Preparing a staff roster layout might be as simple as borrowing what has been used in the past, or as complicated as figuring out seniority within a new business. Whatever problems you face during employee scheduling, the primary issue you face is maintaining efficient use of your time while optimizing the sales for the company.

This might sound counter-intuitive for someone just wanting to prepare an employee schedule or staff roster, but the way you arrange scheduling can directly affect sales. As a new manager, you should focus your learning efforts to really understand how these issues can affect customer satisfaction and ticket averages.

Probably the greatest hurdle you face as a manager preparing employee schedules and working on staff scheduling is the picky requirements of work schedules for each employee. Some can work only on weekday afternoons, while some need the second Monday of every month off, but only on odd months. It is enough to drive a manager bonkers, but employee scheduling is still something that can’t be put off - without the schedule, customers will not receive the service they expect. Without an efficient schedule, in other words, your business cannot grow.

Customer needs are an important aspect to consider as you prepare your staff scheduled and begin to learn more about employee scheduling. You need to learn quickly when the highest sale volumes occur and provide employee scheduling to suit those needs.

When you know that Tuesdays are a quiet day, you can be reasonably sure that a few less employees placed on that day will effectively save the business money. On the other hand, if you know that weekends are usually very busy, that is a time during the week when you should not try to reduce employee scheduling numbers to save money. Sometimes more is more, and sometimes less is more. That is business.

Any manager with even just one employee scheduling experience under his or her belt will tell you it is not as easy as it sounds. Add to that the knowledge that effective employee scheduling and staff roster management can directly influence the success of your business, and you will quickly see why many managers turn to employee scheduling tools and software to meet their analysis and efficiency targets.

In reality, once you are prepared with appropriate employee scheduling tools, and have done your research into business specific trends in terms of sales and customer ticket averages, you are well on your way to becoming a successful employee scheduling manager. The main thing to remember is to keep your cool and focus on the facts. Business is all about efficiency and cost control, so keep your mind straight and narrow on those issues and you will do fine.

Can you briefly describe which business you are in?

Acquisitions is a retail gift shop that is perfect for gifts … our byline in fact. Our range is eclectic, but there is always something for that “hard to buy for person”. There is nothing in Acquisitions that anyone needs … but everything that everyone wants. Our customers love browsing the shop and talking to us about their desires.

Manager Mellanie of Acquisitions at Timaru, NZ

We offer gift baskets and a gift registry and complimentary gift wrapping. There are 13 stores around New Zealand all owned by the same company, and have been since starting some 21 years ago. I currently manage the Timaru store.

What’s the URL to your website?
Our website is at www.acquisitions.co.nz

It is currently in the process of being revamped with a shopping cart. (We’ll update this post when it happens

How does BusyBeeManager help you in your job?

Before I started with Busy Bee, I searched the internet for a suitable program that was going to assist me in employee scheduling. Being only one store out of the 13, I wanted to find something simple to use, easy to understand software that I could ultimately pass on to others managers. We only have 6 staff in this store, but all but one are on part-time hours, and they all have times they are or are not available. Keeping track of when staff can work and can’t can be quite time consuming. Thanks to BusyBeeManager – that’s a lot easier now.

What is your favorite feature of BusyBeeManager?

That would have to be the template saver and the email options. It makes it so easy to just email the rosters to staff and know that they have them and can confirm their shifts.

How much time approximately does BusyBeeManager save you monthly?

To be honest I wouldn’t know – several hours I guess. I just appreciate the fact that I have software that does the hard work for me and I know that it does it right. It helps me concentrate on what I do best – manage the store, serve customers and sell products.

How is your impression of Value for Money in BusyBeeManager?

The Acquisitions Gift Store in Timaru NZ

Having been on the free plan since starting with BusyBeeManager it will be interesting to see the effects of the “paid” benefits that I will get now that I upgraded. I really like the thought that staff can log in and put in days they are unavailable or request holidays. Often in the course of a busy day, a staff member will mention that they are not available at some point … I often don’t remember this. To be able to put that responsibility onto the staff members themselves makes it easier for me in the long run. That will definitely save me a lot of time and above all frustration.

Other comments?

Fantastic program, highly recommended by myself and my staff, who have said that they like the way the email comes with all the hours laid out clearly for them.

