Higher Education: Everything You Need to Know About Workforce Management
Chapter 2: Reduce Workforce Friction with Integrated Scheduling
Don't miss Chapter 1 of our eBook, "Time and Attendance: The Core of Workforce Management."
Any Way You Look At It, Employee Scheduling is Complicated
It seems like simple advice when a manager hollers, “Check the schedule for your next shift” as a staff member leaves for the day. But the reality is, scheduling is one of the most complicated aspects of running a smooth operation. Scheduling student workers makes everything else look easy.
Integrated solutions are essential to accurate workforce management. Scheduling is a key area where the right solution can streamline processes and procedures to relieve organizational and staff issues that you may not have even realized. Aside from receiving accurate pay, it’s likely that an staff member’s schedule is one of the most relevant aspects of their work experience.
Consider the following scenario…
It’s homecoming weekend and the day of the big game. Everybody is at the campus book store buying last minute souvenirs and want to get to the stadium in time for the festivities. Looking at the long lines at each register, the store manager realizes one staff member is more than 30 minutes late. He dials her number, hoping she’s on her way to work.
“Why aren’t you here for your shift?” he asks when she picks up.
“I checked the schedule on Tuesday. I’m not scheduled to work until next week,” says the student staff member.
“I updated the schedule on Thursday because we had a few last-minute changes. Didn’t you see the latest?”
“I haven’t been at the store since Tuesday, so I had no idea,” says the student.
The manager is frustrated. He knows there must be a better way to communicate schedules than posting them on the wall or calling staff every time there’s an update. But he can’t think about that right now – the customers are getting restless.
Regardless of your staff size, if you’re in charge scheduling, there’s a good chance you feel this manager’s pain. Unfortunately, scheduling is one of the most complicated business elements and one of the most critical aspects of operational success. You can’t maximize results without the people there to help you do so.
Scheduling Doesn’t Have To Be Hard, It Starts with an Integrated Approach
HR technology offers a way to address scheduling issues through proactive workforce management – the organizational process that comprises all the activities required to maintain a productive workforce, including:
Not only are integrated solutions essential to accurate workforce management, but higher education also needs a platform that will adapt and flex to its unique needs. Whether it’s tracking time and attendance, creating complex student work schedules, managing the various tasks and roles within the campus police force or integrating with payroll, you need flexibility and configurability in your system.
“The reality is that nonstandard work schedules are common, and every organization that is reimagining the workplace should be cognizant of the pros and cons of implementing them. Schedules can affect a host of important outcomes for employees, both personal and professional,” according to Harvard Business Review.
Many universities and colleges don’t know what they’re missing – in terms of workforce and operational effectiveness – by not having scheduling integrated with their other systems and tools. When you have a robust workforce management system in place, you have all the information you need to avoid issues like the previous scenario, thanks to an integrated approach.
How workforce management solutions solve scheduling issues
Even with the technology available, many organizations with hourly staff members or shift workers still rely on paper schedules, cumbersome spreadsheets, or outdated backend systems that staff members can’t access. In these organizations, you’ll find the schedule posted on the backroom wall or other central location so staff can find out when they work next. This approach may suffice when schedules don’t need to change. But what happens when they do need to change?
“It is clear that volatile schedules can create tremendous stress and hardship for employees and their families. This is especially true for workers in positions that do not pay well and offer limited benefits,” according to the authors at Harvard Business Review.
In many colleges and universities, schedule changes occur daily – if not hourly. Managers and shift supervisors might even say that despite their best efforts, schedules are living documents. The reality is that staff members need to swap shifts, special circumstances require adding more labor and people get sick. Managers change and update schedules to fix gaps and ensure the right people are in place. With so much volatility in the scheduling process, and without a convenient way to access the current schedule, it can be tough for staff members to know where they need to be and when.
Without workforce management solutions that integrate and include key scheduling capabilities, it can be next to impossible for managers to know what’s going on with their teams and even more challenging to manage shift overages and overtime costs effectively.
Colleges and universities have sprawling campuses, 24-7 operational hours and traveling workers. All these factors create unique scheduling challenges. Keeping track of these schedules requires significant time and energy that many organizations don’t have.
Without a central workforce management system, managers must review multiple spreadsheets, request forms, and data points to schedule each worker properly. These outdated systems make the scheduling process ripe for errors.
At universities, managing student work hours is particularly essential to ensure students aren’t burdened by too many shifts. In this environment, accurate and smart scheduling not only impacts the organization budget and staff satisfaction, but it also affects the students’ education.
There are also labor laws and state requirements regarding hours worked. For example, in California, there are unique regulations regarding overtime. In Seattle and other localities, employees earn sick and safe paid time off based on the number of hours they work. A flexible system that adapts to your organization’s needs is an important way to ensure you’re meeting local and federal compliance regulations.
Important capabilities for scheduling
Week after week, month by month, schedules need to be created repeatedly. Making the staff schedule to cover various shifts is an important, but thankless, role in many organizations. When a schedule is managed effectively using a scalable, repeatable process, productivity is off the charts, and labor costs come in at -- or under -- budget.
