If you are still using Excel to organise your workers and schedule shifts, It’s fair to say that you either love admin or must have been so utterly consumed by it that you haven’t heard there are other ways.
Other ways that are fast, effective and over time almost effortless. Other ways that also provide real business insights that you can use to optimise productivity and efficiency in your business.
By using Excel to assign shifts and schedule staff you’re probably also having to deal with the consequences of other issues in your business like poor communication.
Dropping the ball
While you may only have a handful of staff, if you’re handwriting messages and assigning tasks on post-it notes, it’s only a matter of time until you drop the ball. Perhaps critical orders weren’t fulfilled on time, or your people didn’t get the message that you needed them to work on the weekend? How many times have you been caught out by someone calling in sick, a staff member not turning up for a shift because they didn’t know they were scheduled on, or forgetting a staff member was taking leave?
Apart from throwing you into chaos, it’s certainly not the best way to run a profitable business. Poor communication is also a common source of low morale.
In any organisation, communication is key. Particularly so in businesses where all staff are rarely, if ever, in the same room at the same time.
Keeping everyone in the loop
With a work scheduling and people management tool like Deputy, in-built communication tools allow you to keep everyone in the loop and up-to-date.
With Deputy you can allocate shifts, broadcast news or special events, assign tasks and share work schedules which your employees can confirm with a click. It’s all online and fully accessible via everyone’s mobile devices.
Forget about the toing and froing of emails and mountains of paperwork. Whenever you need to replace someone and find cover for a shift in a hurry, all the information you need is right at your fingertips. With Deputy it’s so easy to reach out to suitable and available staff members and confirm replacements without endless phone calls.
Giving your staff an easy way to keep in the loop and contribute to the workplace conversation can only help improve morale and the quality of services you provide.
How’s your Excel spreadsheet going to help you do that?
