“Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” – Dale Carnegie.
As a business owner, you know that tracking employee time and attendance is critical to running your retail operation smoothly. However, ongoing challenges can waste time and money. This blog will look at three common scheduling challenges that impact employee management and demonstrate how TimeWellSchedule’s time and attendance software can make these challenges a thing of the past. What’s more, the service is free for up to 10 employees!
Three Common Scheduling Challenges include:
- Employee Shortages
- Employee Turnover
- Lack of Employee Availability
Challenge #1 Employee Shortage
- 47% of all retailers say staffing shortages are a significant problem (IDC & Telus, 2019)
- one $3,000-a-month absent employee costs a retailer $12,000 per month in lost sales and productivity. (Retail Insider)
- 3 million jobs to fill and not enough workers according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics – January 2022
There are three common causes when it comes to employee shortages. First, there aren’t enough employees to provide full coverage for the business. Second, the company may have enough employees, in which case the issue is with the scheduling process or an attendance problem. Lastly, the issue may not be related to scheduling; there may be a problem with working conditions, such as pay, benefits, toxicity, health and safety, or job design.
Solution #1
1 – Hire on-call employees
If your organization is short-staffed, it may be necessary to hire new employees. Having a group of on-call staff reduces labor costs by only paying employees when needed. These employees are aware that their schedules will change depending on business requirements. Thus, the expectation is clear from the start.
2 – Allow Employees to Participate in Scheduling
Allow your employees to view and select available shifts and easily swap shifts and access schedules. TimeWellScheduled allows employees to participate in the scheduling process via the app, pc, or mobile device. Employee participation into the scheduling process increases engagement and satisfaction.
3 – Be Flexible: Make it easy to change schedules.
- 62 % of US workers would give up a pay rise for more flexibility (Quickbooks)
Make it convenient for employees to adjust or change their schedules. For instance, simplifying time-off requests, claiming open shifts, or swapping shifts with other employees should not be difficult. These procedures can be streamlined using TimeWellscheduled, which provides complete transparency for managers and employees. Lastly, the scheduling system allows for quick managerial approval.
Benefits of implementing a TimeWellScheduled time and attendance system:
- reduce overtime pay, labor cost, time theft
- reduce human input errors. (ie, time tracking and Payroll errors)
- track employee hours accurately and improve employee attendance
- better communication and enforcement of the attendance policy
- ensures legal compliance
4 – Get to know your employees.
Be aware of employee needs; for instance, if you have many college/university students on staff who can only work evenings and weekends or single parents who cannot access childcare at certain hours; it is important to reasonably accommodate employee needs and show compassion for what’s going on in their personal lives. Flexibility will make them feel valued and increase employee retention.
5 – Give Key Employees Raises
Properly compensating employees demonstrates that the company values them as workers and human beings. When people feel valued, they feel good about coming into work. In general, better compensation improves company morale and increases loyalty.
Challenge #2 – Employee Turnover
Employee turnover is one of the fastest ways to lose time and resources. When your business deals with excessive turnover rates, scheduling turns from an organized process into chasing down employees for emergency shift replacements. Reactive scheduling leads to overscheduling, increased over-time costs, and dissatisfied employees and customers.
Increased Costs
Replacing lost workers can be expensive; while the cost varies, some studies have shown that replacing and hiring new staff is as high as 60% of the old employee’s salary. In addition, total replacement costs, including training and lost production, can range from 90% to 200% of an employee’s annual salary (Enrich).
Negative Impacts on Business performance.
Often the employees who remain with a company are less productive and efficient than they would have been in a lower turnover environment. This is because they must absorb the duties of the vacant positions.
Additionally, they must train new employees upon arrival and deal with the stressful work environments. Thus, companies with lower retention rates and high turnover are often less competitive than companies with a stable workforce.
Turnover causes challenges for managers.
National studies consistently show that employees quit jobs more often because of workplace culture or inter-employee relations than because of the difficulty of the work. A culture of high turnover spreads negativity quickly amongst the workforce. Negative attitudes lead to lower retention rates and increased absenteeism. What’s more, it is difficult to manage a workforce that is constantly in flux, leaving companies in a challenging position to compete.
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Recommended Reading:10 Employee Onboarding Tips Proven to Reduce Turnover! Updated 2022
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Solution #2
1- Provide a Thorough and Positive Onboarding process.
According to HR experts, employee onboarding is one of the most critical HR functions since it significantly impacts employee satisfaction, engagement, performance, commitment, and retention. For example, a 2022 report by Sapling HR noted that a positive onboarding increased the likelihood of an employee staying by 69%!
