Peripheral Features
While some neglect to look for it, some of the peripheral features
of a scheduling software are the ones that will save your day. Online access
for your employees to the schedule is a key, if they can see their shifts from
any browser, computer, tablet or a smartphone, they are less likely to miss a
shift. Seeing the schedule is just the beginning, the employees should be able
to request shift trades and find their replacement, leaving the manager only
with the task of approving it. Collecting the staff availability is one of the
most time consuming task a manager can deal with, if the staff can submit their
limitations online to be read by the software, the responsibility shifts to the
employee and the manager just monitors it. In order to create a complete solution
and keeping track of all the trades and daily communication an internal mail system
can come in handy. If a software integrate all these features it can save a lot
of time and money to both the company and the employees.
The Heart of the Scheduling Software
The engine of the scheduling software is the most important
one, this is where the schedule is built and it should be capable of doing all
the things you want it to. A key feature the engine should offer is Automatic Schedule, while many software offer to manage your schedule, very few actually generate it automatically. Moreover, software that advertise themselves as "schedule in 1
second” usually forget to mention that they have a very limited calculation. A good
software should be able to run your schedule the way you would as a manager and
even better. The more rules and policies you have the longer the process takes,
if you need to make sure, for example, that your employees will not work two
night shifts in a row and will not work on days they asked not to and that on
each shift you have at least one experienced staff and all that without putting
overtime and not working more than one weekend per month, your software should
run for a few good minutes when generating the schedule. Once you
have your schedule the software should "watch your back” by recommending you
with the best fit for a replacement and having an error elimination system that
cross checks your rules live and alerts you when you are about to break them.