Thanks to Mellanie for giving this interview! You might also want to check out this other case story from Tea Salon – Tante T.

Why use a shift rota?
Employees like to be at home with their families just once in a while – so they tend to dislike always working in the evening – especially in the weekends. So to make the employee schedule fair for everybody the manager puts together a staff schedule that balances it out between the employees in the roster. In order to not always start from scratch – the same four (or any other number for that matter) weekly shift schedules are then reused again and again.

Who uses shift rotas in their employee scheduling?

It is common to use shift rotas in businesses that need staffing more or less around the clock. Businesses such as newspapers, health clinics and hospitals tend to use rotating shift schedules. But also restaurant, bars and pubs use it sometimes. After the schedule is made and published it often involves a lot of shift trading since people’s personal plans are rarely taken into account when making the schedule. That is either handled directly between the employees or mediated by some sort of shift scheduling software.

How do I get started?

Making a rotating shift schedule can be done either manually or using an online employee scheduling tool such as BusyBeeManager. Any tool that supports template based scheduling can be used though.

1. Simply create your templates reflecting your staffing needs and with a number of templates reflecting how often you want the schedule to rotate. If you’d like every other week to be the same – then you need only create two different templates. If you want every 4th week to be the same – needless to say you’d have to create four different templates.
2. Then put the names on the shifts so it  matches employee preferences and adds some variation to the way that your employees are working.
3. Apply these templates to the employee shift schedule and publish it.

There you go – that’s all there is to it. Happy scheduling!

The weather is one of the main factors affecting the staffing needs for a small business. When the summer is coming and the sun is shining – people tend to go outside and that opens op for a lot of business.

An extra employee shift schedule for the season

Staffing needs are indeed different in the summertime – many have two times more tables to serve when people are suddenly able to sit outside. You need to able to handle that in your employee shift scheduling or you might end up being under staffed (see this article about what that can do to your business). It’s like having a whole new department you suddenly need to staff.

Staffing needs change with the season

So are you ready for that? Because summer is just around the corner?

5 Things to keep an eye on

1. How many hours of coverage do I already have on each employee role? How does the staff roster look for waiters, dish washers etc…

2. How many people will I need when we open up for serving people outside? (Or just get more busy due to more people on the street). Match this with no 1. and you have an idea of whether you need to hire further employees.

3. How will the new employee schedule look after I do this? You might be able to find the employee schedule from last years summer – if not – then maybe you should consider using an online system for handling your staff scheduling.

4. Adjust the staff schedule to weather conditions. In the beginning of the week – check out the weather report to get an indication of whether you’ll get busy or not. If sun is shining Thursday then maybe you ought to put in a little extra help to help take care of customers.

5. What else is going on in the city? Summer means parades, cruise ships coming in, tourist, football matches, more events than usual. Make sure you know what’s going in the city and that you are prepared to handle all that extra traffic while still being able to serve customers in a satifsying way.

All this can of course be helped by using an online employee shift scheduling tool – you might want to try that out. The only real important thing is that you feel confident that you have the correct amount of staff to take care of your customers!

“Our survey reveals a huge opportunity for many businesses to begin using some of the basic online tools”.

The focus of the article is on marketing, but we bet the situation is the same when it comes to doing your employee scheduling in a more efficient way.

The Copenhagen-based tea-salon Tante T used to do build their staff roster manually in Excel. By using Busybeemanager.com for their employee scheduling, they now save 200$ per month on salary for someone to do the scheduling.

Besides saving the salary, the same employee can now instead focus on their core business, which is serving their customers, or as Mette-Marie from Tante T says:

Owner of Tante-T, Mette Marie

“BusyBeeManager is no doubt a great help. It’s not like employee scheduling is a really big thing for us – we are busy doing the real business – baking cakes, making tea, serving customers – hence employee scheduling shouldn’t take up much time – thanks to BusyBeeManager – it doesn’t”

Are you missing out on the opportunity to do your employee scheduling online ?

Read more about doing employee scheduling online with Busybeemanager.com

“Nobody wants to do employee scheduling manually…”

“…But that is how it is mostly done” says founder and partner R. Houlind. “Most small businesses do their shift schedules manually or in spreadsheets such as Excel. In an online employee scheduling tool however you have the benefits that the employees can submit their availability for themselves. Knowing the staffing needs and things such as roles and amount of hours promised – the system can then auto assign the shifts. It saves a tremendous amount of time and gives happier employees.” He concludes.

