What is Employee Scheduling Software?
Employee scheduling software is software used by businesses to manage and create employees' schedules. This software efficiently frees up resources for non-scheduling tasks. Apart from this, it keeps track of compensatory time, vacations, and sick days and identifies conflicts as soon as they arise. The software comes with a wide range of capabilities. Automated notifications, for example, are included in specific staff scheduling software to eliminate schedule issues. Besides this, it also provides analytics to help in task management and coordination.Importance of Employee Scheduling and Attendance Tracking
Employing scheduling and attendance tracking, as the name suggests, helps in scheduling employees' shifts and tracking their attendance. It is an effective solution that eliminates excuses, improves communication, boosts accountability among your team, tracks attendance and time, and grows your business. When used correctly, employee scheduling and attendance tracking offer benefits to both employees and employers. Some of the major benefits include:- Identifying potential attendance issues
- Employers and employees can work remotely
- Ensures employees get paid on time.
- Boost productivity and morale of employees with time-off requests.
- Real-time analysis
- Reduce absenteeism
- Proof of an hour audit, lawsuit, and wage.
Pros and Cons of Enforcing the Employee Schedule
Whether to force the employees to work as per the defined schedule or grant flexibility to them to start and stop work shifts at their convenience. Both options have their advantages and disadvantages. And employers face the dilemma of whether to enforce employee schedules or not. So, to make it easier, the following are the pros and cons of enforcing employee scheduling.Pros
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Let employers Manage Different Departments' Schedules
One of the challenging parts of the employer is managing the schedules of different departments. This is the case for businesses with multiple employees. Therefore for them, it is important to implement employee scheduling software to set your business up for success. It helps you keep track of your employees, ensuring everything is on track.
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Minimize Errors
Manual tracking is more prone to errors than scheduling software. When you enforce scheduling software, it comes with a host of benefits. Most of these have built-in features that help you deal with the issue before it arises.
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Lets Employees Collaborate on Scheduling
Besides this, employee scheduling also helps save time. When coupled with Attendance Tracking, Employee Scheduling lets employees manage shifts, and the manager gives the final approval. It means there will be no scheduling conflicts as employees are accountable for their schedules.
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Automate Sick Leave, time off requests, and vacations
Most collaborative employee scheduling software lets employees place online sick leave, vacation, short leave, or other time-off requests. It eliminates the hassle of remembering the special situations of the employees who request time off.
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Provides Metrics to Analyze Employee Performance
The employee scheduling software also comes in handy when evaluating your employee's performance. So, based on the performance of individuals or groups of employees who excel at selling, you can schedule them for when you need them the most. This solution helps employers to manage the team's performance and reward them accordingly.
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Set Track Record for Employees
Using employee scheduling software also notifies the employee when they are not performing well, are absent from work, or are late. Work Schedule Software also lets employees self-report the time it takes to complete a specific task.
Cons
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Employees May Feel Oppressed And Manipulated
Your staff may feel stifled and overruled from tracking to maintaining video surveillance. As a result, make sure to use it healthily.
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In Some Cases, It Hampers Employee's Privacy
Yes, it can sometimes jeopardize your employees' secrecy and privacy. As a result, make sure you only use it to a specific extent. This software can also be tweaked to make it more useful for your specific business needs. Isn't it going to make it much easier for you to operate your business? So, if you're interested in getting this software for your company, make sure to understand every aspect of it.
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Buddy Punching
When one employee requests another to clock in or out for him, this is known as "buddy punching." This is one of the most common ways of time theft. Buddy punching results in payroll losses and impacts the team's overall productivity, payroll hour calculations, and the accuracy of the timesheets. Therefore, you should look for time-tracking software that makes buddy punching difficult. Small businesses may use employee scheduling software for much more than just tracking time, punches, and keeping staff accountable.
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Geofencing
Many times, employees fail to punch in at their allocated location. This invariably leads to the employer wasting time and money on examining inaccurate timesheets and time cards, attempting to correct errors, or, worse, having tough conversations with staff (and sometimes firing them for their misbehavior). This is a common scenario for organizations that work on multiple sites.