8 golden rules of working time planning

Continuous improvement of workplaces to make them more employee-friendly is no longer a privilege reserved for the most advanced and wealthy organizations Today, the challenge of balancing employer and employee goals is equally faced by companies across all industries – retail chains, manufacturing plants, financial institutions, and shared services centers alike.

Technology comes to the rescue. Modern IT systems ensure compliance with regulations, assist managers in their daily tasks, and relieve HR specialists of routine employee matters.

BeeOffice E-Time from All for One Poland is a solution that enables managers to plan their employees’ time, taking into account their availability and preferences, while adhering to legal and company regulations.

First, let’s dispel the myth of a rigid Labor Code and make it clear: the Labor Code allows for many solutions that enable flexible work scheduling. The rules within it are not meant to limit the employer’s options. Instead, they protect employees using scientific knowledge, including the field of occupational medicine. By planning in accordance with the Labor Code, not only do we avoid penalties, but we also ensure adequate rest periods. After all, a fatigued employee will never be happy or productive..

We suggest looking at the planning process as follows: first, let’s establish the fundamental rules. Let’s agree on the working time system to be used at our company and deliberate on the length of the accounting period. This way, while remaining in compliance with labor law, we will have more options when creating schedules. We should also keep in mind that we do not always choose between the shortest (1-month) and the longest (12-month) accounting period. The chosen length should take into account the analysis of labor demand and workload seasonality.

It should be noted, however, that while systems and accounting periods tend to be elements of working time that rarely change, the appropriate scheduling of individual employees’ work can pose considerable problems for planners. Line managers are most often responsible for scheduling working time at the team (field outlets, stores, departments, etc.) level. In practice, a manager is not a specialist in labor law and should focus primarily on his or her core responsibilities.

Fortunately, technology can help dramatically reduce the time spent on planning by guiding the manager by the hand through the meanderings of the law. The role of the Labor Code compliance controller can be taken over by the application – BeeOffice E-Time.

First of all, BeeOffice E-Time itself generates an optimal team schedule, taking into account the manager’s requirements, Labor Code restrictions and availability of employees. Secondly, in the case of manual schedule modifications, the application prevents time scheduling that breaks Labor Code rules. Moreover, it suggests possible changes (availability of people) that will ensure compliance with legislation. The planner is focused on business requirements, and schedule building is an automatic action.

An automatic check in E-Time is performed each time an attempt is made to assign an employee to a scheduled shift. The system prevents the publication of schedules containing errors ( always suggesting correct schedules and assisting supervisors with manual modifications).

The idea of making working time more flexible is to enable an organization to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. In other words, the goal is to give the company some agility in its operations. Industry experts call it a good flex.

An example of this is the improvement in managing substitutions and successions. Better scheduling results in employees gaining comprehensive experience as they work in different teams and their responsibilities become diversified. In addition, this allows employers to adjust the number of employees on each shift to the actual workload, resulting in real savings.

Personalized time management that takes employee preferences into account helps reduce the need for overtime. Other benefits of individual time management include: more attractive employment conditions, fewer work absences due to illness, more opportunities for part-time work, and compliance with collective agreements regarding night work. These are all factors that more or less directly affect the efficiency of human capital.

Preparing a work plan that takes into account all these perspectives, on top of that – optimized for efficiency and productivity – is a real challenge. In the case of small teams, manual scheduling by the manager, based on their knowledge of demand, the competencies and availability of employees, is likely to be effective. However, in large organizations where line managers oversee groups of at least several dozen employees.

In such a case, optimal scheduling of working time in terms of both employee productivity and costs (e.g., overtime costs) is difficult. BeeOffice E-Time comes to the rescue with its efficient algorithm based on operations research. Experience shows that such an automated system can plan rosters better than a human – it will take into account all variables (demand, legal regulations, employee preferences, and their skills) according to the assigned priorities. Moreover, the application can process data and generate schedules multiple times faster than a human.

As a result, labor costs can be lower than those arising from manual scheduling.

Professional scheduling requires more complex analysis than just ensuring compliance with Labor Code provisions. It is crucial to first assess available human resources in terms of qualifications, contracted hours, specific contract terms, and planned vacations.

The next step is to analyze the expected workload – projected work demands. In this way, we are able to create an accurate plan specifying the human resources that we need to staff each shift. A good schedule should guarantee a balance between available human resources and workload.

Optimal scheduling of staff working hours is crucial for employers for at least two reasons.

Firstly, research shows that neither shortening nor lengthening working hours by itself improves productivity. The secret lies in finding the optimal balance between the amount and type of work to be done and the number and type of employees needed to complete it. The ideal scenario is when staff work only when there are tasks for them to complete.

