Top Strategies to Schedule Employees Effectively and how Employee Scheduling Software Helps

You may be having new projects in the pipeline but allocating and scheduling resources on various projects efficiently can be cumbersome. Poor employee scheduling can be very damaging for your business. In fact, if resources are assigned projects that are not suitable as per their skills, then that will lead to a lack of interest, lesser employee satisfaction, productivity, and eventually, an unhappy client. Efficient employee scheduling is essential for business growth. Having said that, you need to consider various aspects while creating an effective employee schedule, including how many resources are needed in each shift, in each project, what is the availability of employees as per the required skill, etc. In this article, let’s discuss the top best practices and strategies for creating effective employee scheduling that will be advantageous to both your resources and your organization. To be able to do this, you should balance the requirements of both your business and your employees. In simple words, this means that you must aim to achieve the business needs but also consider employee satisfaction and career growth.

Top Best Practices for Effective Employee Scheduling 

1. Break the project into smaller chunks or tasks and sub-tasks

The first step for employee scheduling is to find and list down all the tasks required to be done in a project. When you chunk the project into smaller tasks and sub-tasks that have individual timelines, it becomes easier to achieve your goal. The overall project can seem too much to accomplish and manage. However, when you split it into smaller chunks with its milestones, then it becomes simpler to assign responsibilities to various resources. After you have divided the tasks and sub-tasks, the next step is to determine the type of resources needed and how many people would you need to complete the project on time. An employee scheduling and tracking software ease all these steps for you and you can manage to break a project into smaller chunks in a few clicks.

2. Determine the type of resources required for the project 

Now, you need to plan the type of resources you would need to complete the project. For instance, how many employees and with what skill set, type of tools, equipment, or machinery, and how much finance, and facilities? You would also need to decide if you can get work done by loaner equipment, or machinery, and how many meeting or conference rooms are needed. Other things to factor are IT or tech support and if contractors or freelancers can be hired for the project or only full-time resources are needed. Determining all this, in the beginning, helps with efficient employee scheduling.

3. Evaluate your existing resource pool

After you know how many and what kind of resources are needed, the next step is to evaluate your existing resource pool and check if any employees meet the requirements and have availability. You should consider upcoming holidays, people’s planned leaves, etc. too. If there are too many projects in the pipeline and you foresee the resource demand going up, then you should align some extra resources on the schedule to make sure that there is no shortage. Here resources not only mean human resources but also the equipment required for specific jobs, facilities, vehicles, etc. Also, counting in any hourly resources, non-personnel resources, and dynamic requirements can be complex. However, implementing employee scheduling and tracking software is a boon as you can track the demand and foresee future requirements based on historical data.

4. Find out the peak and lean phases 

You should also analyze your current activity and find out the weeks or months when your team is busier. This helps in determining how many employees should be scheduled in a day or week. Resourcing decisions shouldn’t be based on intuition as that may end up being wrong. That can also result in less-than-optimal schedules, which further leads to over or under-booking employees. The best strategy is to pull out and analyze your business data coming from sales and HR reports to make efficient schedules. This data helps in identifying the time period when more staff may be required and effective employee scheduling.

5. Identify if there are any project constraints

It is also imperative to identify if you can deliver the project in some phases and determine the milestones accordingly. Other things to decide are: if the project would be hosted on a particular tech platform? Would you need some internal resources and hire contractors who could be trained before the project starts? Identifying all the project constraints well ahead of time helps to find solutions to resolve these challenges.

6. Choose resource leveling

A good technique to do resource optimization is resource-leveling. You can especially apply this technique when there are sufficient resources available for completing the project on time. This approach helps in the distribution of resources over the complete project in a balanced manner. Resource leveling helps to enhance team morale and create realistic and attainable schedules. According to the requirement, you may need to delay your timelines or shorten your schedule, and that would work if you do not add to the overall capacity. To do this efficiently, employee scheduling and time-tracking software would come in handy.

7. Wisely assign the required resources to various projects

After making a list of all the tasks, you need to identify all the possible bottlenecks, and then estimate the number of resources required. If you have the needed data to create an efficient employee schedule, you can avert any challenges that could cost the business a lot. Therefore, assigning resources judiciously is very vital. Depending on the employees you assign, the overall capacity, demand, due schedules, and deadlines may need some change or could be delayed. Efficient employee scheduling is thus very important for any project’s success and employee scheduling and tracking software plays a key role in this.

8. Track the availability of team members in real-time

With employee scheduling software such as eResource Scheduler, you can easily check the availability of any employee and schedule and allocate people depending on the bandwidth they have. The software’s scheduling chart and availability reports show you the real-time resource availability on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. That’s not all. When anyone creates a new booking or deletes or updates any existing one in the system, the employee availability information gets updated automatically in the tool. Simply log in and track the updated employee availability and identify the most suitable and qualified employees for your projects.

9. Use employee scheduling software

You may be in any business or industry but implementing the right employee scheduling and tracking software is very important. Such a tool enables you to create efficient schedules quickly with the help of in-built templates. Not only do the resource profiles helpful in scheduling in a few steps, but the tool also raises a red flag when there are any scheduling conflicts. An employee scheduling tool helps to make sure that you schedule employees who have the requisite skills, experience, and qualifications for your projects and in each shift. The right employee scheduling and tracking software also enables the project manager to make schedules for teams in various locations or different projects with ease.

Make Your Employee Scheduling a Breeze with eResource Scheduler

If you have been seeking the right employee scheduling software that can handle multiple tasks such as employee scheduling, resource management, utilization tracking, and timesheet management, then your search is now over. eResource Scheduler is an award-winning tool that assures to aid you in detailed project planning, employee scheduling, allocation, monitoring utilization, time-tracking, productivity management, etc. This leading employee scheduling and tracking software helps you track resource availability, create comprehensive dashboards, and track the productivity and profitability of all existing projects. This AI-enabled and cloud-based tool comes with brilliant features like an intuitive interface, high configurability, and drag-and-drop features. This top-rated tool’s advanced filters enable you to identify the most fitting resource who has the requisite skill set and availability making it easy to allocate tasks and projects with ease. Have questions about the tool? Try it with the free trial offer and check out the advantages yourself