How to Effectively Use Your Employee Work Schedule Template

The Task at Hand

Perhaps the most repetitive task in a manger's list of duties is creating the dreaded employee work schedule when you efforts could be focused enhancing the brand through customer interaction or applying your other strengths to the business needs. One of the ways to reduce the headache of employee scheduling is to create an effective employee work schedule template. Below we will discuss the essential elements to include in an employee work schedule template and, once you have your template created, how you can most effectively use it with your employees.

What Every Employee Work Schedule Template Needs

If you are not sure where to start with your work schedule template, there are a ton of online schedule templates that you can download for free by doing a quick search on Google. Or, if you are a do-it-yourselfer, you can create your own template in a program like Excel. But if you already have enough work on your plate, using a scheduling app can provide you the ability to create employee work schedule templates with ease and allows you to access and edit them from anywhere.

No matter what method you choose to create your employee work schedule template, for it to be effective, there are some absolutely must haves to include. Every template needs

• Names of Employees
• A week or two-weeks worth or longer depending on your needs
• Date of each day
• Business and shift hours
• Manager contact information
• A way to show work hours within each day

How to Effectively Use Your Employee Work Schedule Template

An employee work schedule template is a great tool. But like any scheduling tool, it is only good if it is utilized effectively for the betterment of your business. Time and employee's well-being should also be taken into account. Used properly, a good work schedule template will simultaneously save you time as a manager, streamline the scheduling process, help you leverage the skills of your best employees while ensuring that they are being fairly scheduled and respecting their time, as well as yours. Here are a few tips that can help you accomplish this goal

Tip 1. Consider Your Employee's Strengths and Weaknesses

Depending on the industry you are in, and the shifts you have to fill, you have probably learned that some employees have certain strengths that make them a great asset during certain shifts. In relation, assigned tasks executed by certain employees may present some shortcomings that may not suit their strengths. All employees possess these traits. If you don't yet know your employees well enough to know where to put them on the schedule, try getting to know them better. Asking them what their strengths and weaknesses are and where they think they would best fit is also a good idea. Opening this line of communication with your employee's is good for business and allows for smoother scheduling.

Tip 2. Create Schedules Around Your Best Employees

You know those great employees that you cannot imagine being without? Well, shifts can't do without them either. When creating your weekly employee work schedule, try to spread out your best performing employees over all the shifts in your template. The goal is to ensure that the experience and skill is even distributed so that no shift goes without a senior and more experienced employee that less experienced employees can learn from.

Tip 3. Give Employees a Say

The best way to respect your employees' time is to allow them to schedule themselves for work. This may not always be feasible, but try to implement it if you can. A good method to try is for you to schedule half of their time and let them fill in the rest. Or, in line with Tip

Tip 4. Respect Your Employees' Time

Nothing sours the morale of employees more than the feeling that their time is not respected or valued. If you want to avoid high turnover rate, then make sure to include employees in the scheduling process. If you want high employee retention, then it is important to adhere to their availability, respect the shift preferences and to grant employees time off requests whenever possible -- not all the time, but when possible.

Tip 5. Give Employees Responsibility

With freedom comes responsibility. To save yourself the headache of having to rush to fill an absence, make your employees responsible for finding their own shift fill-ins. Of course, there are emergencies in which a fill-in cannot be found in time. But emergency cases aside, try to foster an environment of responsibility around your employee's shifts. This also opens up communication lines and chances for mutual agreement between fellow employees. An advanced scheduling app can make communication between employees fast and streamlined and keep everyone up to speed on last minute schedule changes.

Tip 6. Send Out Schedules ASAP

Sending out the schedule to your team as soon as it is completed is another aspect of respecting your employees' time. When received in advance, employees are able to schedule their lives around it more effectively and plan their weeks and even months ahead of time. Give your employees the courtesy of having a good idea of their schedule as soon as possible. Sending out the work schedule quickly also ensures that if there are any scheduling conflicts, employees can alert you and have enough time to find a replacement. A good template app allows you to create and send out schedules in minutes, giving your employees plenty of time to determine their priorities and address any conflicts.

Our Recommendation

Try Zip Schedules to create your next work schedule template.

We hope that these tips have helped you get a start on your employee work schedule template and that you can use them to effectively schedule your employees. If you are looking to save a bunch of time and labor, these tips are built in to the very design of the Zip Schedules app and can have you creating and sending out schedule templates in minutes.

The app also allows you to approve or reject employee requests right from the free mobile app, enable employee access to schedules and the ability to communicate, notify and update your entire team about scheduling. Zip Schedules also allows you to save favorited schedules as templates that can be quickly created and edited for your needs.

If you are tired of the tedious hassles of manual schedule creation, then simplify your work schedule creation process.