Growing competition forces businesses to be more flexible, increase the pace of work, and improve coordination over time. In recent decades, due to the rapid changes in economic and social life, the amount of work to be done has become more variable and less predictable than it used to be. This is where IT systems come into play, as they can swiftly process input data from various sources and then propose a work schedule that complies with established rules.

E-Time enables time planning according to requirements entered manually or downloaded from external systems (such as production planning or predictive systems).

For example – the store manager specifies his staff requirements for Friday from 2:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.: “during this time, I need two cashiers, three salespeople, one decorator and one deputy manager.”

The system checks all constraints and employee preferences and proposes a target schedule with staff. For automatic generation of schedule proposals, BeeOffice E-Time  uses an efficient algorithm from the field of ​​operations research, based on the graph theory, but from the user’s perspective it is trivially easy to carry out the planning. The planner is focused on business requirements, and schedule building is an automatic action.

Especially today, with a shortage of employees in the market, it is crucial to consider their preferences when creating schedules.

Shift work and night shifts significantly impact our social and family life. It is much harder to align with the schedules of schools, public administration offices, or even healthcare facilities. Studies show that when employers take employees’ private preferences into account when creating working time schedules, absenteeism decreases by 10% to 25%.

The modern concept of creating a work schedule involves active influence of employees on the schedule even at the design stage. Of course, such a change in approach requires courage. However, companies that have decided to take this step are experiencing a huge cultural shift.

Everything that was previously familiar, obvious and repetitive is no longer so. There are no rigid working shifts or brigades. The basis for creating a schedule is the demand for personnel, created on the basis of the expected workload. For this demand, each employee, based on predetermined rules, enters their name in the schedule. It is important to remember that commitment and a sense of responsibility are key here. It turns out that more than 90% of employees prefer this type of solution.

Considering the diverse preferences of a large number of employees requires appropriate infrastructure that allows for easy data input by employees and processing capabilities to ensure their preferences are incorporated into the final work schedule.

In BeeOffice E-Time, preferences mean both the information that on selected days/hours an employee would prefer not to work, and the information that there are days/hours when work is desired. This is crucial for younger generations, who form the core of the workforce in certain sectors (e.g., restaurant chains or retail chains). Also in manufacturing companies, preferences can be used to record information about which specific employees are willing to work overtime or on weekends.

At the end of the process, there is always a manager of a specific team who can approve or ignore the preferences for various reasons. These preferences can be, for example, the inability to work on Saturdays due to attending school, the unavailability of an employee on Fridays between 3:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m., or the periodic inability to work at night.

Personal preferences are recorded in E-Time by employees at any place, via a computer, tablet or smartphone. After being confirmed by the manager, they are included in the automatic schedule generation.

Currently, there are several generations of employees in the labor market. Especially the youngest one assesses the attractiveness of and chooses an employer based on whether the company uses modern solutions.

The widespread use of smartphones offers significant opportunities. This allows us to have not only our schedule in one hand, but also to stay informed about changes in our work schedule and to request leave while online. And for the youngest generation, we are then just cool.

Today’s world is very different from that of a few or a dozen years ago. We are in the midst of a global digital transformation. HR is also digitizing. Technologies are designed to make our work easier and be competitive in the battle for employees. Self-rostering seems to be an interesting trend showing that what was not possible just a few years ago (adjusting work time schedules to the needs of employees) is feasible today and is a solution to a number of problems.

BeeOffice E-Time offers users an experience comparable to that provided by consumer applications, in particular:

• it is available on mobile devices – an employee can check their schedule, enter a leave request or preferences anywhere and anytime;
• it informs the interested parties about changes relevant to their working time or the status of their request on an ongoing basis;
• it is visually attractive – the bar is set high here (Facebook, Instagram, Uber,…).

E-Time is available from any mobile device, as employees are increasingly using smartphones or tablets rather than computers. Working with BeeOffice E-Time on a mobile device is comfortable, and the application with its simple and attractive interface even encourages the user to reach for it.

By using professional time scheduling tools, we can create schedules that take into account assumed labor demand. This allows us to minimize the number of ad hoc shifts. Well-planned work schedules mean the predictability of time off. This increases the quality of time off for shift workers.

When shift work also occurs on weekends, it is very important not to favor any particular team (fair play). Due to the absence of professional scheduling applications this principle is often overlooked. With the right tools, we can maintain control over this aspect. Shift workers will certainly appreciate this!

