9 Ways to Overcome Scheduling Issues and Prevent Future Conflicts

Employee scheduling can be an administrative nightmare, whether you’re managing hundreds of workers or a small team with limited availability.

If you’re not using the right tools or your processes are inefficient, you’re going to end up with scheduling mistakes or conflicts—which have a negative impact on employee satisfaction, productivity, and labor costs.

The challenge is to schedule enough staff to keep the business running smoothly, while balancing their workload fairly and avoiding clashes or gaps.

But how do you manage scheduling effectively? In this post, we’ll show you how to overcome scheduling issues and prevent future conflicts.

What are scheduling issues and how do they happen?

Scheduling issues are problems, errors, or conflicts that arise in the course of managing and organizing employee schedules. These issues may occur in different scenarios, for example, when an employee fails to show up for a shift or if there’s double-booking of client appointments for the same time slot.

Scheduling issues can be caused by several factors. 

You might be experiencing a shortage of employees or a skills gap, leading to problems with resource allocation. 

Miscommunication is also a factor, as is a lack of coordination between departments or teams. You might experience scheduling errors due to a chaotic shift-swapping process, with multiple employees requesting the same shift that was approved by management, for example. Perhaps you’re dealing with unforeseen events like a sudden surge in customers your teams didn’t plan for. 

Scheduling conflicts also occur when managers assign unrealistic workloads or deadlines or assign tasks to an employee who has no capacity to complete these. In either scenario, workers end up using the time originally allotted for something or someone else.

Finally, reliance on manual methods causes scheduling issues. Let’s say you’re running a call center and you only monitor patterns in call volume manually. You won’t know with certainty how many agents are needed to cover peak times. But if you run an AI call center with built-in workforce management instead, you can determine this with accuracy and schedule shifts accordingly.

Mistakes can also occur if you have to schedule shifts manually. For example, you might end up assigning two workers to the same shift due to oversight. But if you use technology to automate the scheduling process, you can avoid these mistakes.

Why are scheduling issues bad for business?

Staff scheduling problems can lead to anything from reduced productivity to missed deadlines and high turnover rates. It means you’re not optimizing your resources effectively, and are wasting valuable time scrambling to solve problems or fill shortages.

Let’s take our previous example: a manager assigns a task without checking if the employee has the bandwidth or expertise to complete it. If an IT employee was put in charge of inbound marketing strategies, what do you think will happen? The employee will likely be overwhelmed and become unproductive. So, the manager will have to adjust the project schedule.

Scheduling mistakes can lead to understaffing, which leads to overworked employees. When employees are burnt out, this has the knock-on result of unscheduled absences, which are a big reason behind further scheduling issues.

Scheduling mistakes can lead to overstaffing, too. In that case, business productivity is also hampered. After all, you have two or more people performing the same task a single person would have easily completed.

Poor scheduling has other negative effects on the whole workforce. Here are some:

• Inconsistency leads to unpredictability for employees, making it hard for them to plan their personal lives and achieve a healthy work-life balance. 
• For staff, being called in at the last minute to cover a shift is stressful. For managers, dealing with employee no-shows is a major headache.
• Unfair shift schedules create poor relationships within teams—for instance, if a particular employee always gets the “best” shift, or if some workers are offered more shifts than others.

All these lead to job dissatisfaction, higher employee turnover, and increased hiring costs for your business.

9 ways to overcome scheduling issues and prevent future conflicts

We've seen how ineffective scheduling can impact your business—now let's look at some ways to address it.

1.   Identify the problem

Look at what’s going wrong with scheduling and find the root causes. Get input from managers and employees, and brainstorm ideas. What changes can you make to prevent this from happening in the future? For example, if the issues are caused by outdated technology, consider software modernization.

If you’re understaffed or lack a good chief operating officer who can manage day-to-day operations effectively, you may need to hire more people or leverage the services of a retained executive search agency. If team leaders and project managers aren’t collaborating on shared resources or considering other workloads when creating their own plans, it’s time to break down the silos between departments.

2.   Understand your resources

To avoid scheduling issues, it’s crucial to have a full understanding of your business needs and the resources available to meet them. You’ll need to talk to your employees about what their roles involve and how long a typical task takes. Look at data from past projects and compare estimated and actual time for projects.

