OPTIMAL SCHEDULING PROCEDURES
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FROM A LEADER IN WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS
www.mitcsoftware.com
OPTIMAL SCHEDULING PROCEDURES
INTRODUCTION Many organizations with multiple remote locations struggle to control overtime. It often seems that no matter how hard everyone tries, continual staff call-offs and turnover wreak havoc on the best-made plans. Overtime cannot be eliminated, but it can be reduced to a more manageable level. Many organizations enjoy much lower levels of overtime than similar organizations with the same staffing challenges. A comprehensive solution has four major components:
1. CENTRALIZE SCHEDULING Field supervisors tend to use the same pool of staff all the time and often lack visibility into which staff are close to overtime. When confronted with an open position due to a call-off, busy field supervisors tend to see their main priority as filling the open position to ensure continuity of service, controlling overtime as secondary. This instinct leads them to the quick and easy route, which is to contact the person most likely to accept the extra hours.
“By centralizing scheduling, organizations allow field supervisors to focus where their passion and skills lie: in ensuring that effective services are delivered.”
Unfortunately, this person is likely to be in overtime already. This habit can lead to absurd situations where multiple field supervisors contact the same employee to fill different open
organization tries to hold them responsible for payroll overruns
positions at different locations on the same day.
caused by overtime. By centralizing scheduling, organizations
An analysis of hours worked will often show numerous staff working less than 40 hours while other staff are working 60. Field supervisors are sometimes slow to notify Human Resources of permanent openings. This further compounds overtime problems by delaying the hiring process while overtime is scheduled into the workforce on a systematic basis. Supervisors’
allow field supervisors to focus where their passion and skills lie: in ensuring that effective services are delivered. People become supervisors not because of their scheduling skills, but because of their competencies in value-added tasks such as managing employees, motivating staff, and ensuring the quality of client services.
main skills are related to their job and providing services. Often,
Although the change to centralized scheduling can be difficult,
they have been hired from within the organization’s main
direct labor staff, supervisors and management will soon see
direct labor workforce. They do not see their role as schedulers
the benefits. Administrators handle administrative tasks, and
or billing clerks. Nor do they thrive in an environment where an
field staff are left free to address service-related issues.
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OPTIMAL SCHEDULING PROCEDURES Centralizing scheduling does not involve additional payroll
improving managers’focus, raisingmorale, retaining employees,
costs. In fact, it will reduce payroll-related costs. Field supervisors
and minimizing overtime.
will have less to do once they are no longer responsible for maintaining schedules and filling open positions. The number of field supervisors can be reduced in proportion to the hours they currently spend scheduling. One solution organizations
An efficient scheduling system allows organizations to identify critical days, such as holidays, weeks in advance and check staff availablity for those days.
have taken is to move the field supervisors most likely to enjoy
It is possible to complete scheduling tasks in minutes using
working in an administrative role into scheduling.
powerful software queries that quickly sort through employee
This removes the need for layoffs and ensures the staff in charge of scheduling understand the day-to-day employee issues.
skills, availability, leave and preference, in order to schedule the right candidate for each open position. We all know schedules change. For this reason, it is important to be able to react swiftly
The centralized schedulers are responsible for maintaining
and decisively. Managers need the right decision-making tools
accurate schedules, using standard operating procedures to fill
to enable them to do so.
open positions, and minimizing overtime.
2. OPTIMIZE WORKFORCE USAGE WITH EFFECTIVE SCHEDULING
Implementing
a
structured
scheduling
system
helps
organizations minimize prescheduled overtime, fill open positions, and avoid using employees already in overtime.
If your organization is using Excel, Word, paper forms, or an ineffective software application for scheduling, more time is being spent on scheduling than necessary. Ineffective employee scheduling directly impacts labor costs, productivity, and an organization’s ability to operate within budget. When an organization does not have the right scheduling tools, it cannot avoid unnecessary overtime or quickly find the most suitable employees to fill open positions. As a result, some employees are over-scheduled, while other employees are under-scheduled. Vacant positions may be left unfilled or time wasted searching manually for an appropriate employee. This creates cost overruns, lowers operational efficiency, reduces the quality of service, and threatens the future of organizations that have little room for error. In scheduling employees, a potentially large number of factors must be considered, including hours worked, availability, skills, licenses, training, preferred work, and schedule and travel time. Scheduling solutions can deliver significant value, including optimizing employees’ schedules to maximize service,
“Implementing a structured scheduling system helps organizations minimize prescheduled overtime, fill open positions, and avoid using employees already in overtime.” 2
3. REAL-TIME DATA
4. SELF-SERVICE
Collecting time and attendance in real time facilitates the daily
The fourth element of effective scheduling solutions is providing
monitoring of hours worked against budget and schedule.
access to schedules to employees and field supervisors.
In service organizations where hours worked affect billing,
Although field supervisors may no longer have the
or where overtime is a significant cost, collecting time and
primary responsibility for organizing schedules and filling
attendance in real time leads to improved productivity and
open positions, they still need to know who is working at
lower costs.
their locations, and which shifts they are responsible for.
Schedulers can be far more effective in controlling overtime if they have access to real-time attendance data. Automated noshow alerts and check-awake calls can be incorporated into day-to-day operating procedures. Integrating scheduling into an automated time and attendance solution yields additional benefits in organizations where schedules change frequently and overtime is a concern.
Communicating these schedules and schedule changes can be automated by the scheduling solution through email or the internet. Allowing field supervisors access to schedules by employee and by location will help them be more effective. Employees used to seeing paper-based schedules — however inaccurate — posted at a location will also benefit when given access to their schedules through the internet or telephone.
This is very important in any campaign to root out unnecessary overtime. For instance, one employee’s overtime might be the result of another employee showing up late. Just reviewing an overtime report might not pinpoint the real cause of the overtime: the other employee’s tardy behavior. Similarly, overtime in one cost center might be the result of poor scheduling in another cost center by a different manager.
ABOUT MITC MITC provides modular workforce management solutions and services to support all the needs of service organizations — time and attendance, advanced employee scheduling, payroll rules and reporting engine, workforce analytics, payroll and billing integration, and more. For 25 years, MITC has grown to serve over 1,500 organizations (with anywhere form 5 to 10,000 employees) in the USA, the UK , Africa, Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand. They have selected MITC to help control costs, save time, improve productivity and ensure compliance.
Visit www.mitcsoftware.com to learn more.
WWW.MITCSOFTWARE.COM
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