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3 Reasons to Schedule Your Hourly Employees in the Cloud

January 13, 2014 By Chad Halvorson 12 Comments

3 Reasons to Schedule Your Images in the Cloud
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Scheduling is hard. I used to work in a grocery store —  and it didn’t matter if you were the employee or the manager — scheduling and communicating with hourly employees and coworkers was always a huge hassle.

Managers spend hours preparing the work schedule — figuring out who’s available and who’s not. Flipping through post-it notes and emails to make sure you don’t schedule your Shift Lead, Sally, on a day that conflicts with her classes or second job.  Not to mention when someone calls in sick or doesn’t show up.

Fortunately it’s 2014 and we have the cloud, smartphones, text messaging and social media to help coordinate and communicate with hourly employees more efficiently.

Below I will review 3 really cool ways technology and devices can be used to more effectively schedule and communicate with our hourly employees.

Full disclaimer: I’m the CEO of When I Work, a mobile employee scheduling software — so the bulk of my enthusiasm is going to be around the tech I live everyday, but I’ll also touch on a couple other tools that I’ve heard work well too.

Table of Contents

  • Text, Email and Tweet Your Employees Their Work Schedule
  • Know Who’s Available and Who’s Not
  • No Shows and ‘Sick’ Calls
      • Chad Halvorson
      • Latest posts by Chad Halvorson (see all)

Text, Email and Tweet Your Employees Their Work Schedule

There are dozens of online scheduling tools that can help you communicate and distribute the work schedule to your employees. Most support email, few support text messaging — and I don’t know of any (except ours) that leverage social media and 2-way text messaging.

The goal is to put the work schedule in each employees pocket by whatever means necessary. These days, pretty much ALL text messages get read, and getting the work schedule in front of an employees eyeballs is paramount. Also, employees typically love it because it makes life easier for them — managers like it because it makes them more accountable.

A text message or tweet reminder sent to an employee 2 hours before their shifts begins helps too. You can also use free tools like Google Calendar and/or WhatsApp to keep everyone in-the-know, but these tools require a bit of an ad-hoc setup and communication is more manual.

Another fantastic way to save yourself time and keep employees accountable is integrated 2-way text messaging. For example, if employees can text things like “Do I work on Friday?”, your online scheduling tool should instantly reply with an appropriate response.

Know Who’s Available and Who’s Not

Centralize communication about availability and time off requests into an online system. It’s an efficient and reliable way to determine who can work and who can’t.

Most systems allow employees to input their availability preferences through the schedule tool. This streamlines things for managers because they can instantly see (in one view) who’s available.

This can be taken a step further with mobile. With our mobile scheduling system, employees can update and input their availability right from the iPhone.

No Shows and ‘Sick’ Calls

The worst is when you get caught off guard. You get a call or text in the morning that someone’s not going to make it in today for their shift.

A good employee scheduling software will make it easy to see who’s available and qualified to work the shift — but a fantastic scheduling software will automate the process for you — from your computer or mobile phone.

One click and you’re done. Get back to business.

Scheduling hourly employees is a daunting task. It has been for decades. Fortunately, we now have a lot of great tools at our fingertips to help us ease the pain.

Finding those tools can be almost as daunting, but if you understand your problem well, the right solution should find you.

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Chad Halvorson

CEO at When I Work
Chad Halvorson is the CEO of thisCLICKS, makers of When I Work, where he leads product development for their mobile employee scheduling software. He believes that business software should be created for the end-user, not the decision maker and that businesses should be able to roll out software to their workforce in 5 minutes, not 5 months. When I Work simplifies staff scheduling and communication for restaurants, retailers, healthcare providers and small businesses all over the world.
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Filed Under: Increasing Productivity, Small Business Advice Tagged With: employee scheduling, small business advice, small business solutions

Comments

  1. Geo Op says

    August 19, 2017 at 12:20 am

    Hey,
    This is very informative article & I am completely agree with you that scheduling employees and their work is very important to grow fast your business. This is amazing to read and helpful. Thanks 😀

    Reply
  2. anuja says

    December 20, 2016 at 4:45 am

    It’s actually a cool and useful piece of info. I’m satisfied that you shared this helpful information with us. I am using these things to schedule the work of my employees. Glad I found this article.

    Reply
  3. Meghan says

    August 25, 2014 at 12:08 pm

    good way to communicate through online tools.

    Reply
  4. Meghan says

    August 11, 2014 at 11:26 am

    Fantastic tool to manage workforce!
    article is a good read!

    Reply
  5. jass chahal says

    January 21, 2014 at 11:22 am

    Now we can communicate with online tools
    jass chahal would love you to read ..intelligent fun child,crazy childMy Profile

    Reply
  6. Zareen says

    January 20, 2014 at 12:40 am

    Yes !
    Its really an amazing and great way to deal with your employees on hourly basis. I shall follow your above mentioned instructions to deal with my employees. You are beautifully providing some amazing information.
    Zareen would love you to read ..Road Transport Inspectorate Training Programme 2014: CBRTA CareersMy Profile

    Reply
  7. Samir says

    January 17, 2014 at 6:10 am

    Hello,

    Well scheduling employee is an important task get the work done easily. You’ve shared absolute ways and tools

    Thanks.

    Reply
  8. Virtual Assisstant says

    January 15, 2014 at 9:24 am

    Scheduling was a challenge earlier but now its a minute’s task with templates ready to figure out who is doing what when and how much. Presence of technology helps human and makes them dependent on the same.

    Reply
  9. Aahna says

    January 14, 2014 at 11:17 am

    Hi Chad,

    Certainly useful tool, which will help you to manage your available workforce in a much better way after ensuring their availability.
    Aahna would love you to read ..Health Awareness CentreMy Profile

    Reply
  10. RosSumiati says

    January 14, 2014 at 8:55 am

    I am thinking to have an writing assistants, maybe i will need tools for make the schedule for them. Thanks for sharing
    RosSumiati would love you to read ..Introduction to BloggingMy Profile

    Reply
  11. Andy S says

    January 14, 2014 at 12:21 am

    This is a great read indeed. Good thing today there are lots of tools that could prove useful in handling this task to make it easier to manage. Thanks for sharing them here.

    Reply
  12. horoskop 2014 says

    January 14, 2014 at 3:43 am

    This is a great read indeed. Good thing today there are lots of tools that could prove useful in handling this task to make it easier to manage. Thanks for sharing them here.
    horoskop 2014 would love you to read ..6 Olahraga Untuk MataMy Profile

    Reply

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