Think also about the mix of staff in your business—are they full-time, part-time, freelance, remote? Who’s usually down for overtime and who can only work mornings? How much paid leave is each employee legally entitled to? 

If you have employees who earn different hourly rates, scheduling them sensibly will also help to manage your budget.

3.   Leverage automated scheduling

Automated scheduling software helps to prevent conflicts by eliminating human errors. Scheduling tools ensure a fair distribution of workloads and shifts, and display availability so that managers can quickly find replacements for absent staff. Integrate them with software that tracks employee hours, breaks, and overtime.

How about automated rescheduling of appointments in the event of employee absence? That’s what TIMIFY’s upcoming solution, The TIMIFY Assistant, will offer: detecting when someone reports an absence, reviewing their calendar, and rescheduling with a similarly-skilled employee. It’ll notify the replacement employee and the customer, allowing the customer to accept or decline.

4.   Make accurate forecasts

You can also use technology to forecast workforce capacity and predict when you’ll need people. With visibility into employees’ schedules, including leave requests and public holidays, you’ll know who’s available when. Analytics software uses past data to predict busy times, so you can ensure the right staffing levels in a cloud contact center, for example.

Predictive scheduling is also valuable for project management, as you can use logged time data to see how much time is needed for certain tasks. That way, you can determine actual capacity before you allocate tasks or schedule meetings, and plan project timelines more accurately.
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5.   Communicate!

It’s essential to keep the lines of communication open. Employees need to alert managers about potential scheduling conflicts or if they need more time for a task. Managers need to tell staff in advance about any changes, and confirm availability before creating a final schedule.

It’s a good idea to collect feedback from employees, and to meet regularly to review possible scheduling issues.Effective use of customer communication management tools is also important, in case you need to reschedule appointments.

6.   Be fair to everyone

Fairness in assigning shifts and workloads will improve employee morale. Share out the less-favorable shifts (late nights and early mornings) equally, and make sure the same rules apply to everyone for booking time off. Add buffer times around tasks so that employees have plenty of time for breaks.

If someone steps in to cover an absence, you should recognize the compromise by allowing them to take extended breaks, switch their assigned days off, or shorten other shifts. Be careful that it’s not always the same employees who end up working extra shifts.

7.   Implement self-service

The process of submitting and approving requests for vacation leave or shift swaps can be tedious and time-consuming. With the right software, you can set up a staff portal where they can see their own schedules, make time-off requests, and agree among themselves to switch shifts.

The system notifies managers of requests or changes, making it easy to approve or decline with a click. As well as saving time and energy, self-service gives employees more autonomy and improves engagement and satisfaction. It also prevents potential conflicts among employees due to scheduling issues.

8.   Have a backup pool

Even with efficient team scheduling, you may experience staff shortages due to illness or personal issues. It’s good practice to have a backup pool of part-time or on-call staff to cover unexpected absences, plus a list of trusted freelancers or contractors who are familiar with your business.

Another idea is to cross-train your best team members, so that they can cover various roles if needed. This also helps with career development. If you’re hiring, aim for a good range of skills and shift preferences, and a mix of senior and junior staff.

9.   Review your policies

To keep on top of potential issues, you’ll need to review your scheduling policies on a regular basis to make sure they’re still working for you. Are they transparent? Are they fair to everyone? Factor in changes to applicable labor laws, as well as evolving business needs.

Check your scheduling data to identify patterns and areas for improvement. A rigid schedule is harder to amend when necessary, so use your forecasts to build in flexibility.

Make sure your entire team is aware of your updated scheduling policies. You can notify them about these changes through the company’s email newsletter. Just use relevant newsletter email templates so you don’t have to create content from scratch.

Final thoughts

Scheduling issues cause problems for businesses, from low productivity to conflicts within teams. But you can overcome common scheduling challenges by implementing best practices.

That means communicating effectively, improving your processes, ensuring fairness, and keeping schedules flexible. Employee scheduling software helps you do all that, and remove human error.

Effective scheduling keeps managers and employees happy, leading to better customer experiences and a good business reputation.