Author: AdminHTSS

Overview of the importance of a digitization plan for HR in 2023

In today’s changing work environment, the digitization of human resources (HR) processes has become an essential tool for organizations to maximize performance and streamline costs. The importance of an HR digitization plan for employee scheduling in 2023 is obvious.

According to a McKinsey study, using technology to automate certain processes to improve performance and streamline costs is essential in any organization’s HR digitization plan. Also, the importance of having a comprehensive data-driven approach to employee management is necessary as this can help organizations make informed decisions when it comes to employee shift scheduling.

Organize around the employee experience by taking a similar approach to how retailers define customer journeys – in this case, by identifying the moments that matter most to employees and allocating resources accordingly. For example, critical moments for employees might include the recruitment process, onboarding, employee shift planning, and performance reviews and promotions.

Benefits of an HR digitization plan for employee shift scheduling

Digitizing shift work through an automated shift scheduling software solution offers better employee engagement, greater efficiency, and cost savings..

Improved employee engagement

One of the most notable benefits of an HR digitization plan for employee shift scheduling is improved employee engagement. Using a shift calculator, employees can easily view upcoming shifts, swap shifts with co-workers, and request time off.

Increased efficiency

This increased transparency and flexibility leads to greater employee satisfaction and engagement. In addition, the digitization of shift work leads to greater efficiency.

Cost efficiency

By automating the employee shift scheduling process, organizations can quickly create and edit employee schedules, eliminating manual errors and saving time. This improved efficiency can lead to cost savings as organizations can operate more efficiently with fewer resources.

Despite the potential challenges, organizations should begin the digitization journey to remain competitive in an ever-changing work environment.

How can we help you?

A team with business and HR expertise to accompany you through the stages of defining your human capital scheduling framework and strategy, as well as change management.
A software tool – shiftin – built around the same needs you are aware of, to help you digitize and automate your workforce scheduling process to support your business performance.

Contact a specialist now! 

The importance of increasing employee retention

Employee retention is an important factor for any business, as it helps ensure that an organization has a stable workforce and can maintain its operations. Increasing employee retention rates can have several benefits, such as reducing costs associated with hiring and training new employees and increasing employee motivation and productivity. One way to increase employee retention is to digitize human resources (HR) processes.

According to a 2022 Statista study, more than half of organizations that have digitized their HR processes reported an increase in employee retention rates. In addition, the survey found that these organizations experienced a decrease in employee turnover rates and an increase in employee engagement. Furthermore, digitized HR processes are being used to reduce the time and cost of recruiting and training employees, as well as improve the overall quality of the hiring process.

Digitization of HR processes

Digitizing HR processes can help automate administrative tasks, streamline performance appraisals, and improve communication.

Automation of administrative tasks

Automating administrative tasks can help reduce time and effort spent on repetitive tasks, freeing up HR staff to focus on more important tasks.

Streamlining performance appraisals

Streamlining performance appraisals can help to ensure that employees are assessed fairly and consistently and can help to identify areas where employees need additional training or support.

Improve communication

Improving communication can help ensure that employees are aware of their rights and responsibilities and help promote a positive work environment.

Implementing digitization in HR processes

To implement digital HR processes, organizations need to invest in the necessary technology and train their employees to use it.

Investing in the right technology can help ensure a smooth and efficient process flow and help reduce costs associated with manual processes.

Training employees to use the technology can help ensure that they are comfortable with the process and can use it effectively. In addition, organizations should establish clear policies and procedures for the digital HR process so that employees are aware of their rights and responsibilities.

In conclusion, digitizing HR processes can be an effective way to increase employee retention. Automating administrative tasks, streamlining performance appraisals, and improving communication can help reduce the costs associated with hiring and training new employees and can help increase employee motivation and productivity. Investing in the right technology and training employees to use it can help ensure a smooth and efficient process, and establishing clear policies can help ensure that employees are aware of their responsibilities.

How can we help you?

A team with business and HR expertise to support you through the framework and strategy stages of human capital planning and change management.
A software tool – shiftin – built around the same needs you are aware of, to help you digitize and automate your employee planning process to support your business performance.

Contact a specialist now! 

The retail industry is facing great challenges in the social and economic context of recent years. The customers’ behavior has changed – they are more cautious when spending their money or have limited their visits to physical stores in favor of online shopping. The competition in the Retail market is increasing and one of the best opportunities for differentiation is cost efficiency and especially optimizing the workforce cost of hours.

Optimizing the workforce hours does not always mean reducing the capacity of the workforce, as is often understood, but rather redistributing them so that they are aligned with the staff shortages to be as profitable as possible.

For team managers in the Retail industry, the challenges are even greater, as they have to fulfill multiple issues, such as unpredictable fluctuations in staff shortages and sales, increasingly demanding daily workforce requirements, workforce retention, sustaining business growth, controlling expenses, and the monthly time commitment to the scheduling process. And above all, all these aspects must be well framed by compliance with labor legislation.

Here are some best practices that you can implement immediately to optimize your workforce scheduling:

1) Use a Retail software tool

Such software can digitize and subsequently optimize your scheduling process. Choose one that allows you to integrate all processes, from HR administration to scheduling, attendance, timesheet and payroll. The information will circulate traceably and automatically, the effort put into each of these steps will be optimized to the maximum for your HR teams.

2) Schedule shifts based on sales forecasts or expected staff shortages

Whether you use templates created according to the business curve of the day or directly the business objectives for the period you want to schedule, an intelligent algorithm of scheduling software can propose the optimal shift structure adapted to your business. In seconds, just a click away. This way, you will have a good overview of the required capacities in relation to your business ambition. At the same time, you will make informed decisions about over-structured or under-structured teams.

