FingerTec Newsletter Vol: 07 Year: 2015 | TimeTec Strives To Strengthen Scheduling

Strives to Strengthen Scheduling

Scheduling is vital for every business to meet business demands at low cost and high productivity, in short to match business demand with available employees. However, the complexities in scheduling due to its dynamic variables, which includes time, resources and skills often time leave companies at a disadvantage because they do not have the appropriate skills to manage scheduling efficiently. Having an efficient tool to manage workforce scheduling such as TimeTec is advantageous for every company to gain that business edge that’s required in today’s business environment.

Scheduling might seem monotonous for companies where majority of its employees are using fixed schedules like 9-6 or 8-5. But it doesn’t mean that other types of schedule in this type of company could be disregarded. In this day and age where work life balance is an important criteria in employment, some employees in the regular hour offices might be using flexible schedules as an alternative. Flexible Schedule manages employees whose start time and stop time are not fixed. Such employees may operate by completing total work hours on a weekly basis.

For example, an employee must specifically complete 40 hours per week despite not adhering to the normal 9-6 schedule. It’s quite common for offices to be using flexible Compressed Work Hours like 4/10 that translates to working only four days at 10 hours and having 3 rest days. Some prefer 5/4/9 whereby two teams are required to cover a biweekly 80 hours work-period. One team has to work 8 days of 9-hours per day and 1 day of 8-hours per day in a biweekly period. These compressed work hours are preferable at some government agencies as an alternative to the basic fixed schedule in the effort to achieve work life balance amongst the staff. A Flexible Schedule also would easily monitor employees’ task and, by enabling Job Cost feature, calculation of the man-hours involved for each specific job and employee is made easy.

Those in the healthcare, transportation, security, and customer service industries have at least one thing in common, the possibility or requirement to work shifts, even graveyard shifts. And there are also some companies that require a mix-and-match of scheduling to tackle their distribution of workforce. Flexible Schedule and Rotational Schedule in these cases can be generated to cater to employees that work at odd hours or are frequently on the go.

With TimeTec, Rotational Schedule can easily be set up for large companies with various working schedules, particularly those that require 24-hour employee coverage. This schedule type enables employers to distribute the workload between the workforces to avoid any health issues or unequal or unreasonable working hours. The most common is the 6-4 6-4 6-4 10 hours shift that consists of a 30-day cycle where each team works six consecutive 10-hour first shifts, followed by 4 days off duty, works six consecutive 10-hour third shifts, followed by 4 days off duty, works six consecutive 10-hour second shifts, followed by 4 days off duty. There’s no other effective way to manage this shifting process except by using automated tools and time attendance devices. The Pitman Shift Schedule focuses on 24/7 operations and requires four teams or crews. Each team will operate in a 12-hour shift in a 2-week cycle with total of 84 hours. Although the teams would have to work two hours overtime, each team will work no longer than 3 days per week.

While surely complicated to set up, this form of scheduling is necessary as it is commonly practiced with law enforcement agencies and emergency medical services.

TimeTec comes complete with features that will make time attendance management a breeze for any company in any industry. Workforce scheduling can be tedious for the management to handle, especially for companies with fewer staff members. But even if you have more than enough employees, why not make things easy when you can? Thus, TimeTec is the best solution that any company needs.

Apart from providing a systematic tool for employees to adhere to, having a great tool for scheduling can benefit companies in a long run in terms of costs and productivity. TimeTec will be coming up with Scheduling Templates in its Guide Me soon to ease HR scheduling woes.