How your rota affects employee satisfaction
Happy employees are productive employees.
And so it’s in your interest to keep employees happy.
Scheduling is one way to do that.
Any way you can make reasonable adjustments to your processes that benefit your employees, you should take the chance to do so.
Here are our top tips for creating a rota that will contribute towards a positive workplace environment and satisfied employees.
Collect employee preferences
It’s hard to cater to people when you don’t know what they want! As such, the obvious first step towards better scheduling is to understand the lives of your employees and how the shifts they’re assigned might affect them.
Gather information on commitments they have outside of work, from caring responsibilities to further education, so that your default position can be putting them on shifts that work for them.
Consider remote and hybrid options
The way your employees work is a fundamental part of their experience with your business. And there are few bigger factors in that than where their carry out their shifts.
While not all companies can offer it due to the nature of their work, if you are able to offer employees the option to complete some shifts remotely, it can transform their engagement and happiness.
Whether it’s reducing commuting, letting them work in a more comfortable space, or having greater flexibility in their location, finding ways to let employees contribute without being on site can be beneficial to your business.
Plan rotas early
By giving employees as much notice as possible of when their shifts will be, you make it far easier for them to plan other commitments around work and vice versa. Short-notice call-ins can be stressful, even if they are sometimes a necessary evil.
Finding ways to deal with last-minute shifts effectively can lessen the impact of these, but avoiding them altogether is still preferable. That means giving employees time to work out whether their assigned shifts are compatible with everything else going on in their lives.
As well as planning your rota in advance, regularly publishing it on a set schedule will help employees know when to look for it and start analysing their shift assignments.
Give employees agency over their shifts
As well as publishing your rota early so that employees can plan around it, you should also allow them to make reasonable changes to that rota if possible. Findmyshift’s features include the ability for employees to make shift requests, which you can view and respond to using your manager’s view.
This allows employees to suggest alternative shifts and swaps that suit their own lives and help them to maintain a healthy work-life balance. If they’re able to choose shifts that are less likely to clash with their commitments outside of work, you may avoid last-minute changes and no shows.
Ensure employees take enough leave
Employee burnout is a serious concern. When employees are suffering from being or feeling overworked, businesses see a rise in employee dissatisfaction, absenteeism, and presenteeism.
Employees themselves are also likely to suffer from mental and physical health conditions, which can then further impact their ability to work effectively.
As such, ensuring employees are happy and well-rested by taking sufficient leave is important for you and them.
By encouraging leave throughout the year, you also reduce the likelihood that you will be short-staffed at key, busy times.
Clock in and out
This might sound strange, but clocking in and out of each shift can be helpful even for salaried employees. As well as automatically recording their hours using automated payroll data, clocking in and out has been shown to help employees create a healthy divide between their time at home and at work.
Look for patterns that could signal struggles
Looking at the absence and attendance records of your employees isn’t only useful for disciplinary action. By spotting employees that might be struggling, you can initiate conversations about how you can better support them and find solutions that work for them and your business.
The Bradford Factor can be a good indicator of attendance issues, and may trigger processes that can nip issues in the bud.
Encourage feedback and improve your process
Of course, as ever, following these tips should be the first step on a journey towards a more efficient, productive, and happy business. You won’t get to the finished state overnight. So it’s important to make incremental changes, measure their impact, collect feedback from employees, and iterate again.
Over time, you will be able to find the right processes, which are likely to be as unique as your business is.