Ensuring the Right Number of Workers on Every Shift

19 Sep, 2013 | Tags: Employee Schedule, Employee Scheduling, Employee Scheduling Software, Employees Schedules, Job Scheduling Software, Online Scheduler, Online Scheduling, Online Scheduling Software, Retail Scheduling, Schedule, Scheduling Software, Scheduling staff members, Shift Scheduling, Staff Scheduling, Web Scheduling Software, What Time do I Work, Whattimedoiwork.com, Work Scheduler, Work Scheduling

All businesses have both slow and busy seasons/days/hours, however retail companies are hit hardest by dramatic swings in customer traffic. It can be a struggle to create a schedule that includes the optimal coverage for every shift. You don’t want to schedule too many people during the slower times—that would be too costly to your bottom line. But you need to make sure enough personnel are on the floor during the busier times—ensuring your customers enjoy a pleasant shopping experience.

Guessing and estimating might work some days. Then again, “guestimating” might also miss the target entirely, leaving you grossly overstaffed on a slow day, or perilously understaffed on days that the barrage of customers walk through your doors  needing assistance.

To get a clearer idea about when you need more or less staff, you can review sales reports. These documents enable you to see your busiest and slowest days/hours throughout the year. But that’s only one piece of the scheduling puzzle.  You must also consider the availability of your staff, their preferred hours each week, and time-off requests. In addition, you need to ensure your employees are aware of the schedule (ahead of time), deal with scheduling conflicts, and eliminate overtime hours whenever possible. Juggling all these variables can significantly impact other important aspects of your business that require your attention.

A proven way to resolve all these problems is at your fingertips with online employee scheduling software. By storing all employee contact information, availability, and previous schedules in the cloud, you can quickly and easily create conflict-free schedules. Fortunately that solution is available today from WhatTimeDoIWork.com!

Here’s how it works.

• You start by entering all your employees’ names and departments, all in a single cloud-based location that you can access 24×7.
• Then, you create weekly schedules with easy-to-use web-based software.
• Once you’ve used the system for a while, you can run reports against the existing schedules to gather in-depth information about any day you choose. You can discover:
  • Who worked what shifts
  • How many workers were on the floor during any shift
  • Overtime hours
  • Busy days of the week/month
  • Slow days of the week/month

Best of all, you can use the built-in reporting and analytics capabilities to predict the volume of business from one week/month/quarter to the next. Also with accurate forecasts in hand, you can make optimal schedules by having the right employees scheduled for the right shifts in the right place.

To discover for yourself just how much time and money you can save by using our web scheduling software, you can test drive it for free. There’s no obligation, and no credit card is required to sign up.  For complete information on our web scheduling software, please visit https://www.whattimedoiwork.com/features/

---