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Challenges in shift planning
Many businesses in the restaurant, delivery service and retail sectors have one thing in common: most team members do not work full-time, but rather on a flexible basis – for example, in the mornings, evenings, at weekends or as needed. Plans often have to be constantly adjusted, requests taken into account, and someone found quickly in the event of sudden absences. Anyone who wants to organise all this manually will quickly realise how complicated and time-consuming it can be. Fortunately, there are now digital options that can take a lot of the work off your hands and make your everyday life easier and more relaxed.
Different times & needs
Part-time employees often do not work according to fixed patterns. Some are still studying, others have families or other jobs. Availability changes, holidays come up, and sometimes someone wants to swap shifts spontaneously. Clear structures are needed to ensure that everything is fair and transparent.
Short outages & spontaneous changes
In fast-paced industries in particular, it is not uncommon for someone to be unavailable at short notice – whether due to illness, scheduling conflicts or sudden emergencies. When this happens, a solution must be found quickly, ideally without lengthy phone calls or chaotic group chats.
Fluctuating workload
Some days are much busier than others in restaurants, shops or delivery services. Demand fluctuates during holiday periods, promotions or unusual weather conditions. Shift schedules must be flexible, adaptable and responsive to actual workload.
Laws and regulations
The Working Hours Act applies to everyone – including part-time employees. It is important, for example, to take breaks, not exceed the maximum number of hours per week and keep track of all regulations. Checking this retrospectively can quickly become complicated for many employees.
Dissatisfaction due to unfair planning
No one wants to work the unpopular shifts week after week. If the schedule seems unfair or requests are often ignored, motivation declines. This often results in team discord, frustration and high turnover rates.
Digital solutions: a real relief
Modern shift planning software is much more than just a digital calendar. It performs many tasks automatically and ensures greater clarity, fairness and flexibility. How does it work?
- Record all appointments and requests digitally: Employees enter their availability, preferred shifts and absences directly into the app or on their computer.
- Automatic suggestions: The software suggests how best to distribute shifts based on team preferences, staffing requirements and legal requirements.
- Quick shift swapping: If someone can’t make it, they can swap shifts with others directly in the software, without having to go back and forth by phone or paper.
- Always up to date: The schedule is always up to date and everyone can see immediately when they are scheduled to work.
- Easy communication: Messages or free shifts are displayed directly in the system. That way, everyone knows what’s going on.
- Better overview for managers: You can see immediately whether enough people are scheduled, identify bottlenecks, overtime or understaffed times, and react in good time.
Especially when many part-time employees are involved, shift planning becomes much more relaxed and mistakes are avoided.
Tips for getting started with digital technology
To make the transition as smooth as possible and ensure that it really brings benefits, here are a few practical tips: Regularly assess when and how many employees you need. Look at past figures to identify peak times and quiet periods.
- Involve your team: Explain early on why digital planning brings benefits. Let everyone enter their own times and preferences – this creates fairness and transparency.
- Allow for easy swapping: shifts can be easily swapped within the app. This promotes personal responsibility and takes the pressure off management.
- Set rules and limits: the software helps to comply with laws – but you should check that everything is set up correctly. This way, you stay on the safe side.
- Training at the beginning: Briefly show everyone in the team how everything works. The software is usually easy to use – after a short introduction, most people quickly get the hang of it.
- Use the evaluations: Many tools display statistics – for example, who works how often, which shifts are unpopular or where bottlenecks occur. This allows you to further improve the schedule.
Digital planning offers many advantages
The days of notes, phone calls and endless emails are over. With digital shift planning, you no longer have to keep everything in your head – you get support. Schedules become fairer, the team is better informed and morale improves.
Part-time staff benefit in particular: they can influence decisions more easily, remain flexible and get clarity more quickly. As a manager, you have more time for the important things in the business and less stress.
Conclusion
When you organise shift planning digitally, you save a lot of effort, have to improvise less and keep your team happier. Changes and absences are no longer a problem, you don’t lose track of things and everyday life runs more smoothly. Digital shift planning is easy to implement and ensures that working hours are better suited to everyone. It’s a step that’s really worth taking!
