Consequences of Poor Employee Scheduling

The base line of any business is to achieve profitability. Employee scheduling has a major impact on company’s profitability.  Scheduling staff to meet business requirements is a complex task. In previous times there were traditional office hours and shift work. Now It has become complicated especially because of extended or 24/7 working hours on one hand   and on the other employees working shifts, flexible working hours, split-working, job share or part-time hours etc.  

Business managers who undertake this task  of employee scheduling  manually spend considerable time to deliver  good schedules and in case the manager fails to deliver an optimal schedule the consequences of poor scheduling will be apparent in company’s operations, revenue generation, employee satisfaction, retention etc. Most important, it will also have impact on the brand image of the company. Poor employee scheduling can lead to chaos in the company’s operations.  This will be perceived as being arbitrary and will invite ad-hoc changes for reasons not connected with the business.  This will lead to repeated corrections and amendments and appear as a rough guide of the work schedule. This leads to loss of credibility of the schedule in the opinion of employees and desire to get changes as per the employee’s preferences and it is difficult to encourage an ordered and responsible approach to staff deployment. In case of poor leave scheduling overall head count may be met but there may be poor skill mix leading to loss of proper work-flow and productivity. Furthermore in the absence of a definable work-flow, managers find it difficult to timely deliver consistent staff schedules associated with company goals .

Consequences of poor employee scheduling is generally seen in the form of workplace stress,  staff conflicts, poor productivity, increased absenteeism,  and ultimately poor retention of trained workforce. Staff finds it difficult to manage when they are confronted with unplanned schedule changes at short notice, especially those with responsibilities. The costs associated with poor employee scheduling are difficult to define. Misunderstood schedules can be very costly to any company. Controlling overtime costs is a benefit most companies understand, but much higher costs are involved in less obvious areas of activity as payments for work not performed, reduction or a temporary halt in production, possible reduction in the quality of work, vacation scheduling, negative effect on the morale of the employees, training expenses of replaced employee and administrative costs. Poor resource management leading to poor retention of employees influences employee relationship in a negative way and can also result in poor public relation. Reduction in the quality of products leaves a negative impact on the brand name.

Effective scheduling, which includes matching specific skills with specific needs in the most cost effective manner, is vital to achieving goal of the company as well as providing the best possible financial results. The soft wares available for employee scheduling have features to generate good schedules and  provide a crucial link  between the financial and productive side of the business.

Dynamics Of Employee Scheduling

In any dynamic, resource intensive organization “expertise” in employee management and scheduling is essential to thrive. The task of employee scheduling is complex, time consuming, tedious and at times the best human efforts are not enough to meet it’s complex and diverse requirements. The objective of employee manager is to schedule the employee’s duties perfectly and optimize the workforce to improve the outcome.

Employee management and scheduling encompasses the Initial creation of staffing vacancies, both day-to-day staffing decisions and long-term scheduling strategies, strategic and timely decisions regarding human capital optimization etc. For all this, Managers need to have timely, accurate and detailed information about the employees, such as their qualifications, training, abilities and past records. Besides this many financial aspects e.g. complex pay policies, contractual staffing, overtime rate and calculations, multiple shift codes etc. have to be considered for effective management of employees, in big as well as small organizations.

In present day, these multiple array of complexities can be handled by resource scheduling software. These scheduling software understand the nuances of scheduling, provide integrated workforce management solutions, can predict just about all of the different scenarios you can find in any organization and also know how to handle them. They can also provide advice for solving “specific” challenges. These software with robust functionality can empower the staff to make a bigger positive impact on implementation and financial outcomes. 

Data-driven human resource scheduling can provide the ability to deliver high quality work out put while managing costs. These resource schedulers ensure effective and efficient use of human talent to accomplish organizational goals by Coordinating staff credentials with job requirement, reallocating workforce more efficiently, managing floating resources and creating predictable, flexible schedules.

Resource scheduler software are also perfect solutions for pay calculations depending on the output of the resource. Managers can spend less time on administrative tasks and executives can have the information they need to track trends and make strategic proactive decisions for other beneficial, futuristic, developmental efforts dedicated to improving processes and outputs. These resource planners lead to development of systems that can make job easier and organization more effective. The employee management and scheduling software are designed for the overall success of the industry. These software should be from highly professional vendors who besides providing professional expertise can also have a really strong relationship with their customers. Effective resource scheduling truly empowers your organization to complete projects in time and budget.

Barriers in Efficient Employee Scheduling

Many levels of intense activities continues in most organisations and many managers and team leaders find themselves working hard on a myriad of activities trying to get  best performance  from the resources as this is the underlying basis of the company’s success.

Optimum Human resource utilization by the means of efficient resource scheduling has always been central to success of the organization. Human capital is intangible and elusive and cannot be managed the way organizations manage jobs, products and technologies. There are many attributes of each individual and variables of each interactive resource which influence the total quality work out put. These can be categorized as  the  knowledge, skills, life experiences, morale and it’s motivation, abilities and interpersonal relations, to name a few. The value of employees is increased when his knowledge, skills and abilities are known to the manager.

The barriers in optimum resource utilization are mainly related to resource scheduling deficiencies, lack of educational and training records of the employee, inadequate staffing,  time and attendance, clear job description, job analysis, diversity (racial / ethnic diversity,  more women in the workforce, single-parent households, dual-career couples, domestic partners, working mothers and family/childcare), loss of employee loyalty,  health safety and security issues, the companies going global leading to multicultural environment, technological shift and use of Internet, older employees not trained in modern techniques or exposed to today’s work culture, need to accommodate working mothers and fathers through parental leaves, ensure equality for women in  respect to employment advancement opportunities and compensations, job sharing, part time and contractual employment with  their job analysis, more sensitivity to the growing need for policies, procedure to eliminate sexual harassment, conflicts and their resolution, work place  negativity etc.

On top of this, global nature of big organisations does not help in efficiently scheduling employees. Resources are more mobile than ever, this is good from operational point of view but a night mare for a resource coordinator, as they have to keep real time record or resource engagements and future commitments.   

For moving forward all these issues need to be addressed, as these are a barrier in high performance work practices. Environmental scanning, anticipation and flexible, foresighted and strategic deployment of resources is the key to ensure effective and efficient use of human talent to accomplish organizational goals and to gain that edge of advantage over competitors which makes the company not good but great. Using modern day employee scheduling software that can manage different types of resources and show informative reports can also help to a great extent.