Why text messages and workforce planning are a perfect match

Nowadays, employees receive one e-mail after another, often unwanted, in their mailbox, which means that more and more mails remain unopened or are relegated to the spam folder. What if you need to notify your staff of an important update? Then just contact them via SMS? Research shows that 90% of all SMSs are read within three minutes of receiving them!

The SMS has been losing popularity for many years now due to the rise of mobile apps such as Messenger, Whatsapp, iMessage, ... An unjustified concern if you ask us. The use of SMS can provide you with many advantages in your staff planning.

Availability

At busy events or work days, chances are your crew will barely have time to surf the Internet during working hours. A text message, on the other hand, will immediately catch their eye when they take a cursory look at their cell phone. Some companies work primarily with older employees, some of whom do not yet own a smartphone. What they usually do own is a standard cell phone, and fortunately they can receive SMSs with it.

Smooth communication in emergency situations

Sometimes, as an employer, you have to deal with emergency situations. Consider, for example, a storm at an outdoor event or an office closure due to a gas leak. In the event of a severe storm, SMS is the ultimate way to communicate a safe place to all employees present as quickly as possible. In case of a gas leak at the office, you can warn your employees who are still on the road that they'd better work from home that day. In such cases, an SMS will reach your staff much faster than, say, an e-mail or a Messenger message. There are also platforms that allow you to send an SMS to a whole list of recipients in just one click.

Timesaving

Since an SMS can contain a maximum of 160 characters, your message must be very concise and to the point. Consequently, your SMS will be composed much faster than an e-mail. If there is no limit on the length of your message, in most cases you will send a longer text. Therefore, an SMS saves you a lot of time as an employer. The recipients, your employees, also save time by using SMS, because an SMS is read in the blink of an eye.

Last-minute updates

It happens regularly that you need to find last-minute replacements for scheduled employees who have called in sick or not shown up. Then there is nothing easier than to send an SMS to a pool of reserve candidates. Sometimes your customer wants the event to start a little earlier or later. Then you can easily notify the scheduled employees of the changed start time. In Beeple, these SMS are even automatically sent to the registered team members!

The SMS service of Beeple is hosted via CM.com Want to know more about the collaboration between Beeple and CM.com? Read all about it in this blogpost.

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