The person or people who manage the schedule not only need to know each staff member’s availability, but also their role, skillset, and in some cases, grant limits and the hours they’re working in other departments. (That’s all information that can easily be lost if it’s posted to the schedule on a sticky note!)
The good news is that HR technology has made this task much more manageable for every size institution. In the past, only large universities could afford to purchase systems that would help automate scheduling. Thanks to cloud-based platforms, scheduling automation and robust workforce management are an option for any institution.
When a schedule is managed effectively...productivity is off the charts, and labor costs come in at—or under—budget.
Some of the fundamental ways that scheduling software supports organizations include:
Flexible schedules and configurations allow managers to pivot shift coverage quickly or reassign a shift to another staff member. This flexibility helps when people are out sick or are using other paid time off.
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Software solves common scheduling issues
Two recent HR industry studies found that while the Covid-19 pandemic changed organizations’ spending on traditional HR technologies, many still invest in the systems required to support remote work, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.
One of the studies attributes the desire to upgrade systems to an increased need for “time management technologies with time tracking and scheduling applications that are highly configurable.” They also found that 36 percent of organizations practiced workforce planning in 2020, which was much higher than in previous years.
Now more than ever, HR functions need workforce data and tools
they can leverage to provide answers
and make workforce plans
As you consider what your institution’s needs from a scheduling tool, there are vital features to consider. Necessary capabilities to think about scheduling and workforce management solutions include:
A schedule created in a vacuum is not going to help anyone. Even if a manager uses technology to create a schedule, it’s only useful if they have a way to deliver it to staff members. Look for solutions that enable staff to check and view their schedules, regardless of their location. You also want to provide a way for them to view historical data about their hours and the shifts they’ve worked. Without these capabilities, staff members and faculty may suffer due to miscommunication, lack of job satisfaction, and even burnout.
Many departments may have standard hours, but your rec center staff members, for example, work various hours and shifts. Each department and team may schedule differently, which means you need a solution that fits multiple scheduling needs.
When it comes to schedules and time tracking, you don’t know what you don’t know. Suppose your scheduling system is separate from time and attendance. In that case, labor variances or issues will come to your attention when the pay period closes, which may be long after they occurred. Managers need to be able to view exceptions so they can follow-up on staff time entries and data. Rather than asking managers to dig deep into data files, try to find a system that flags issues, alerts managers, and raises awareness regarding any staff members who are close to reaching overtime limits or who aren’t keeping to the schedule (e.g., arrive late and leave early).
Scheduling is a crucial component of workforce management, and as such, you need data that will provide a perspective about schedule variance and trends. With integrated reporting capabilities, workforce management systems empower managers by allowing them to view productivity trends in schedules and hours worked.
Just as your scheduling capabilities have outgrown the calendar-on-the-wall method, you want the workforce management you choose to grow and flex to meet your needs. As with any HR technology solution, it’s best to find a fully integrated solution that meets multiple requirements.
Five Features That Set TCP’s Scheduling Capabilities Apart
Based on our experience, we know that scheduling should improve overall operations and ensure you have the right people in the right place at the right time. For today’s employers, faculty and staff, scheduling is much more complicated than posting a calendar on a wall. We offer a variety of scheduling tools to support how your organization achieves results.
TCP’s Humanity Scheduling solution offers higher ed institutions the greatest value by allowing departments to manage schedules, create and automate recurring schedules, set up exceptions and maintain compliance.
Here are six important ways TCP sets itself apart from other providers:
Schedules in our software can be set up on an ad hoc basis to recurring 9 to 5 hours, and anything in between. You can also deploy specific schedules for different environments. The easy-to-use interface allows you to drag and drop shift assignments, as well as view coverage percentages to ensure the right people are scheduled at the right time.
We make it easy for your workforce to access their schedules on any electronic device, including your Apple Watch. With this ability, staff members are empowered to manage their schedules remotely, trade shifts, and request days off. Organizations also have the flexibility to allow staff members to change their schedules without manager input if desired.
The Humanity Scheduling solution allows workers, especially students workers with chaotic schedules, to input their availability into the system. Administrators have this information right at their fingertips as they build schedules OR they can even use the auto-fill or auto-build schedule feature and have the system populate the schedule for them.
We know that organizations need to monitor schedule anomalies, such as late arrivals or missed shifts, and take action to resolve issues. Our TimeClock Plus software allows users to define the types of anomalies they wish to track, and you can also set up notifications based on these actionable occurrences.
In our system, you can create rules to ensure that laws are followed and, overtime is appropriately applied. This helps ensure compliance with federal, state, and local labor laws.
Thanks to seamless configuration, you’re able to integrate scheduling with our time and attendance, leave management, and other capabilities.
You Can Schedule Better with TCP
Scheduling is about having the right people in the right place at the right time. But the long-term impact extends far beyond that weekly or monthly schedule.
Effective, efficient scheduling built with a modern system can help cut costs, ensure compliance, and provide workforce management and planning data that informs business decisions.
Find a solution that offers you scheduling support but also provides what you need when it comes to workforce management. When you have a flexible, real-time scheduling option that includes opportunities to analyze vital operational data, you can improve staff experiences, support managers, and make changes that impact your business.
Reach out today to learn more and schedule a demo with one of our consultants.
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