Work Schedule: 6 Essential Types

Work schedules are critically important to ensure operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and productivity, especially within security sectors and the cleaning services industry. Work schedules enable you to plan, manage and monitor the services you are providing to your customers. These schedules also provide your employees with all the necessary information required to do their jobs effectively. We deep dive into the different types of work schedules, their importance and how you can ensure that you are effectively managing this process below. 

Understanding Work Schedules 

In simple terms, a work schedule refers to the specific days and times that your employees are expected to complete the tasks or duties related to their position of employment. This schedule includes the specific shift details, like the days of the week and hours of the day they are expected to work.

This schedule ensures that your employees and staff know when they need to work, how long they need to work, the work location, their duties and roles etc. 

When the work schedule process is managed effectively and correctly, it will: 

• Reduce the amount of time you spend on the scheduling process, allowing you to focus on growing your business.
• Ensure that your scheduling procedures comply with legal requirements and regulations outlined by the labour department.
• Enhance consistency and customer experience, as your employees know well in advance the days and hours they will be working, reducing absenteeism and increasing productivity. 
• Efficiently determine and manage labour costs by scheduling employees so that they are not working overtime and that you do not have too many employees or too few employees working at the same location.

To effectively manage your employees’ work schedules, you need to identify and define the types of work schedules that apply to your business and services. We examine these in more detail below.

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6 Work schedule types

All businesses are unique and require several different employees who have different work schedules that need to be defined to enhance operational efficiency. The top 6 types of employee work schedules include:  

• Full-time work schedules – with this type of schedule, employees would work for the same days and hours per week, usually 40 core hours a week. 
• Part-time schedules – this type of schedule offers more flexibility as employees work less than full-time hours. The employees’ schedule may change from week to week. 
• Fixed schedules – a fixed work schedule lays out a predetermined set of days and hours that remain the same throughout an employee’s employment. These hours are usually defined before an employee begins work and can include both full-time and part-time schedules. 
• Flexible work schedules – a flexible schedule allows for a bit more freedom than fixed schedules, as employees need to work a certain number of hours a week, but they can do this within their own time frame and not during specific hours set out by the employer. 
• Rotating shift schedules – in this work schedule, employees will work a series of day and night shifts that the employer decides on. This is a popular work schedule for hourly workers. 
• Split shift work schedules – with this type of work schedule, an employee’s shift is split into two parts. They will clock in for one shift, clock out,leave and then clock in for the last shift. 

Within the security and cleaning services industry, we often see a number of these work schedule types, especially the rotating shift schedules for security personnel who may need to work different day and night shifts. Split shifts are also prevalent in the cleaning services industry, where cleaning staff come into an office space before everyone starts work and come back at the end of the day to clean up after the staff who have been in the office all day.

By defining your employees’ work schedule, you are ensuring predictability by having the right people, in the right location, at the right place, with the right skills and equipment needed to complete the job. A work schedule, when correctly and efficiently designed, not only enhances operational efficiency, reduces labour costs but also impacts customer satisfaction.

What elements should be included in a work schedule? 

For a work schedule to fulfil its purpose of enhancing operational efficiency it needs to include a number of different elements that provide employees with information related to their jobs. This includes information related to their working hours, availability required, workweek, weekly schedules, day shifts, overtime work, as well as:

• A breakdown of start times, end times, breaks, and planned hours of work.
• Highlight days off – especially where rotating shifts are concerned.
• Overtime needs and requirements. 
• Define the Work Schedule rules, which includes specifications for the daily working hours, weekly working hours, monthly working hours, annual working hours as well as weekly workdays.
• Location information. 
• Employee roles and responsibilities.

If each of these elements is not correctly defined within an employee’s work schedule, it could negatively impact the accuracy and efficiency of the work schedule. For example, if your employees are not provided with all the information needed, they will not be able to do their jobs effectively and could arrive for their shifts at the wrong time or wrong location etc. To assist in managing this, often complex workforce scheduling process, many businesses are turning to an innovative employee scheduling software, like EasyRoster.

EasyRoster work schedule software

The customisable EasyRoster solution was specifically built with workplace scheduling challenges in mind. This software solution simplifies the scheduling process through: 

• Personnel management – details regarding staff are managed, captured, and maintained by this solution to ensure that you can choose and access the right employee for the right project, site, or job. This could include their working preferences, previous assignments, call schedule and other variables related to their work. 
• Staff scheduling per location – this allows you to schedule and roster your employee shifts based on location. This ensures that you have the right employees at the right locations. This feature also enables you to track and get overtime alerts, monitor non-productive time and provide sales data that you can use to determine the profit per site.
• Time and attendance per location – the EasyRoster software allows for the capturing of attendance details per location, allowing you to pull reports and make necessary adjustments to ensure sites are correctly covered and that wage costs are managed effectively. 

By utilising the EasyRoster solution, you can make the work scheduling process simpler, faster and more efficient, which in turn reduces administrative burdens, enhances productivity and ultimately improves profitability. 

Conclusion 

Developing a work schedule for your security or cleaning services company can be a time-consuming and complex process, especially if you have a range of full-time employees, shift workers, part-time employees and more.

Utilising an innovative work scheduling tool, like EasyRoster, will simplify this complexity and allow you to enhance operational efficiency and effectively manage labour costs.