Employee Work Schedules for Companies Open
More Than 8 Hours/Day or 5 Days/Week
Businesses that operate more than 8 hours a day or more than 5 days a week will benefit from having a set work schedule for employees. Employees will be happy with the increased predictability that comes with knowing when they are scheduled to work and, more importantly, when they will be off. Managers will appreciate not having to spend so much time creating new schedules every week or running short-handed because a vacant shift can't be filled.
Employee work schedules should be based on the company's hours of operation and how the workload is distributed. Let's take a look at how these can affect the schedule:
Shift Length
If you're open for more than 8 hours a day, the first step is to decide how long you want employees to work each day, i.e. the shift length. Here are the things you'll need to consider:
Format
If you have more than one shift per day, you'll have to decide if you want employees to work the same hours every day, or if you want them to work different hours from time-to-time, i.e. rotating shifts. Most full-time employees will prefer to work the same hours (i.e. fixed shifts). On the other hand, you may want them to gain experience both opening and closing, or working during the busy periods. Each approach has advantages and disadvantages that you'll have to weigh before deciding.
Work Pattern
Here are three common issues:
Staffing
The first consideration is whether to use any part-time (PT) employees. They are great for short shifts, odd shifts each week, or even absence coverage. Using both full-time (FT) and PT employees can keep your staff size and costs at a minimum. For example, if you need 1-person working at all times on a 10/6 basis (10 hours a day for 6 days a week), two full-time (FT) employees working 40 hours a week (or 4 days a week) would overlap 2 times a week. This is unnecessary coverage that could be avoided by having one FT employee for 4 days and one or two PT employees to cover the remaining 2 days.
PT employees are often only available for certain shifts or days of the week. They may only be able to work a limited number hours each week. If these are good employees and/or you don't have a lot of choice, this means you'll need to start the scheduling based on their availability and build the schedule for FT people around that. For example, suppose you are open 12 hours a day Mon-Fri and 6 hours on Sat and you need 3 people at all times you are open. You have 2 PT people. One is available Saturdays only. The other is available weekday evenings but can only work 8 hours a week. Once you lock in these days and times, you can start on the FT employees' schedules.
The next step is to allocate the days of work to the FT employees to total as close to 40 hours a week as possible. When you have a mix of part-time employees, different shift lengths, short shifts, and coverage that varies from hour-to-hour and/or day-to-day, it's difficult to figure out an efficient schedule. We can help! Click on the link below to get a quote for our schedule design services.