Optimized Employee Scheduling – Challenges and Solutions

  • By Barun De
  • April 6, 2022
  • 4 min read
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Workforce management and employee scheduling are big challenges in labor intensive industries including manufacturing, retail and logistics. The main issues of employee scheduling are:

  • Shortage of employees with required skillset – Various shop floor activities need employees with specific skill sets. Hence, proper allocation of employees according to their skillset is required to achieve operational efficiency with optimal cost.
  • Overscheduling and Regulatory requirements – Employees need required breaks between their shifts and need days off to perform their work effectively. Some industries have regulatory requirements related to the mandatory resting time between weekly work shifts/ days off.
  • Planned employee leaves – Scheduled leaves or vacation time can make preparing the schedule difficult.
  • Last-minute absences – Due to various unforeseen reasons employees might take leave at the last minute. The manager needs to find a replacement on a priority basis.
  • Employee shift preferences – Employees have their preferences related to day shift/ night shift, weekdays/ weekends etc. A schedule must accommodate their preferences as much as possible.

Here’s how can AutoWiz automate employee scheduling for your organisation

AutoWiz employee scheduling solution can assign employees to tasks/ shifts subjected to various constraints like:

  • Employees’ leave plan
  • Regulatory requirements related to consecutive work shifts or consecutive days of work
  • Maximum and minimum number of shifts/ days of work in a week
  • Preference of shifts and days for employees

The solution also provides an incremental scheduling option in case of sudden leave application of any employee and or a sudden addition of tasks/ shifts. The solution ensures the minimum impact of the existing schedule subjected to various constraints.

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AutoWiz employee scheduling solution can also:

  • Free up critical time and resources of the management team. The management team can use those time and resources in more productive activities.
  • Ensure automatic adherence to all regulatory requirements, thus eliminating future possibilities of any lawsuit.
  • Optimise the number of resources needed for a set of tasks or shifts. As a result, the company can save a significant amount of cost. Also, the incremental run ensures minimum addition of temporary resources, if needed. Therefore, reducing the cost and hassle of finding additional resources.
  • Ensure equal distribution of tasks among the employees so that employees are not overburdened.

AutoWiz employee scheduling solution takes excel files as inputs. Managers can create and modify input files easily. The software can also send the generated schedules to the employee app (if any) in real-time. The solution also can take inputs from a server in a pre-defined format. As a result, it can run automatically depending on the acceptance or denial of the schedule by the employees or employee leave applications.

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We recommend automating your employee schedules. An efficient software will allow you to create, edit, and publish schedules with ease. Using an employee scheduling app will save you a lot of time and resources. You can focus on important business matters.