4 reasons NOT to plan shifts with excel
We understand that sometimes opening an excel spreadsheet can be like dipping into a warm bath. You know what it’s going to be like, it’s comforting and (unless you find yourself in Nightmare On Elm Street), there should be no nasty surprises.
Often Excel is a universal language in the workplace – you and Brenda in HR can use it, and you know the boss can print and check it all easily.
Despite these tempting reasons, Excel is not the way to go when planning your workforce.
Here are our top 4 reasons why we want you to give up excel planning immediately and go cold turkey while switching to a Time and Attendance system.
1) People are not perfect
You can work out the best rota/schedule possible, but people will always be sick, have emergencies or even forget shifts – no one is perfect.
So what do you do when you need to have flexibility and real-time staffing options? Is Excel going to help you work out who’s free, can fit the role and update the schedule in a few clicks? – thought not.
Cloud software like uAttend, allows you to quickly know when someone doesn’t show and update the schedule whether at the office, on the go with your smartphone, or sat at home with a tablet.
2) Save money, time and resources in the long run
Even if you’ve perfected the art of an Excel Schedule – how about the process of hour tracking, break compliance and all the other many staffing issues you need to document?
Is this on another Excel sheet and is the process easy to know if your admin team are away?
With a cloud-based Time and Attendance system, your employees would automatically fill in the data you need to know such as worked hours, breaks and overtime, every time they clock.
You can even apply your pay rules to the system so that your payroll data is already calculated for you and 100% accurate to your needs.
3) The right people, in the right place, at the right time
With Excel, you are relying on a person to work out and place each employee on their correct shift.
Not only does this person have to consider personal preference (nights/days/child-friendly shifts etc) but skills. Production lines may need a H&S leader or someone with a forklift license. Suddenly the thought of scheduling employees isn’t as simple as plugging the gaps.
Continually putting the employees on a wrong shift due to human error can also hinder production and affect morale moving forward.
This is where a cloud-based system like uAttend can help. Our scheduling tool allows you to ‘group’ employees by their titles, skills and more. You can select how many of each role you need for a shift and fill the working week based on what you need.
4) Transparency
John needs to know what shift he’s working next week to arrange child care. It takes the admin team a few days to work out shifts for the month, print and then pin them for the team to see.
By the time John can check, he can’t get a babysitter and needs the day off. With a cloud-based system, this could have been so much quicker!
The admin team could have allocated shifts week by week based on easy-to-use templates and simply publish them when filled.
Employees would then need to just log in to the uAttend App or portal to check their shifts. Any issues and John could apply for holiday straight away, alerting the admin team in real-time of any issues and allowing them to sort it.
Have we convinced you to ditch Excel for scheduling employees yet? Need to find out more about Scheduling with uAttend?