Speed up your planning process with these tips

Do you struggle to plan personnel efficiently? Do you spend (too) much time on it and do mistakes often creep in? These tips can help you.

Develop shift templates

Usually, it is not necessary to draw up a completely new schedule every month. Just invest time in creating a few templates for shifts that recur. Many events, periods or seasons have a certain degree of predictability.

Make and share the planning well in advance

Obvious? Perhaps, but in many companies it is a problem. Try to have the planning ready at least 14 days before the end of the current planning and send it to your employees. Don't forget your flex workers! Eventhough you deploy them flexibly, they like to be informed of the planning on time. That way, they have enough time to pass on any problems and you can still find a solution.  

A cloud-based tool provides a direct line to your employees: the planning is always, everywhere accessible to everyone, in real time. This way, you can be sure that information flows smoothly.

Let employees look for replacements themselves

Emergencies cannot be avoided. In such situations, you can save a lot of time by having your employees find and appoint replacements themselves. What would otherwise cost you an hour of phone calls and text messages, is now often arranged in a few clicks. Please note that you always check the shift change and have to give your approval for it.

Request availability

Sometimes employees cannot immediately find a replacement for their shift. In that case, you have to go and look for them yourself. This is when an availability overview per employee comes in handy. This can easily be requested using a monthly calendar. In it, employees indicate per day whether they are available or not. Or even easier, a tool that automatically takes into account the entered availabilities when creating the planning.

Or let employees do their own scheduling

You can give your employees more ownership and let them determine their own work schedule. You publish the shifts for which you are looking for someone and let your employees apply or register for the shifts they prefer. As a planner, the final schedule is always in your hands. Satisfied with the composition? Put the shifts back offline and communicate that the new planning is available.

Enable profile requirements

For some jobs, it is necessary to have a specific diploma or certificate. Think of doctors or nurses in the care sector or sound engineers in the cultural sector. Keeping track of those skills per employee saves a lot of time during the planning process. That is why Beeple goes one step further. You can link jobs to specific profile requirements. Only employees who meet those requirements are candidates for that particular job.

Divide your planning into (sub)projects and teams

Work with a fixed structure in your planning. Divide your planning into projects, sub-projects and teams. Projects can be, for example, monthly schedules or schedules per department. Partial projects are, for example, plans per location. Teams are groups of employees who work at the same time in the same place within the same function. Beeple likes to set a good example. In the tool, you can easily copy projects and teams. This way, several reusable templates are created as recommended in the first tip.

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