How to Create the Best Employee Work Schedule?

An ideal employee work schedule optimizes both your time and your budget.

It also meets your employees’ needs by providing them with a better work-life balance. And since it also allows you to better plan your labor needs, an optimal schedule also benefits your customers.

But balancing performance and profitability with flexibility and human well-being is no easy feat.

Without a real method of organization to manage schedules, you might even say that it’s mission... impossible.

This article gives you employee scheduling tips to help you put together the best possible employee work schedule.

1. Create a Concrete Reference Work Schedule

Create an easy-to-copy reference schedule based on your business’s workforce. These needs vary according to several factors, including:

• The time of year: Christmas is peak season for retail and retail stores, while summer is more demanding for resorts or restaurants. Each industry has its own particularities; make sure to take yours into account.
• Time of week: For restaurants, some days (usually toward the end of the week) are much busier than others.
• Daily rush hours: Similarly, in the food service industry, afternoons are often quieter with fewer needs, while busy times such as lunch and dinner require a higher number of employees.

This simple strategy will save you time. A reference schedule is also an asset for your employees, who will have a better idea of when they’re free to organize outings or make appointments, for example.

2. Prioritize Your Employees’ Availability

When drawing up schedules and managing your team, taking into account availability and unavailability is a must.

If you start running out of employee availabilities, you may need to hire. If too many of your teammates are telling you they’re short on hours, you've probably hired too many.

I once worked at a restaurant where, unless we had a clear emergency, the manager simply didn’t accept unavailable times. This was obviously an irritant for all the employees.

Taking your team members’ availability and even preferences into account tells them that they matter to you. It’s also a cornerstone of happiness at work. The more you take their preferences into account, while respecting your own needs, the more likely you are to hang on to your employees and reduce your turnover rate. Using an employee availability form is a great tool to implement such practice.

3. Use Rotating Shift Schedules

Having flexible work hours has become imperative in recent years, especially since the shortage of labor has given employees the upper hand when it comes to negotiating working conditions.

I can already hear you telling me that having flexible work hours isn’t exactly possible in your industry. This is understandable; how can you allow your team to work when they like at a restaurant, a pharmacy or a retail store?

Even in this kind of context, however, there is a solution—rotating shift schedules. This is a schedule where shifts vary or alternate according to a predetermined calendar. Here’s an example of a three-week rotating schedule:

Week one: 4 day shifts, followed by 3 days off;

Week two: 4 night shifts, followed by 3 days off;

Week three: 4 evening shifts, followed by 3 days off.

This sequence would then be repeated.

It's also a great way to avoid burning out your top employees by always assigning them the busiest shifts, such as Friday and Saturday nights at a restaurant. What’s more, rotations prevent the same people from systematically ending up stuck with the least desirable shifts.

4. Involve Your Employees in Scheduling

Managing day off requests and the resulting replacements is a common task for anyone who makes employee work schedules.

Allow Your Employees to Exchange Shifts

If possible, share part of the task of managing replacements with your employees by allowing them to exchange shifts. This will give them greater autonomy and make them feel like you really trust them.

With the employee scheduling software Agendrix, the employer can allow employees to transfer shifts with certain restrictions. For example, you might establish that employees can only swap shifts with a coworker in the same position as them. Or, that each swap must be approved by a manager before it is made official.

Let Your Employees Volunteer for Open Shifts

Last-minute replacements are a major headache for managers. They create stress, irritation and pressure on the rest of the team—and it's even worse when there’s no replacement in sight.

Instead of contacting your employees one by one looking for a replacement, reach out to everyone and see who would like to volunteer.

At Agendrix, the open shift feature lets you notify available people that a shift is open. This feature can be useful when creating the schedule or if an employee notifies you at the last minute that they can’t show up. Once a replacement is found, you can assign them the shift, and you’re done!

5. Be Fair

I once worked at a place where the workers who had been there the longest were showered with privileges.

The result? Every day, a few employees with 10 or 20 years of seniority worked with a team of new employees who stayed at the organization for only a few months on average.

One night, I arrived at work only to learn that a coworker with more seniority had taken my shift—which she was entitled to do, as long as it was 24 hours in advance. While this way of doing things does value seniority, it also makes new recruits reluctant to stay on at the company.

So remember this: if you want to improve your turnover rate, think to treat your employees fairly. When creating your schedules, consider the satisfaction of the entire team.

6. Schedule Breaks in Advance

If your organization allows breaks and they need to be taken in alternation, schedule them in order to avoid overlaps. This ensures that there are always enough employees on the floor and that everyone will be able to enjoy their breaks.

Most employee scheduling software also allows you to schedule automatic breaks, to simplify your planning.

7. Avoid Split Shifts

In some industries, split shifts can seem inevitable.

However, days when an employee works from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. are a real obstacle to finding a good work-life balance. Split shifts prevent employees from doing many kinds of longer activities by monopolizing both their day and their night. Such shifts may be commonplace in certain industries however, notably assisted living, which requires 24/7 shift coverage.

Still, whenever possible, give your employees full days of work. When things are quieter, assign them related tasks instead of sending them home for only a few hours.

8. Give Some Thought to Your Labor Cost

Many managers make the mistake of neglecting the cost of labor. To ensure the sustainability of your business, it’s essential to schedule according to your budget. While these calculations may seem cumbersome or complex, they are definitely worthwhile, particularly in service industries with tight profit margins such as hospitality and retail.

Consider, for example, a shift that theoretically starts at 12:00 p.m.

If the busy hours and the nature of the job allow it, consider scheduling some employees to start about 15 minutes later, i.e., at 12:15 p.m. This may seem like a tiny difference, but at the end of a month or a year, it could add up and have a significant financial impact.

Calculating the cost of labor helps you be more cost-effective with your shifts. Several employee scheduling software programs also offer additional cost-tracking features to make it easier for you to create schedules.

The Best Schedules Take Into Account the Employer and the Employees

If you only take away one thing from this post, remember that the best employee work schedule is the one that allows you to save time and devote it to other tasks, save money, and make your employees feel that their well-being matters. To achieve this without pulling your hair out, consider a quality scheduling tool.