In this article we are going to discuss the various benefits that organizations and companies of varying size can leverage for their employees. Organizations can leverage the use of a rostering engine or software in order to solve the staff rostering as well as employee scheduling problems and can take advantage of this approach in many suitable ways.
1) Cost Savings:
Employee salaries are the most significant part of the expenditures beared by any organization or company no matter the size of the organization. Better scheduling can always be able to reduce this expenditure
- By minimizing the employee coverage, and that means assigning a limited set of employees that are required at any time.
- Your organization can reduce the reliance of short notice workers who work in order to fill the gaps between schedules when the organization seems that this is the only possible solution to a way out.
- You can intelligently schedule the work shifts among workers or employees in order to minimize fatigue as well as the stress that is incurred amongst workers caused due to poor scheduling procedures and techniques that are of low quality and that has no reliable throughput.
2) Higher staff retention as well as better and viable recruiting aids and procedures:
- For an example consider the work ability in the healthcare industry, a number of countries have witnessed a reduction in the number of people that are undergoing training in order to become nurses and/or an increase in the number of nurses leaving the profession altogether.
- As the population of these countries become mature, the demand for healthcare initiatives will increase and in turn put pressure on the number of nurses being recruited for the industry will see a rise and this problem will become more acute. In order to encourage more people to take up nursing as a profession, and reduce the number of people leaving the healthcare nursing profession, various initiatives have been taken.
- One of the initiatives that have been taken is to allow more part time contracts to people for becoming nurses, and to provide nurses with more flexible work schedules and on the ways they work. This can allow more people to remain in the nursing profession without having any problems during work altogether.
3) Reduction in tardiness as well as absenteeism:
- Many companies and organizations face a reduction in the overall productivity because of staff absenteeism as well as tardiness. The reasons for persons that arrive late or take the day off have a variety of reasons.
- This can be due credited for the dissatisfaction of the workers schedules as well as fatigues encountered due to poor scheduling and organization.
- This can be reduced by providing better rostering abilities as well as providing workers more say in their work patterns. For example, an employee is less likely to remain absent when their voices and inputs are heard and implemented.
4) Personal Preferences:
- Organizations can increase the employee satisfaction rate by providing them with a flexible work schedules and work timings that are as per the convenience of the employees, thus allowing them to better plan and use their leisure time and can also increase their general morale levels.
- This can in turn lead to benefits for the organization such as higher employee productivity and lower staff turnover with the costs that are associated.
5) Increased Quality of Services:
- Another example from the healthcare industry is that the nurses are able to spend much more time with patients if they are not overworked as well as the department is not understaffed as a result of poor scheduling.
- In the worst case scenario, fatigue as well as stress can also result in the occurrence of a medical error thus endangering the lives as well as health and safety of patients and can also damage the hospitals reputation.
- Creating high quality and efficient rosters however is a challenging process which is made much more difficult by providing the ability to give increased flexibility as well as a variety of work contracts.
- In many companies or organizations which includes those that does not use any kind of workforce management software, the schedules are still created and produced by hand which is inefficient as well as time consuming.
- This task can be tiring as well as frustrating and confusing. The planner can be presented with a number of requests and the ability to schedule requirements which can rarely be fully satisfied and compliant.
- They are also required to be fully abiding and binding to the rules that are set by the organization while trying to grant as many requests as possible. Quite often, unfavourable shifts must be unassigned and the requests must be denied when trying to maintain fairness as well as impartiality.
- Organizations should use a rostering engine in order to automatically create schedules. It is possible not only to remove this chore but also the associated costs and create a much higher quality roster.
- The scheduling can be performed at a fraction of the incurred cost and effort and the schedules are better than what expert human planners can be able to achieve.
- Legal requirements should be regularly checked which can be missed by an automated planner and more requests and working preferences should be satisfied. The person that used to do these chores and set up schedules now has more time in his/her hand for other duties.
- This is especially noticeable when the regular scheduling is due because of staff sickness and unpredicted absences. As the schedules being computer generated, people feel that they are less victimised if they believe that their schedule is worse than a colleagues.
- Rostering engine can often be used as a decision support tool that can easily allow planners to test different scenarios. For an example, how would the quality of the schedules change when more or less employees are assigned this location.
Staff rostering can indeed be a blessing for organizations that deal in providing work schedules for different employees. Regular shifting and flexible work hours can not only boost the morale of the workforce but also motivate them to put their best efforts forward when they come to work. Many organizations can benefit from a detailed and well prepared staff rostering plan.
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