There are many factors to consider when designing a scheduling strategy, and it's often worth taking the time to consider all of the high-level environmental factors before you put pen to paper and create a shift pattern. Unfortunately, WFM teams frequently dive right into the details, leading to a trial-and-error approach that yo-yos between strategies and, in the end, does more harm than good.
The best place to begin is at the top, with your first thought being where you want your company to fit into the scheduling triangle.
For example, a company with a first-employer strategy may design shift patterns that their employees love, but this may come at the expense of the customer, who may have to wait longer for service or pay more because you now have to overstaff to accommodate the additional schedule inflexibility. I've had to explain many times that if you give me an unlimited budget, I can create shift patterns that are both "best in class" for employees and optimal for ensuring people are in the right place at the right time for the client.
Employees, customers, and costs are frequently intertwined, making it difficult to strike the right balance. A cost-effective scheduling pattern that meets customer expectations, for example, may appear to be cost-effective on paper. However, if employees become ill or leave the company, costs will rise due to recruiting and overtime costs, and the customer will suffer as a result of a lack of manpower. The good news is that there are scheduling solutions that check all of the triangle's boxes at once. These strategies have already been discussed in previous posts –if you have not already read them, you can find them here: SelfScheduling & EquityScheduling.
When deciding where you fit in the scheduling triangle, think about and evaluate the following:
Your business type: An emergency service, for example, is more likely to be skewed toward the customer point of the triangle and to put expense to one side than a line of business with a high net-worth income stream.
Workforce Demographics – Employee needs are influenced by age, gender, ethnicity, religion, student status, and family/marital status. Knowing this knowledge is one thing, but don't assume you understand these groups of individuals; instead, engage with them and speak with them directly, accumulating a list of demands that you can subsequently incorporate into your scheduling plan.
Facilities - To give a few examples, how close is your employee to their place of work, building opening hours, canteen operating hours, facilities near the office, and work from home.
Customer needs - How consistent is your consumer demand across a 24-hour period? For example, very high demand between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. and deficient demand between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. is significantly more expensive than demand arriving equally throughout the day. Also, how susceptible demand is to change on short notice is a crucial factor to examine since it will define how much short notice flex you require in your timetable plan.
Spending time to understand where you want your business's scheduling strategy to be is a precious exercise that will prevent yo-yo behaviour, provide clarity and transparency to all parties involved, and, most importantly, serve as a guiding star as you dive deeper into the details and design the shift patterns themselves.
Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don't much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.
Alice: ...So long as I get somewhere.
The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.