Managing working time is difficult, and practice shows that many organizations do not manage it well. This is evidenced by the numerous complaints and disputes regarding working time that include recurring issues: excessively long or incorrectly rotated or arranged shifts, insufficient or incorrectly scheduled breaks, excessive work intensity or, on the contrary, periods of inactivity, etc.

The consequences are, on one hand, overworked and demotivated employees, and on the other hand, high labor costs due to excessive overtime and sick leave, production or service cycle downtime, high staff turnover, and the need for short-term hiring of additional personnel, etc. Productivity losses of 5-15% are not uncommon.

It is surprising that relatively few companies understand the essence of the problem and properly address it. It seems that the main reason for this is the lack of awareness that economic indicators of the company’s operation can be significantly improved in this area, especially such as an increase in labor productivity or a decrease in sickness absenteeism and overtime.

IT systems can make a difference here by organizing and rationalizing the entire time scheduling process, as well as by involving employees in the process as described earlier.

The scheduling algorithm used in E-Time makes it possible to take into account employee preferences and define additional fair play rules. By having employees participate in the planning (by entering their preferences), they feel that they are being treated subjectively. In addition, if plans are based on actual demand (read from external production or sales systems), plans are predictable, and any changes are due to random events. This has a positive impact on the employee’s experience and can be one of the elements that build the employer’s image.

A manager or foreman is the person with the most experience in a team. Allocating their working time (undeniably valuable) to handling spreadsheets is not only a failure to use their potential, but also a waste of money.

The manager’s task is to effectively manage the team, implement the plan (production, profit, sales, etc.) and take care of the company’s image. Administrative activities, especially management of working time of subordinate employees, should not distract them from strategic tasks.

Using algorithms to automate planning saves time, money and reduces frustration. The manager can focus on what they do best and enjoy the most.

With automation and built-in algorithms, E-Time allows for a significant reduction of the planning process time for the team. The larger and more complex the team covered by the process, the greater the reduction. For example, it can be a reduction from tens of hours to minutes!

The benefits of automated scheduling also become apparent when planning shifts. In retail outlets or production facilities, there is often a need to reassign employees (for example, to another store or to a newly opened outlet or to another production line). It would seem to be a simple task, but it requires a number of activities: communicating the reassignment (between managers and employees), changing a work schedule, changing a cost center, placing an order, and other actions (often involving the HR department).

The system supporting working time management should allow such a process to be carried out with a few clicks. In the end, the relevant costs must be borne by the place of reassignment. BeeOffice E-Time fully supports the process of reassigning an employee from one place of work to another. In particular, it provides support for the settlement of labor costs, the transfer of information about an employee to a new workplace and the appropriate permissions without involving the HR department.

Often in time management, the role of HR extends beyond routine activities – managers and employees expect support in billing time, filing and approving requests, handling employee reassignments, etc.

By implementing a rational model of time management that takes individual preferences into account, HR departments have fewer responsibilities related to preparing staffing schedules.

Employee involvement in scheduling is clearly linked to the widespread adoption of employee self-service. By utilizing well-designed IT solutions, employees can handle many HR matters immediately without involving HR specialists. Let’s mention here the obvious example of getting an answer to the question “How much vacation leave do I have left this year?” Similarly, improvements in manager self-service reduce the need for support from HR specialists for line managers.

In this way, the entire organization transitions to a modern HR process model, leveraging technology wherever it is feasible and justified.

As an employee and manager self-service solution, BeeOffice E-Time relieves HR of many routine tasks, including:

• a manager can reassign an employee to another entity with a few clicks without HR involvement;
• the system fully controls scheduling in terms of the Labor Code provisions, no HR assistance is needed here;
• employees can check their time schedule or even the tasks they are assigned to on a given day at any time;
• employees submit absence requests via smartphone and can check their status at any time.

The Polish version of BeeOffice E-Time incorporates various controls, including:

• no 11-hour break maintained on a planned day, counting from the end of work on a preceding day,
• no 35-hour break maintained (in the accounting week),
• planning of work on 4 consecutive Sundays,
• validation of a plan for disabled employees (prohibited full-time work, overtime and night work) – the check can be deactivated if an employee obtained a doctor’s consent to work full-time, overtime or at night,
• checking the number of days-off in the accounting period,
• inability to plan more hours in the accounting period than are provided for in the standard for the accounting period (with taking into account the date of employment and/or dismissal of an employee),
• monitoring of employee’s working day violations
• checking Sundays with trade ban.

Additionally, BeeOffice E-Time supports the working time planning for part-time employees, the disabled and nursing mothers.