consistency and accessibility to messages is most important when letting staff know about schedule changes or when posting the latest schedule. If you’re still using a whiteboard in the back office, then that makes it difficult for your employees to stay on top of changes and you are likely fielding a lot of questions or having higher than average no-shows for shifts. Perhaps it’s time to rethink how and when you communicating with employees. This is crucial to morale and a high performing team.

Tools

Fortunately, if you’ve identified weaknesses in any of the above areas there are tools that can quickly solve these issues. Homebase , a Clover app, integrates with your point of sale system and puts scheduling and communications directly in your employees’ hands. Your staff loads a user app on their mobile phone and alerts are sent immediately when changes are made to the schedule and when a new schedule is posted. In addition, reminders are sent to notify staff of their shift, so no more excuses of “I didn’t know I was on the schedule!” as you can set the auto reminder to go out the day before each shift.

Lightspeed’s inventory management system, which also integrates with your POS, tracks sales and transaction logs for individual employees through the clock-in-clock-out feature. This functionality helps you to identify your best sales people and your highest traffic times, therefore allowing you to put your highest performers on the most lucrative shifts.

Are you ready to learn how your POS system can take the headaches out of scheduling, then contact a Marketing 360 Payments representative for an appointment? We’ll help you maximize the capability of your POS system so you can focus on growing your business. We are ready to help make your business richer!