How do you ensure that the schedules you create for the large team are accurate? Creating or updating employee schedules may take many days at times. This particularly happens if you are using spreadsheets, or working with calendars, etc. for employee scheduling. Do you wonder if there is some fast and easy solution for managing employee scheduling and shift planning, which is accurate as well? The answer to these challenges is implementing an employee scheduling app. The good news it that technology has advanced a lot and there is employee scheduling and shift planning software that not only saves your time but also makes your work a lot easier. Read on to find the features that the right employee scheduling app should have to help you do shift planning, time tracking, and resource scheduling. workforce management.
Main Features to Look out for in an Employee Scheduling and Shift Planning App
A leading employee schedule and shift planning software would include:
- Customization functionality: It should offer ease and flexibility to customize, edit, or save various templates, the feature of drag and drop for easy employee scheduling, and provide alert notifications.
- Role-based access: The right employee scheduling app would allow for role-based access into the system. This means that some people who are leading or managing projects may have edit or review capability, but others may just have viewing rights.
- Cost-effective: A tool that enables you to save money to do employee scheduling, time-tracking, and shift planning make sense to implement.
- Scalability: Such a tool should definitely suit all business sizes and should be scalable if the business or organization grows in the future so that the expanded operations can be supported.
- Easy integration: An intuitive employee scheduling app must have all you need in a single place. It should also be easily integrated with other tools that the organization may be using.
- Customer support and a free trial: Look out for tools and employee scheduling apps that offer a free trial before you actually buy. In addition, their customer support should be easily reachable and provide any help if needed. Lastly, check for the rating provided from earlier customer reviews to gauge the usability of the employee scheduling app.
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Features of a Smart employee scheduling and shift planning app
- Role-based access
Not all information needs to be passed on to all the employees. Some tasks or processes may include some sensitive or crucial information that should not be shared with all the resources in the team. A leading employee scheduling app allows customized role-based access control based on different roles and users. Thus, users may view, access, review, or edit files and documents depending on their roles only.
- Automated notifications
Another key feature to find in employee scheduling and shift planning software is automatic notifications. This way, the app would notify all resources about any schedule-related information or update to everyone quickly. The top-rated employee scheduling apps offer to send notifications in many forms such as SMS reminders, emails, or in-app push notifications. One of these formats can be chosen to stay updated on any schedule-related information. The notifications can be sent about any upcoming timelines, changes in the shift plans, and scheduled meetings or events. The alert notification feature is very important in employee scheduling software to do shift planning and workforce management.
- Time-tracking and performance monitoring
In addition, to enhance the efficiency and productivity of your resources, you can track their performance and the time spent on a task. This helps in calculating the available capacity, resource availability, and also employee productivity. An employee scheduling software helps to gauge who will meet the schedule and those who are struggling to complete the deliverables on time. Such a tool also compares the actual effort vs. planned effort. If some timelines look tough, an employee scheduling app with time-tracking capabilities can help to monitor the utilization and performance, and update you on the status of each project milestone. The tool’s time-tracking data also helps in planning for your pipeline projects with ease.
- Simpler allocation and scheduling
Employee scheduling tool eases your work to a large extent. If you have to schedule resources on some tasks, such software helps in checking availability, creating the best plans, and assigning tasks accordingly. eResource Scheduler is a top-rated employee scheduling and shifts planning app with an intuitive interface. Offering high configurability, easy-to-understand design, and drag-and-drop functionality, you can plan workflows and team members quite easily. There are many beneficial reports such as availability and utilization reports that provide helpful data and you can make well-informed resourcing decisions.
- Elimination of manual and repetitive tasks
Too many unnecessary meetings and repetitive or manual tasks waste a lot of time and are a cause of frustration of team members. Imagine if that precious time was utilized better in some other crucial or strategic tasks. An employee scheduling app provides pre-defined guidelines and best practices for creating employee schedules, and workflows, and managing a specific task. Simply configure the tool according to your requirements and it automatically assigns various tasks to resources. Such a tool also helps in reducing or completely eliminating all the repetitive, mundane, and manual tasks and automates all the processes, which saves a lot of time and effort.
- Custom templates available
It’s important to look out for a shift planning and employee scheduling app that offers a custom template feature too. Custom templates help project managers who need to manage multiple teams and projects. With an employee scheduling app that enabled customizing templates, you can easily create platforms that meet your specific needs. You can base all the team templates on the department, shifts, preferred break times, or any other aspects that may be relevant to their workflows.
- Smooth communication and transparency
Having clear and smooth communication and a transparent work environment is important to foster trust among your employees. Employee scheduling software encourages better working relations amongst various employees, between the team and their project managers, and with the stakeholders. A tool such as eResource Scheduler fosters open communication and seamless data flow between teams, various departments, and different project managers. You can easily gain visibility into the company-wide resource pool, projects, employee availability, planned workload distribution, etc., and avoid any wrong decisions.
- Visibility of performance and productivity
An employee scheduling and shift planning software enables you to monitor the performance and productivity that your team members are achieving. You can also log in and check the status of multiple projects and track the utilization of your team or some employees in just a few clicks. Or if you wish to check the status of some specific tasks or projects, to find if some tasks are completed or pending, or if there could be any likely roadblocks, you can do so in a few clicks. This enables one to plan ahead easily and look for solutions for any possible loopholes or issues in the workflow.
- Simplified leave management system
It’s important to choose an employee scheduling software that allows you to track and also approve your staff’s leave requests on the go. This reduces the wastage of time in sending leave requests to get approval, then following up, etc. You can manage your team’s leaves and time off requests and track the leave balances or assign their fixed days off in just a few clicks.
- Process time reduced
Implementing an employee scheduling app also speeds up the end-to-end processes and various tasks. For instance, be it getting any approvals, tracking data for various milestones, the time spent on reviews, or final project delivery? A shift planning and employee scheduling tool helps to alert all stakeholders and people involved in the process about the timeline or in case the schedule has been missed. The project leads or managers can utilize this feature for updating critical messages to their team members and reducing the overall process time.
Choose eResource Scheduler – A Leading and Top-Rated Employee Scheduling Software
eResource Scheduler is a leading cloud-based and AI-enabled resource management software with which you can definitely improve your team’s utilization by 18 to 30 percent. The tool acts as a single centralized online repository of all your projects and global resources. The tool provides visibility of the organization’s entire resource pool in real-time, existing projects, their availability, productivity, etc. Project managers don’t need to worry about timelines and deliver timely projects within budget. That’s not all. eResource Scheduler is a top-rated employee scheduling app that can improve your resource scheduling estimations and offer clear insights into the productivity and profitability of all employees and projects. The real-time updates happen on the tool regarding any scheduling changes, and it also generates comprehensive reports that flag any probable issues or loopholes. So, take your free trial soon and let this employee scheduling app help you with your resourcing decisions.
