5 Reasons Why Weekly Work Schedule Templates are Obsolete Today

What is Employee Scheduling?

If you run a restaurant, you must have felt the need to have an organized and efficient system with the help of which your entire staff would report to work on time and perform their tasks on cue. This can be done with the correct employee scheduling tools. These can help you assign tasks to individual team members, track projects, manage time and attendance sheets, and also integrate employee work hours with your payroll management system.

Employee scheduling is the process of organizing and managing employee shifts such that your business has sufficient staff coverage at all times. There are different factors to consider when creating an employee schedule, including skill set, availability, and workload. The most effective schedules are those that are created with inputs from both, managers and employees. While there are the traditional methods of creating schedule templates, there are also automated weekly planners and employee scheduling software solutions that can make the job easy.

Benefits of Efficient Employee Scheduling

Efficient employee scheduling can offer a number of benefits to restaurant businesses, including improved customer service, better communication among the team, increased profitability and reduced turnover. Here's a detailed look at them-

• Improved communication is one of the most important benefits of efficient employee scheduling. With a clear and concise schedule, employees will know when they are supposed to be working and when they can enjoy personal time. This can help reduce confusion and misunderstanding among employees, as well as improve overall morale.
  
• Increased profitability is another major benefit of efficient employee scheduling. When employees are given their work schedules beforehand, businesses can run more smoothly without the risk of sudden staff shortage. This can guarantee increased sales, higher profit margins, and optimized business management.
  
• Proper employee scheduling and time tracking can also help reduce wastage and labor costs, which can further increase profitability of the business. Efficient employee scheduling can also ensure that all employees are utilized according to their skillsets without the scope for resource wastage.
  
• When employees feel like they are doing meaningful work and their skills are being used effectively, they are less likely to look for other employment opportunities. Therefore, by investing in an efficient employee scheduling system like Scheduling Apps, businesses can keep their best workers happy and motivated, while reducing overall turnover rates at the same time.
  

Traditional Ways of Employee Scheduling

The traditional way of Employee Time scheduling involved manually planning a daily schedule or a weekly schedule on Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, or Google Sheets. This work schedule is then downloaded and distributed among all employees as printed or digital copies. However, these are not editable, managers cannot use them for time tracking, project management, and other employee management operations. The traditional method also takes up a lot of time as managers need to manually track work hours, availability, work patterns, and details of each employee to prepare a work schedule.

Another way of employee scheduling is using schedule templates that are available for download on the internet. These (often free) shift schedule templates come in various forms and patterns and you are free to choose one as per your business needs. Although a traditional method, schedule templates still manage to reduce some of the repetitive work of restaurant managers who can just edit them to create new rosters every week.

What's a Weekly Work Schedule Template?

A work schedule template is a document that contains a pre-designed table or format for creating work schedules for an entire workforce. And a weekly schedule template is one which can be used and reused every week to make new shift schedules by just tweaking a few sections. The main purpose of using such a schedule template is to help individuals, businesses, or organizations create accurate and consistent employee schedules. Work schedule templates can be found online and on many software applications.

Why are Work Schedule Templates Obsolete Today?

There are a number of reasons why work schedule templates are now obsolete. Perhaps the most significant reason is that there are simply too many variables to consider when creating a work schedule. For example, employees may have different availability, shift preferences, and skill sets, while customer demand may also fluctuate day to day or week to week. It is nearly impossible to create a one-size-fits-all work schedule template that will meet the needs of all businesses on all days.

Instead of using a work schedule template, businesses today are far more likely to use employee scheduling software. This type of software takes into account all the necessary variables and creates an optimized work schedule that meets the needs of both, the business and its employees.

Advantages of Employee Scheduling Software

Restaurant businesses are increasingly turning to employee scheduling software to automate the process of creating detailed and conflict-free work schedules that reduce their headache and also help them save on labor costs. With some Best Practices in place and employee scheduling software at your disposal, you can achieve a lot with your workforce. Here's a look at some of its advantages-

1. Automatically generate work schedules based on employees' skills, qualifications, and availability and avoid conflicts between work schedules, leaves, and skillsets.
2. Ensure that all your employees receive their desired number of work hours every week, without having to wrack your brains to meet these needs.
3. Monitor compliance with labor laws and company policies without putting in any additional labor.
4. Improve communication between managers and employees as scheduling software solutions come with in-built messaging and calling tools. Moreover, employees can put in leave requests, and time-off requests on the apps and managers can directly approve or reject them from the platform itself.
5. Reduce the incidence of absenteeism and tardiness with accurate shift schedules that do not upset your employees.
6. Increase productivity by better managing employee breaks, mealtimes, and overtime.
7. Directly integrate the employee scheduling app with the third-party payroll management system you use to ensure that your team members are getting their due.

Final Word

There is no perfect employee work schedule. The best you can do is to try out different approaches and see what works best for your team. Ultimately, you want to find a balance between giving employees the freedom to manage their own time, ensuring that your restaurant managers are getting the work done and your business is generating the desired results.