It seems like the business owners have taken BusyBeeManager up on these words. Since the launch in August 2009 more than 500 businesses have now signed up for the online employee scheduling software and now maintain their staff roster and their scheduling online.

“We have mainly marketed our application through Google and Yahoo – it gives us the ability to reach people who are actively looking for a solution to the shift scheduling nightmare. We still have a feeling however that there is a multitude of businesses out there who don’t realize that there is an easy way of doing the employee schedules. Hopefully word will spread and we can continue to grow our business.”

The customers say:

“Employee Scheduling used to be like a big jigsaw puzzle – thanks to BusyBeeManager – it’s almost automatic now. I’ll never go back to the old Excel-sheet again.”

- Mette Marie – tea salon owner at Tante T.

“We use the free plan and are actually quite satisfied with that, so for me it’s great value for no money at all!”

- Johan Storm – Manager at Skistore.se

Most managers or employees working in restaurants, diners, cafés, bars, clubs, shops, call centers, pet care services etc. know that employee scheduling is a tiresome task. Putting it together is a huge puzzle since everybody has expectations about when they can and cannot work – how much they are willing to work and with whom. This has to match with the actual need for staffing in the business. It has to be a close match since employee salaries are a big expense also if you fail to satisfy the employees’ requests then you might have to spend a lot of time training new employees.

BusyBeeManager in short

BusyBeeManager can help small businesses of any kind in doing their employee schedules almost automatically. The system which is entirely online features template based scheduling, automatic shift assignment, publishing of shift scheduling, employee login and availability submission and many other helpful features.

Resources:

www.BusyBeeManager.com

blog.busybeemanager.com

twitter.com/busybeemanager

So why is it important with a good employee schedule?

The answer is a combination of many factors.

First of all – employee salaries are probably one of the (if not the) biggest expense that you have if you are in the retail, restaurant, service or hospitality industry. That given – it is quite clear that if you can keep this expense as low as possible you should be able to save a lot of money. So we’ll just fire all the employees then… I guess not because..

Second to this – you wont get very far by not having anyone on the employee roster. Employees are the ones who indirectly generate your revenue – perhaps even directly if you sell services. If you are not serving people online then you need someone to face your customers – being it in the restaurant, the café, the diner, your retail shop, your pet care services center, your office, your call center, your veterinarian clinic – you name it. People serve customers, take orders or handle operations in the way they see most fit. If there is not enough people to take care of your customers then you will lose revenue. This can happen in many ways:

If there are fewer people at work – then chances are that customers will get a poorer service and thus a bad experience. Ultimately if it is a busy day then people might leave your place just because it looks insufficiently staffed. Second, if they actually do sit down at a table they might leave before they are served – talking about the experience to all their friends. Third, if they actually get served, they might just not put that second order for an extra cup of coffee because they can’t be bothered with the waiting time.

Killer startups have sent soooo many visitors – thanks guys!

FeedMyApp sent us many visitors when they posted their article on our employee scheduling application:

This one is perhaps the most review-kind of thing:

Listio keep sending us visitors:

The same do the rest:

In German:

And in Spanish:

Even Portuguese (think it’s from Brazil=)

Thanks everybody!

It can be costly when employee don't show up on a busy night

The first question to answer is -

Which implications does it have when people don’t show up for their shift?

First and most importantly – it means poor service for your customers. If there are fewer people at work – then chances are that customers will get a poorer service and thus a bad experience. Ultimately if it is a busy day then people might leave your place just because it looks insufficiently staffed. Second, if they actually do sit down at a table they might leave before they are served – talking about the experience to all their friends. Third, if they actually get served, they might just not put that second order for an extra cup of coffee because they can’t be bothered with the waiting time.

How much does that cost you? It depends of course on your prices and the amount of customers that you have on that day – but it can easily result in several hundred dollars per night with a no-show. Then come all the stories and bad PR that the customers who actually stood the waiting time will spread – that’s hard to measure, but bad PR can kill you in the long run.