3) Flexible time schedule has a positive impact on several important aspects of the business

Flexible time is beneficial from several perspectives:

• It can support your better availability at key times of the day or month, such as peaks in staff shortages or filling shelves with products in line with delivered volumes.
• It will support reduced absenteeism because workforce scheduling can be agreed with the employee according to personal life priorities
• It will be a good differentiator for recruiting varied and diversified workforce’ profiles
• Increase workforce engagement and satisfaction

4) Keep workforce overtime under control by using a varied structure

By having part-time profiles and a full-time workforce in your team structure, you can manage shift coverage on staff shortages or activity much faster and more dynamically. Scheduled hours in fixed shifts for full-time employees can often be unproductive.

5) Agree with the workforce structures whether labored hours can be used as polyvalent or to cover open shifts in other locations or departments.

The workforce structures may be interested in mobility and flexibility when their personal lives allow it.
Optimizing the distribution of labored hours often means reusing them in the right place at the right time. This can also mean that an employee in one store may be available and interested in working punctually in another store closer to home or their child’s school. You can also use incentives for the employees who perform difficult open shifts. Costs will certainly be greatly optimized and your employees can round up their income as and when they decide.
An automated shift scheduling software can give you the best suggestions of eligible and available people and they can provide their availability in real-time using a mobile app.

6) Use cyclical template scheduling according to a set pattern

The employees will appreciate the predictability of their working time and as long as they have been consulted in its development, the monthly work dedicated to scheduling will fundamentally decrease, helping you to reuse time for business purposes, for example.

7) Consult your employees about their preferences and availability for work

In today’s job market, the workforce has many options to choose from. And they will choose the job that brings them the most satisfaction. This can mean consideration, quality of life, variable income, and control of their time, when or where they work.
After all, workforce shift scheduling can be the best lever towards job satisfaction. And the quality of life also means control over work-life balance.

How can we help you?

We can help you:
• A team with business and HR expertise to accompany you through the stages of defining your human capital scheduling framework and strategy, as well as change management.
• software tool – shiftin – built around the same needs you are aware of, to help you digitize and automate your workforce scheduling process to support your business performance.

About the author:

Alina Raicu-Vitan

Product Owner shiftin

Expertise in Human Resource and Operations Excellence, Change Management and Scheduling Strategy

The current labour market is putting major pressure on the business environment for optimal workforce structures to meet customers’ increasingly demanding needs.

There is a discrepancy between the number of professionals required by the market and the speed at which companies can attract them. Most of the time, companies try to do a lot of things at once, by allocating less time and minor investments. Caught up in this dynamic, companies often end up planning their existing workforce structures with the inertia of their habits or custom that no longer keeps pace with the dynamic of modern life.

Not infrequently, we have heard the phrase „we schedule the timesheet” lately because workforce scheduling has become a repetitive, dry, purely operational process. What happens is that the strategy is led by the current state and not by the real need.

Strategic workforce scheduling is really about analyzing historical data and making the best decision for now and for the future. It helps you to have visibility of what’s next and to conclude whether what you have now is enough or too much for tomorrow’s needs.

If you do your workforce scheduling without starting from an analysis of optimal capacity given by business needs, there are high chances that you will find that all staff costs will have a major negative impact on the profitability of the business you manage.

Strategic workforce scheduling

A simple definition of strategic scheduling would be: the right person is scheduled at the right time and does the right job.

Unlike operational scheduling, which is always short-term, inefficient, and requires spontaneous decisions, made in critical situations and at a high cost, strategic workforce scheduling provides companies with a long-term vision and a structured, cost-effective plan based on mathematical calculations.

Strategic workforce scheduling helps you match customer behavior and needs with staff capacity. With this, in relation to your company’s staffing structure, you will know:

• whether it has too many or too few staff, relative to the need given by the business prediction;
• whether the workforce’s skills structure is in line with what customers require;
• whether staffing levels are optimal, both to support the business need and to create a work-life balance framework for the staff;
• whether flextime scheduling could be a way to optimize the distribution of paid hours and increase workforce engagement and satisfaction.

To start a strategic approach to workforce scheduling for your company, you will need to consider the following actions:

• Bring the impacted and affected stakeholders around the topic: HR, operational managers, planners, payroll, etc;
• Define a scheduling strategy tailored to your business;
• Find out what the current workforce scheduling process is;
• Analyze the structure of your company’s human resources capital;
• Analyze customer behavior and identify business objectives relevant to workforce scheduling;
• Access an workforce scheduling software tool to help you digitize, automate and audit your scheduling processes for maximum efficiency;
• Have a change management process in mind once you have decided on a new approach to the scheduling process.

If you are aiming for continuity and growth in your business, keep in mind that performance is a consequence of good planning and not an accidental event.

Without addressing strategic planning:

• You will have challenges in achieving company goals;
• You will face unpleasant situations of turnover, absenteeism, or burnout;
• Costs from overtime will increase;
• Productivity and satisfaction levels of the workforce working under pressure will decrease;
• You will suffer from poor customer service or wastage of goods or merchandise.

How can we help you?

We can help you:
• A team with business and HR expertise to accompany you through the stages of defining your human capital scheduling framework and strategy, as well as change management.
• software tool – shiftin – built around the same needs you are aware of, to help you digitize and automate your workforce scheduling process to support your business performance.

About the author:

Alina Raicu-Vitan

Product Owner shiftin

Expertise in Human Resource and Operations Excellence, Change Management and Scheduling Strategy