For many businesses, keeping their workers on a consistent schedule can be difficult. Moreover, particularly for companies in the retail and service sectors, it can be difficult to determine what an optimal employee schedule would even look like. However, all of this is beginning to change, thanks to sophisticated employee scheduling software being developed by companies such as Dayforce and Kronos.
Through a variety of different methods, the software created by these and other industry pioneers is beginning to revolutionize the ways in which employees’ time is managed. Some of the methods are extremely straightforward, such as scheduling employees based on 15 minute time increments, rather than the more typical hour-long periods previously used. Other techniques are more complex, including analysis of store sales and other data to recognize peak and ebb activity times and schedule employees accordingly.
One impact that technology such as this has had is to shift more workers out of full-time work into part-time jobs. For companies, this is seen as a net benefit, in that it can reduce the number of workers who are eligible for certain benefits, as well as decreasing the need for intervention by an employment lawyer or business lawyer because of uncertainties and discrepancies in hours worked, especially when it comes to overtime pay disputes.