Buy Visual Staff Scheduler Pro from $495

Employee Scheduling Software

 

End of Service Notice (4/1/2022): It has been our pleasure to provide our customers with quality PC software for over 30 years. As of 4/1/2022, all installable PC-based products and tools will no longer be available for sale. To help you transition to other solutions, we will continue to support these products through 3/31/2023. You can continue to use our products after 3/31/2023. Thank you for your business!


How to Schedule Staff with Employee Scheduling Software

Posted by Brandy on March 28, 2013

If you’re using paper and pencil or a spreadsheet to make your work schedules, you may be wondering if there’s a better way to do it. A scheduling program can help a lot. It will help you make sure you’ve got the right number of staff assigned to each shift. It will save you scheduling time. And, it will help you keep employees informed about their own work schedule, as well as special announcements. Now you may be wondering how to schedule staff with employee scheduling software.

Categories

Popular Tags

  • Employee Scheduling
  • how to schedule
  • personnel records
  • reports
  • Business Planning
  • Human Resources
  • Appointment Scheduling
  • write a business plan
  • customer review
  • upgrade

Define Shifts

It’s easy to get started. During the initial set up of the program, you’ll need to type in your staff members names. Then set up your pre-defined shifts, such as a 7:00 am – 7:00 pm shift and a 7:00 pm – 7:00 am shift. You can set up as many shifts as you need. And, you can add descriptions, abbreviations, and colors for each shift, so they will be clearly understood by your entire team.

Assign Shifts

When it’s time to create your first schedule, all you have to do is click on a day by an employee’s name and then assign the shift you want them to work. As you schedule your staff, you’ll notice the program keeps track of how many people you have assigned for each shift, so you won’t mistakenly plan for too many or too few.

Copy Shift Patterns

Once your original work calendar is set up, you can copy that pattern into the future. Many companies copy their schedule rotations, so they won’t have to start from scratch each time they need a new schedule. Typically, when they use a schedule rotation, the only thing they have to do is make adjustments for time off, such as vacation time. So, a manager will need to go into the program to tweak the shift assignments to grant time-off requests and find replacements to work during those times.

When you use an employee scheduling software, you can produce several different types of schedules and reports that are easy for both employees and managers to understand. You can make the reports as detailed or as broad as you would like. And, you can even change fonts, colors, sort order, and date formats on the reports.

Using this type of program really is an easier way of preparing a calendar of work shifts for your employees. It’s easier for the manager who needs to prepare the schedules, as well as the employees who have to read them.