2 – Best Practices checklist for new employee onboarding:
- Provide an enthusiastic welcome to the team
- Provide contact information of trainers, managers, and HR
- Include a scheduled breakdown of their first day
- Provide a guided tour of the facility and their workspace
- Introduce the new employee to coworkers and managers
3 – Offer Ongoing Learning and Development opportunities.
An employer that does not focus on learning or career development will lose out on performance, engagement, and retention. According to LinkedIn’s 2018 Workforce Learning Report, 93% of employees would stay at a company longer if their company invested in their professional development.
Training has two main components, new employee training and long-term career development. For training and development to be successful, a company should:
- Clearly outline the goals of the training and development program.
- Ensure that all employees have access to training and development opportunities.
- Learning activities should recognize different learning styles.
- Evaluate the success of the program by measuring employee engagement, performance, and turnover rates before and after training
4 – Promote the Right Store Employees to Manager Positions.
A Gallup poll of over 1 million employed workers in the US found that the top reason employees quit is bad bosses. What’s more, 75% of voluntary turnover was because of their bosses and not the job. Bad bosses force good employees to leave their jobs. Therefore, hiring or promoting the right people for management positions is essential.
5 – Create a pleasant work environment
A low stress work environment helps people to be happier, and when people are happy, they tend to work harder, which has a positive impact on productivity. By creating a comfortable work environment many tough tasks will seem easier.
Benefits of Creating a Positive Work Environment
- Increases employee happiness by as much as 33%.
- Prevents or reduces long-term sick leave.
- Boosts productivity, creativity, and profitability.
- Decreases employee turnover, in some cases by 58%.
- Increases company revenue by a whopping 33%.
Challenge #3 – Lack of Availability
- 55 % of shift workers say they need more notice than their employer usually provides. (Quickbooks)
One of the most frustrating scheduling tasks is organizing employee availability. Depending on the size of your team, you’ll need to coordinate different types of employee availability. Both large and small companies experience their challenges.
Solution #3
1 – Know who is available to work.
A schedule of employee availability form or an availability calendar is an important document that shows when an employee can work. It is used to schedule shifts and determine coverage to meet business needs. The employee availability list should be updated regularly to ensure that it is accurate. TimeWellScheduled automates these processes, so there is no need for documents or keeping track of employee availability. This frees up your schedule to work on more important work.
2 – Manage Employee time and Shifts in Real-Time
- 68 % of employee work schedules are handwritten leading to errors and poor attendance management (Quickbooks)
TimeWellScheduled system allows businesses to manage employee availability and shift coverage in real-time. This is essential information; for example, if someone is absent (today) or there is a sudden fluctuation in business, managers will have a list of available employees to call in or know who they should send home. It can be guesswork without employee names and scheduling information to draw upon!
3 – Manage leave, vacation, or other time-off requests
- 70 % of US workers don’t use their paid time off. (Quickbooks)
- 80 % of US workers would take a pay rise over more time off (Quickbooks)
The access to employee availability can help plan out vacation time, leave, and other time off requests for employees. This way, everyone knows when they are available and when they are not. This can help to avoid any conflicts or confusion.
With TimeWellScheduled, you’ll always know who is and isn’t available to work because the information is all in one place.
4 – The Importance of Employee Time Tracking Systems
- 80 % of employee timesheets have to be corrected (Quickbooks)
Employee time and attendance are an integral part of the workplace as it allows for effective staff management. Attendance and time tracking software enable Human Resources to know who is present or absent for their shifts. And, at the same time, the software collects employee hours and attendance data for payroll. If an employee is absent for a shift change, the attendance system lets HR know if a replacement is needed. Employee attendance management is required to avoid any discrepancies in this information.
- TimeWellScheduled will help dramatically reduce the number of hours spent processing time and attendance for your company.
- The reporting solution empowers you with informed real-time decision-making capabilities, so you can easily convert data into actionable information.
- Simplify the employee management, the scheduling process and payroll processing.
- TimeWellScheduled makes building your schedules easier, faster, and more accurate.
- The scheduling system allows you to spend your valuable time on more important things.
- The attendance tracking software ensures that employees are accountable for their shifts.
Managing time and attendance is a critical part of the retail industry. Making sure you have the right employees in the right place at the right time is essential for success. By reducing the amount of time spent on administrative tasks, like processing timesheets and tracking employee availability, businesses can focus on what they do best; serving customers. With TimeWellScheduled.com, you can make your workplace run more efficiently and smoothly than ever before. Try it for yourself and see how easier life becomes when schedules are easy to create and manage!
Thank you for reading our article!
TimeWellScheduled.com is a secure, online time and attendance software that is 100% tailored to meet your scheduling needs! In addition, TimeWellScheduled facilitates employee attendance tracking, payroll tasks, and enhances your staff management capabilities. Plus, our service is free for up to 10 employees!
Click: here to download our (Excel) employee scheduling template, IT’s FREE!