So is that all, you might ask? No – I’ll argue that there is more to it that can damage your business in the long run. Think about the frustrations that it generates internally between the employees when people don’t show up. Whenever somebody doesn’t show up for their shift – the other guys have to do extra work, run faster, wait on more customers etc. Not funny to suddenly have 50% extra tables to watch out for during a night. As an employee you will have a heck of a time running between customers to try and satisfy everybody knowing that you probably don’t. That’s simply not cool when it could have been a good night where you could have had the extra it takes to up sell with a better wine, another meat dish, dessert etc. while keeping the customers happy and leaving them with a feeling of being well looked after.

If that’s how the other employees experience it then it will result in poor team spirit for everybody. Eventually employees may quit because of this – how much does it cost you to train a new employee?

Furthermore customers can easily feel the difference between a good and a bad team spirit. If the people serving me seem to get a long good with each other and have a good time – then chances are that I will tolerate mistakes better and still have a pleasant dining experience. If they work as a team then they will probably also handle mistakes better – not blaming each other, handling it with a smile etc.

So why don’t people show up? Seems like it is a big killer for business…

First reason – they get ill – it happens and there is not much to do about it if it happens just before they had to meet up.

Second reason – perhaps they aren’t committed to their shift schedule? This could be because they had no influence on how it came to look like? I’m more likely to accept a shift for the third friday in a row if I had a chance to actually influence the creation of the schedule by applying for days off and having the chance to tell when I’m busy doing other things and would rather not be working. It can be a big puzzle for the one doing the work schedule but as an employee it really matters to me.

Third reason – If the employee schedule is in paper form then the employee in questions might have lost or forgotten how their shift schedule looks like or they don’t have the proper tools to easily access and view the employee schedule.

Fourth reason – things pop up that people prioritize higher than work. You could of course say that you only want staff that have their jobs as no. 1 priority but that isn’t always a realistic thing to assume. So when things actually DO pop up and your employees would rather not be working anyway – it could be a problem if they don’t have the proper tools for trading shifts easily. If they can work it out themselves – it won’t cost you any trouble nor time and you’ll have a happy employee who got to go to that party anyway – leaving him or her with a good story to tell everybody and helping team spirit –> and thus business.

Ok I get it – but what can I do about these employee schedules?

Fist thing you can do is to involve people in the staff scheduling proces. You can either do this on the staff meetings but as this article suggests – it might not be cost effective since you can spend the valuable time talking about more business productive things than a boring work schedule. You can also collect preferences and requests by notes or email – it takes a while to interpret but in the end it will provide a better work schedule that the employees will appreciate. There are also a lot of online applications facilitating and helping out with this proces.

Second thing you can do is to make it absolutely clear who has which shift. Do this by sending out the work schedule by email, snail mail or as a hand out. Make sure that schedules are easy to read and comprehend leaving no doubt about who is working when. Again – this can be done automatically if you are a little internet-savvy.

Third, you can allow and encourage people to trade shifts when things pop up and they are suddenly unhappy with their shifts. Of course you’ll have to make it clear that when a person’s name is on a shift – then it is that person’s own responsibility to find a replacement and not yours. Again you’d have to make that really easy for your employees to keep things from going wrong. Some sort of system to handle this proces can also be a big advantage for you here.

Fortunately – there are some cool Employee Scheduling tools out there that  in an easy way involves your employees and gives them the opportunity to see employee schedules, trade shifts, submit availability etc. One of them is BusyBeeManager that you might want to check out, but there are many more. Learn more about employee scheduling  by subscribing to our blog.

Good luck with getting your no-shows to a minimum!

http://coffeepartyusa.com/

Check out the video:

The idea is, that someone takes the initiative to hold a meeting where everybody can participate and have a drink of coffee. There is no set agenda and no political stand points – the purpose is simply to engage and facilitate more dialogue between citizens about political issues.

But what’s in it for the business owners you might ask?

Apart from contributing to a greater cause you have the opportunity to drive business directly to your cafe/diner/restaurant/coffee shop by hosting these meetings.

Then comes all the PR that it is likely to create – by supporting CoffeePartyUSA you’ll suddenly have a valid reason for promoting your business through the greater cause – how much more can there be to think of?

http://coffeepartyusa.com/og

Oh yeah of course – with all the extra business that you are likely to generate – you might want to put your employee scheduling on auto pilot – check www.BusyBeeManager.com for that.