Why you should use Online Employee Scheduling Software

19 Dec, 2013 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Our new digital world is bringing us new, more efficient ways to complete jobs that were once thought of as time consuming, and until now inefficient.  We have phones and/or tablets that are basically computers that fit in your hand. Every day there are 300 new apps created to help improve our lives. You probably use many of these each day, playing games, checking email, checking your favorite social media sites all the way down to seeing what your dog is doing all day while you are at work. However with all these programs you have to download the app. With the growth of the “cloud” (internet) companies are finding ways for you to use their software without the hassle of downloading programs. The advantages are being able to access the program and information from anywhere at any time, automatic access to any upgrades to the program and ensuring that your information will not be lost if something happens to your computer.

Today you can leverage the power of the cloud to complete your weekly work schedules with advanced yet easy-to-use What Time Do I Work online scheduling software. Here’s how it works.

  • Load all the pertinent information about all your workers—names, emails, phone numbers, preferred shifts, time-off requests, hours/week, skill sets, etc.
  • Employees are able to enter their own time off requests that are logged and stored in the program for the next time you begin to work on your next schedule.
  • Create weekly work schedules from your office or at home.
  • The software will alert you to conflicts, such as scheduling a worker in a timeslot he/she requested off or if you have accidently scheduled one employee for overtime (saving you time and money).
  • When the schedule is complete, click Save, and the schedule is automatically stored in a secure cloud environment, where your employees can access it from anywhere at any time.
  • Click Send, and the schedule is automatically distributed to your employees’ email addresses and/or cell phones. No more paper schedules required and no need for employees to call and ask “What time do I work?”
  • Easily contact your entire staff when you have an open shift, without having to call down a phone tree

Cloud-based scheduling is faster, more efficient, and best of all, it removes you from the emergency-schedule-changing equation. Your workers can “self-serve” using the cloud.

What Time Do I Work.com taps into the strength of the cloud to deliver a solution that not only stores your schedules, but also makes them available to your employees 24×7. The What Time Do I Work.com online scheduling software offers many time saving features to aid in the schedule creation process, while also improving your business and your bottom line. Some of the top features include:

  • Notifies your staff immediately when new or updated schedules are posted
  • Automatically alerts you about scheduling conflicts and overtime hours
  • Saves old schedules for reuse when creating new schedules based on the history of the needs of the business
  • Stores time-off requests in the system; your employees enter the requests, so there’s no work for you
  • Reduces “no-shows” by automatically alerting your staff of upcoming hours

To discover for yourself just how much time and energy you can save by using our online employee scheduling software, watch the video.

How do you create a Time-off Policy

17 Dec, 2013 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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For many companies, managing vacation and time-off requests is a constant challenge. You need to maintain adequate business coverage and support while understanding that your employees have times when they need to take time off.  The outcome of not having a formal policy in place about when and how to submit requests results in employees asking for time off by:

  • Talking to you in the hallway or your office
  • Calling you on the phone
  • Sending you an email
  • Scribbling the days and dates on a piece of paper and dropping it on your desk
  • Taping a note to your office door

These types of requests are not only hard to deal with on the fly, becasue of the no boundaries on “acceptable ways to request time off,” but you are also tasked with trying to keep track of who requested what time off. And if you have two employees requesting the same days off, who gets first dibs?

There are many different options and ways to create policies, but the most common in the service and health industries is to create a “time-off bank.” Here’s how the bank works. Let’s say each employee is allowed 160 hours off each year, which equates to 20 work days. The bank includes time off for:

  • Holidays
  • Vacation
  • Sick days
  • Personal days

You can’t always give all your employees all of the holidays off, so they can use their banked time to request  vacations or personal/sick days off. Each employee is responsible for scheduling the days he or she wants off from work, using a single prescribed method, within the needs of the business. You can require that requests are submitted for planned time off within 2 weeks of the date, and that they must submit requests on special forms that are filed away for you to refer to when creating upcoming schedules

This plan offers many benefits to employees. They can:

  • Ensure that their time off request will not be forgotten
  • Assume responsibility for their own time off; they make their own choices, and they need to abide by them. For example, some employees might prefer a day off for religious holidays, rather than the Fourth of July.
  • Draw from their time-off bank for emergencies, such as caring for a sick child.  Remember, the bank is for all time off—holidays, vacation, sick days, and personal days.

The plan also offers many benefits to you. You will:

  • Spend significantly less time managing time-off requests; all requests will come to you through the standard form submitted in the “time-off request box”
  • Create more accurate schedules that require fewer changes, as you no longer have to try to remember who asked for what time off?
  • Empower your employees by letting them make more choices about how they spend their time away from work
  • Create a more positive working atmosphere at your company

All of these ways are great, but they are still time consuming, especially when going through all the requests each time you make the schedule. Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a way for the requests to be waiting for you right on the schedule? How about knowing when each request was submitted so that you can grant requests in a first come first serve method? The solution is available today from WhatTimeDoIWork.com and there are many other benefits far beyond tracking time-off requests and auto-populating them right into the schedule.

  • Automatic alerts to scheduling conflicts and overtime hours
  • Calculation of Labor costs as the schedule is created
  • Posting of the Schedule online allowing employees easy access without picking up the phone
  • Communications sent to your entire staff as soon as a new schedule is posted.

We are so sure that our software will solve your scheduling needs that we offer the first 30 days at no charge, with no obligation.

Learn more here.