Scheduling employees can be a time-consuming task with the multiple moving pieces. Without the proper tools, scheduling can be a nightmare. This article describes how using Excel can be a difficult way to effectively manage the employee's schedules.

Time-Consuming

The problem with Excel is the time it takes to make the different components of scheduling display in the workbook. It may seem simple to plug in the names of employees into the spreadsheet, but the process can be time-consuming to sift through all the availability, requests for shifts off and overtime issues. Also, when last minute difficulties occur such as an employee calling in sick, it can be next to impossible to find the correctly qualified person as a substitute. To properly manage an organized schedule, it's important to have the capabilities to easily display employees' availability, qualifications and amount of hours already worked. It's not possible to resolve issues quickly without all the information in one place. Focusing time to fix a schedule will take away from important customer service opportunities that can help your business grow.

Lack of Security

Confidential employee information is always present in a staff schedule. Although Excel allows you to protect a document, it does not provide the ability to set security levels to determine which managers have access to what data.With scheduling software automation, you do have the ability to determine who has access to employee information, pay rates, or company reports and you are also able to assign who you want in charge of these responsibilities. Maintaining an audit trail with automation also ensures accuracy and fairness with schedule changes and overtime assignments. A spreadsheet cannot provide those levels of security and accuracy.

Updating Issues

Workforce scheduling has several moving parts that constantly need to be updated or changed. Once an Excel Worksheet is made, employees will have to call in or ask managers for contact information whenever they need to ask another employee to pick up their shifts. Then there can be communication problems between workers and managers as information gets jumbled over many phone calls. The Excel Sheet is either printed or sent out through email and the changes cannot be updated again unless managers have the time to resend the schedule every time it needs to be changed. Scheduling software can alleviate these woes because all the information needed is in one place and changes to the schedule in real time.

Lack of Customization Capabilities

Excel has very limited capabilities for the comprehensive scheduling of a business or organization. Spreadsheets cannot handle the skill sets of workers, payroll integration, labor laws and requirements, fairly assigning overtime, or a host of other scheduling-related needs. Fortunately, scheduling software offers tools that allow users to customize desktops, data fields, reports and more to make scheduling unique to the way you do business.

VCS Scheduling Software

Your labor force is the most expensive part of your operating budget, and with the mobility of today’s employees, a proactive, schedule-centric approach will save tens of thousands of dollars annually. Whether you are a small business or a large corporation, proactively managing your workforce for optimal productivity is an absolute necessity in today’s competitive business landscape.

Check out the link below to see how scheduling software can benefit you.