Speed up your scheduling process with these tips

Every company is monthly/yearly faced with drawing up a schedule for her collaborators, but that is often very time-consuming. However, it does not necessarily have to be like that. These tips will certainly help you save a lot of time!

Create some shift templates

In most cases, it is unnecessary to draw up a whole new schedule each month. Rather invest some time in composing a couple of shift templates for shifts that occur regularly. Many events are predictable to a certain extent, so take advantage of that. The created templates can be easily copied at the end of the month/year. You can always add extra shifts if necessary.

Make & send the planning well in advance

This seems obvious, but it is still not evident in many companies. It is advisable to finish the planning and send it to your staff at least 14 days before the end of the current planning. That way, your collaborators have sufficient time to communicate any possible overlaps with private appointments and the planner has enough time to find a solution. The quickest way to distribute your planning is via a cloud-based tool, because it is anywhere accessible for everyone and it can be adapted anytime.

Enable your staff to find substitutes themselves

Unintentionally, you will encounter emergencies , no-shows, illness and so on. In these cases, you can save a lot of time by enabling your collaborators to find and indicate a replacement themselves . What would have cost you an hour of phone calls and text messages, is now often arranged in a couple of minutes. It is however important that the planner does a final check on these substitutions and needs to approve them.

Retrieve the availabilities of your collaborators

It sometimes happens that your collaborators do not immediately find a replacement for their shift. In that case, the planner has to look for a substitute himself. An availability overview per collaborator can come in very handy then. This can be easily retrieved in a monthly calendar in which you need to indicate per day if you’re available or not. Beeple even automatically takes into account the entered availabilities during the scheduling of staff.

Or opt for self -scheduling

You can also give your collaborators some more responsibility and let them determine their own work schedule. You publish the shifts for which you need somebody and you enable the collaborators to apply or enrol for the shifts that they prefer. Of course, the planner still has control of the final schedule. Are you satisfied with the planning? Then you can unpublish the shifts and communicate that the new planning is available.

Set profile requirements

For some functions, it is necessary to own a specific diploma or certificate. Take for example doctors or nurses in the health sector or sound engineers in the cultural sector. If you keep track of those qualifications per collaborator, you also save a lot of planning time. In Beeple, you can even link the functions to specific profile requirements. Only the collaborators that meet those requirements qualify for the concerning function.

Divide your planning into (sub)projects and teams

It is recommendable to work with a fixed structure in your planning. In Beeple, the planning can be divided into projects, subprojects and teams. Projects are for example month schedules or schedules per department. Subprojects are for example schedules per location. Teams are groups of collaborators that work at the same time in the same place within the same function. To come back to the first paragraph: Beeple enables you to easily copy projects and teams. That way, several reusable templates are born.

‍

The right information anywhere and at anytime?

‍