Do You Know When Your Employees Are Available?Using employee availability data effectively

We know scheduling can be tricky.

Yes, even with smart solutions like Findmyshift, that turn nightmare spreadsheets into simple drag and drop rota building.

People make mistakes and oversights, miss notifications, and have emergencies come up.

All that means that one of the biggest challenges is knowing who to schedule when.

And while that depends on a whole host of factors, from their skill sets and who works well together to how busy you expect to be, one of the key considerations is who’s actually available.

Tracking this data is one part of the equation. But are you even up to date with your employees’ availability?

After all, we’re all people with lives outside of work. And those lives come with various commitments, from childcare to higher learning and volunteering to second jobs.

Ensuring that the information you have for your employees remains timely is crucial if you’re going to schedule shifts that work for them as well as your business.

One way to keep this information up to date is to regular use employee availability forms or surveys. Checking in with your employees will ensure that you keep an accurate picture of any effect that their personal lives might have on their work availability.

With the right data on hand, you can schedule your shifts and your employees without causing undue stress and effort for yourself or them.

What data do you need to collect?

The exact data you need depends on the systems you have in place. For instance, if you manually handle scheduling and let employees know directly about changes to the rota, you are more likely to need their contact information to hand.

However, if you use a scheduling tool like Findmyshift that has in-built features for shift reminders and messaging, you can streamline how much data you actually need.

Beyond that, you’ll want to capture employees’ availability and preferences in terms of days and shifts, including any times where they may be able to be on call if your business requires this, or times when they absolutely cannot work—for example over firm commitments elsewhere.

It also helps to keep each update in the same place—say a single form or spreadsheet—so that you can spot patterns over time.

While it’s not strictly about availability, collating this data with employees skills and the requirements that each of your different shifts has will help you se the big picture of the shift scheduling process when you are building your team’s rota.

How do you use availability data to schedule?

Now that you have this data, what are you meant to do with it? There are some obvious guidelines here: avoid scheduling employees on days that don’t match their availability and preferences.

If you do, make sure to note it so that the same employee isn’t always being called in for shifts that don’t work for them. It’s a team game after all.

You also need to have the right mix of skills available, which could mean mixing and matching employees to find the right balance.

But what else? It’s important to demonstrate that you are using this data by making the conversation around availability an open and transparent one. Make the process of providing this data a clear and simple one, and then communicate how you will use it to schedule shifts.

Of course, factoring it into an intelligent shift scheduling tool is always a good option!

How often should you update employee availability data?

The answer to this question depends a lot on your business and your employees. In particular, consider the demographics of your workforce. If you employ a lot of students or seasonal staff, their availability will likely change significantly throughout the year.

Recalibrate whenever you make a significant change to your business’s ways of working or your shift patterns. Ensure any new processes are still making sense for your employees.

Any time you ask employees to update their availability, take the chance to check in as well. You don’t need to be nosy, but showing a healthy interest in their lives and the factors that affect their availability will help build a professional relationship.

With these tips, you’ll be able to stay on top of your employees’ availability and schedule shifts that work for them and your business.

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