Employee scheduling can be a difficult task as managing everything from employee’s time to day-offs can prove to be a challenge. Also, it’s hard to keep track of everything simultaneously, and the more your organization expands, the more difficult the task of scheduling becomes. Employees are the most crucial part of your organization, and you should provide them with the best employee scheduling software to prevent high turnover. You can find many open source employee scheduling software in the market that aids you in getting such things done without any hassle.
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What is employee scheduling software?
Simply put, employee scheduling software is a scheduling management platform that assists the owners and managers of an organization in managing their hourly employees. This software not only helps in managing labor costs but also automates the process of generating schedules to increase productivity and offer consistent results. Moreover, you can use this software to enhance workforce satisfaction. Other than that, the primary function of scheduling software is to permit auto-assigning shifts and automatically generating notifications for shift changes and new schedules. You can also use it for the creation of a timecard and importation of the payroll file.
Benefits of employee scheduling software
• One of the most vital benefits of using employee scheduling software is time tracking. With this, you can track how much time an employee is spending on a specific task, and this can further benefit you in many ways. For instance, you will be able to figure out the efficiency of your employees and train them accordingly to enhance productivity. Moreover, you can also manage the attendance issue with this by easily figuring out who is late or absent and accordingly take actions or fix them.
• With the help of employee scheduling software, managers can save a lot of time that’s used to spend on preparing spreadsheets. Such software will automate the entire process and allow your manager to complete other tasks, which will surely improve the efficiency and productivity of the firm.
• As mentioned earlier, employees are one of the most important resources of your organization and an open-source employee scheduling software will help you in balancing the payroll costs. It will also help you to prevent needless over time and with a few clicks, you can discover the most suitable person for a specific work who has the capability to finish the work before the deadline.
• You can also enhance the recruitment process through this software by scheduling your recruitment sessions and focus more on the on-boarding process. Also, planning a recruitment session manually can take up a lot of time, and these software will save that time to focus on productive tasks.
• One of the most crucial things that make efficient teamwork better is communication. In order to enhance the interaction between the parties, you can use this software. It will encourage collaboration and also offers dedicated forums.
Top free and open-source employee scheduling software
|
Software |
Mobile access |
Payroll management |
|
Homebase |
Yes |
Yes |
|
When I Work |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Deputy |
Yes |
Yes |
|
TSheets |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Shiftboard |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Jobber |
Yes |
Yes |
|
NimbleSchedule |
Yes |
Yes |
|
WhenToWork |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Findmyshift |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Acuity Scheduling |
Yes |
No |
| Zoomshift | Yes | Yes |
| Connecteam | Yes | Yes |
1. Homebase
It’s a free employee scheduling software that helps you in generating a schedule in minutes. Moreover, you can get access to the schedule in your mobile device that allows you to modify the data from anywhere at any time. You can filter the schedule by time period, role or watch hours. With this software, you can easily copy the previous schedule or even use automatic scheduling that saves your time. Your team will always have an up-to-date schedule if you use Homebase. They can even request shift trades or update their availability, and a notification will be delivered to you asking for the approval. You can also set a PIN for quick clock-in, which will not only save the time of your employees but also ensure the security of your organization. In addition to that, if any employee forgets to clock-in, the manager can easily edit that. The mobile application offers offline services that make it convenient to use if your employees do not have access to the internet.
2. When I Work
When I Work a free and open-source employee scheduling software that offers loads of features. It allows you to create the schedule for the entire week in just a few minutes that helps you to save hours every week. Also, you don’t have to worry if you have no idea how to create one as it provides templates that can be customized according to your desire. You can simply drag and drop shifts that make the process of employee scheduling hassle-free. Moreover, online scheduling can be done with the help of the mobile application that comes absolutely free with the software. Also, with this software, you can easily spot which employee is available and capable of doing a particular task. With a single click, you can publish the schedule, and a notification will be sent to all the employees instantly, which will help you to prevent the conventional method of calling the employees.
3. Deputy
Employee scheduling is a vital part of running an organization efficiently, and Deputy helps you to do that without putting much effort. With this software, you can save your money, time and energy as you can generate schedule for your employee with a single click. This software helps you to precisely evaluate the requirement for the labour for a specific task by using data from multiple demand signals, and it will assist you in building an efficient shift structure. The auto-scheduling feature makes sure that you will always have access to the right amount of employee at moments when you need them the most without taking help from third-party data such as events or bookings. You can check which team fits perfectly for a specific project by setting like the shift equality, lowest cost, and matching past preferences. It also helps in streamlining timesheets by keeping track of which employee is currently on the shift.
4. TSheets
This employee scheduling software ensures quick shift scheduling and keeps the manager and employee on the same page. You just need to drag and drop to generate, edit and assign shifts to your workers for the day, week or even the month. In addition to that, you don’t have to create the schedule again and again if it remains the same as you can simply copy and publish it. You can get rid of making the phone calls to your employees as this software sends instant notification to all your workers as soon as you publish a schedule. Moreover, you can assign permissions to the selected ones who can create, edit and assign shifts to the employees. With the help of this software, you can save tons of hours that you used to spend on generating schedules. You can get a free 14 days trial without even providing your credit card details. Also, you can use the mobile app to change the shifts on the go.
5. Shiftboard
With this employee scheduling software, you can turn the process of scheduling into a strategic advantage as you will be able to improve the communication between the team, save labor costs and streamline operations. It will allow the manager to get rid of the spreadsheet and shift to innovative scheduling software. With this software, you can not only adjust shifts to fit complicated scheduling and overtime rules, but it also aids in reducing fatigue. This software can automatically change the shifts and also manage overtime. You can also auto-assign workers to optimize labor coverage. It will surely boost employee engagement as it helps in streamlining the communication between the employee and the manager. It also allows you to send the notification to all the employees at once or even send it to targeted ones only. Shiftboard also helps you to prevent employees from being scheduled whos credentials are expired.
6. Zoomshift
Unlike other employee scheduling software in this list, Zoomshift differentiates itself by focusing on providing an efficient way of creating and managing schedules for hourly employees. Considering hourly employees work in a different manner as compared to regular employees, this software takes care of that aspect by providing a calendar view, along with sending notifications. It also makes it easier for employees to set their availability, request time off, or even pick open shifts. Thanks to its reports, an organization can ensure there are lesser instances of early check-outs, unnecessary overtime, and missed attendance punch. It works on both web and mobile devices, and offers a customized payroll report too.
7. Connecteam
For an organization and team to work efficiently, it’s not just the employee scheduling that matters. And that’s what Connecteam ensures as it offers several other things on top of scheduling and communicating it with employees. It offers a variety of options such as checklists, reports and more to ensure that employees are communicated, while features like GPS, time tracking, timesheets, and the likes make sure that the working hours are tracked well. The software can also provide reminders, status updates to employees along with offering training courses, knowledge center, etc. to help everyone enhance their professional skills.
Managers spend so many hours generating a schedule for the employees which makes them stick to a single task. However, with the help of employee scheduling software, you can allow them to get rid of the scheduling tasks so that they can utilize their potential in work that matters. This move will not only save the labor cost for scheduling but also enhance the productivity of your organization.
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