How to Schedule Employees for Your Small Business

The current pandemic has had a significant impact on the working environment of small businesses. Some companies had to initiate work-from-home procedures to accommodate regulations while ensuring that their employees remained as safe as possible.

However, the time has come to ensure that these teams are brought back to their offices, particularly now that vaccines have been widely distributed. During this time, small businesses might undergo massive struggles to ensure that all shifts are covered. As such, looking into scheduling early on can be beneficial for large and small businesses alike.

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Schedule Employees for Your Small Business

To help you maximize efficiency and effectiveness during this challenging time, here’s how to schedule employees for your small business.

Adopt The Right Scheduling Software

The internet access and thousands of applications must be on the top of your list among the number of ways to distract you from work. But, honestly, would you blame only smartphones for distracting you or keeping you from your work? Because, if you look objectively, smartphones serve as one of the key devices to help increase your productivity. You can schedule appointments, manage tasks, set reminders and do a lot more through your smartphone, on the go. One great example is BlackBerry Hub that gives the phone a productivity boost, whether it’s integrating all your email, text and social messages into one place or giving you a really smart Calendar. It makes sure that doing stuff on your smartphone is effortless and really smart, therefore, increasing your productivity dramatically. Here are five useful tips to help you tap into your smartphone's productivity power: Note down THAT idea now: Keep track of your to-do lists or your bucket list, make notes for a presentation or action items from a meeting, all on your smartphone, anytime, anywhere. Suddenly hit up with that great idea? Just note it down on your phone. Some phones also offer features that synchronize your notes with Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook. So you can shoot these ideas when you believe you are ready to. Smoothen the process: Make use of applications such as launcher that turn multi-step actions like sending an email or calling a friend into a one-click task. It lets you organize apps, widgets, and shortcuts on customized home screen panels for instant access. You can view any application widget by simply swiping up or down across the icon on your home screen, giving you fast access to the information you need, whenever you need it. BlackBerry Hub is another great feature that BlackBerry devices offer, it integrates all your email, text and social messages into one place. This unified inbox is an irreplaceable tool for consolidating all of your messages in one place – whether it’s email, calendar, social or phone calls. Collaborate without worrying about security and privacy: Handing memos to co-workers is a thing of the past and should stay there. We live in a hyper-connected world, with a propensity for instant access to information and things. Smartphones come in handy for sending texts, voice, video or having a group chat. However, this also imposes severe privacy and security vulnerabilities on the individuals and the organization. Therefore, security-conscious individuals and organizations consider BBM, which is complete instant messaging platform and meets regulatory compliance standards, protecting data with a high level of encryption from end-to-end (in transit and at rest) across Android™, iOS, Windows®, and macOS. Meetings and Calendar: Your smartphone can help you schedule a meeting and also act as a reminder. Moreover, for example, when you use a calendar on your Blackberry phone, you don't have to worry about double booking. When you create or change events, you can avoid double bookings by viewing if you’re busy. Using the Join Now feature, you can instantly dial into your meetings directly from your event reminder. Isn't that like having a personal assistant on the go? Stay focused: Sometimes, all you need is to give deadlines to yourself and set reminders to get the work done. And what could act as a better reminder than your smartphones that stays with you almost 24*7. Blackberry Task is an interesting feature that will increase your efficiency at work by creating tasks, and setting due dates and reminders to help you stay focused and meet your deadlines. You will receive notifications for upcoming tasks. It also syncs recurring tasks, due dates, and reminders. So go on and get the work done. You can either blame all evil in the world on smartphones, new technologies, and internet or you can make use of these to enhance your productivity and simplify your work-life and beyond. The options are available and the choice is yours!

No matter your field of speciality, having the right tools is essential to getting the job done properly. When corporations are rapidly moving to cloud integration, it is also important to select a solution that stays in line with the latest technologies.

Getting the right employee scheduling software makes it easy to adopt efficient schedules in small business settings. Software solutions with built-in templates, customizable scheduling rules, and employee guidelines help you get the work done without any hassle.

Create the Schedules In Advance

You must assess the staffing needs of your small business. This deep understanding of your staffing requirements puts you in a better position to comprehend your small business’s seasonal and production variations.

In turn, you are able to figure out how to fill the existing gaps in your scheduling, which goes a long way towards putting together early schedules. Posting an early schedule to the employee portal or workplace bulletin board also gives you ample time to initiate reviews and make changes whenever the need arises.

Have a Clear Understanding of Employees’ Needs

Schedule Employees for Your Small Business

Besides establishing your scheduling needs based on your available staff, you also need to assess your employees’ expectations from you. Remember that employees may have other commitments or restrictions on their plate that they will need you to work around. Your recruitment interviews can help you determine whether prospective hires have any special scheduling needs. Make sure to note unique scheduling requests from your employees, so you can reference these notes during scheduling.

At the same time, you should follow the lead of organizations establishing empathic management by opening a direct communication channel with existing employees, like a company-wide messaging app. By noting down key information such as employee availability and the number of hours they will work in a day, you can make optimal decisions while rolling out your schedule.

Have a Clear Absence Management Plan

What if an employee falls sick? What if an injury occurs? It is best to think about such issues when you are scheduling employees or posting a schedule. To manage these issues, you should establish a standby or on-call team that could come in to help when such emergencies happen.

On the other hand, you may get more creative by initiating a cross-training program. Instead of depending on on-call employees, you can ensure that all employees understand the day-to-day operations of your small business. In addition, you may encourage your employees to expand their job skills, which would be beneficial whenever one of your employees is absent.

It Is Essential To Think Beyond The Ordinary

Since your needs may vary from other businesses in your sector, it is best not to blindly adopt other organizations’ approaches to scheduling. Instead, treat your small business as a unique venture that is free to explore diverse options and innovate as much as you can to meet your specific needs.

You may indeed have been used to the traditional spreadsheet in your scheduling agenda, but business needs are dynamic, and organizations must adapt to changes in technology and processes. Therefore, to make the most out of your scheduling efforts, you should try out other creative scheduling options that are available in the market.

Each organization has a different approach to scheduling, employee management, and resource allocation. As a result, your system will need to account for your specific needs and requirements, which opens doors to overall flexibility and productivity.

By taking the above ideas into consideration, you can ensure the long-term efficiency of your business. Don’t be afraid to get creative with scheduling and take your own approach to make sure your business is staffed and your employees are happy.