Employee scheduling software automates the process of creating and maintaining a

schedule A schedule or a timetable, as a basic time-management tool, consists of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place, or of a sequence of events in the chronological order in which such things are ...

. Automating the scheduling of employees increases productivity and allows organizations with hourly workforces to re-allocate resources to non-scheduling activities. Such software will usually track vacation time,

sick time Sick leave (or paid sick days or sick pay) is paid time off from work that workers can use to stay home to address their health needs without losing pay. It differs from paid vacation time or time off work to deal with personal matters, because si ...

, compensation time, and alert when there are conflicts. As scheduling data is accumulated over time, it may be extracted for payroll or to analyze past activity. Although employee scheduling software may or may not make optimization decisions, it does manage and coordinate the tasks. Today's employee scheduling software often includes mobile applications. Mobile scheduling further increased scheduling productivity and eliminated inefficient scheduling steps. It may also include functionality including applicant tracking and on-boarding, time and attendance, and automatic limits on overtime. Such functionality can help organizations with issues like

employee retention Employee retention is the ability of an organization to retain its employees and make sure the sustainability of employees. Employee retention can be represented by a simple statistic (for example, a retention rate of 80% usually indicates that an o ...

, compliance with

labor laws Labour laws (also known as labor laws or employment laws) are those that mediate the relationship between workers, employing entities, trade unions, and the government. Collective labour law relates to the tripartite relationship between employee, ...

, and other workforce management challenges.

Purpose

A theoretical underpinning of an employee scheduling problem can be represented as the

Nurse scheduling problem The nurse scheduling problem (NSP), also called the nurse rostering problem (NRP), is the operations research problem of finding an optimal way to assign nurses to shifts, typically with a set of hard constraints which all valid solutions must fol ...

, which is

NP-hard In computational complexity theory, NP-hardness ( non-deterministic polynomial-time hardness) is the defining property of a class of problems that are informally "at least as hard as the hardest problems in NP". A simple example of an NP-hard pr ...

. The theoretical complexity of the problem is a significant factor in the development of various software solutions. This is because systems must take into account many different forms of schedules that could be worked, and allocate employees to the correct schedule. Ultimately, optimization of scheduling is to minimize costs, but also often requires a reciprocal approach from management instead of complete reliance on software.

Transitioning to employee scheduling software

Prior to employee scheduling software companies would use physical mediums for tracking employee hours and work schedule. This then gave rise to data storage forms that later by the 80s were compatible with computer programs and software. These forms however never actually scheduled the employees, it just kept track of the employees work week, hours, and prior work schedules. This then gave way to the idea of employee scheduling software, which would be an all-inclusive system that would store and track employee work history, along with actually scheduling the employee's work week.

Punch cards

The earliest form of automated employee scheduling and managing of employee hours was the

punch card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...

. The idea first created by

Basile Bouchon Basile Bouchon () was a textile worker in the silk center in Lyon who invented a way to control a loom with a perforated paper tape in 1725. The son of an organ maker, Bouchon partially automated the tedious setting up process of the drawloom in ...

developed the control of a loom by punched holes in paper tape in 1725.

Herman Hollerith Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was a German-American statistician, inventor, and businessman who developed an electromechanical tabulating machine for punched cards to assist in summarizing information and, later, i ...

improved the design. IBM manufactured and marketed a variety of unit record machines for creating, sorting, and tabulating punched cards, even after expanding into electronic computers in the late 1950s. IBM developed punched card technology into a powerful tool for business data-processing and produced an extensive line of general purpose unit record machines.

Magnetic tape

During the 1960s, the punched card was gradually replaced as the primary means for data storage by magnetic tape, as better, more capable computers became available. Mohawk Data Sciences introduced a magnetic tape encoder in 1965, a system marketed as a keypunch replacement which was somewhat successful, but punched cards were still commonly used for data entry and programming until the mid-1980s when the combination of lower cost magnetic disk storage, and affordable interactive terminals on less expensive minicomputers made punched cards obsolete for this role as well. However, their influence lives on through many standard conventions and file formats.

Auto-scheduling and intelligent rostering

In the 2010s, the wide adoption of mobile devices and the rise of 3G, 4G, and 5G networks worldwide has made it possible to approach the task of scheduling differently. In the last decade, many software solutions have sprung up to make the lives of business owners and managers easier and less burdensome. The first wave of solutions helped small business owners to schedule, manage, and communicate with their employees in a more streamlined way. The newer way of solutions go a step further, leveraging machine learning and are being built on even newer cloud technologies. The need for automation and intelligent rostering in workforce management will continue to grow as society's heads into a gig economy.

Complexity

Algorithms are used within the employee scheduling software in order to determine not only who is working, but also the specific jobs and tasks required of the workers. The system still must be monitored, and any further issues with assigning of specifics is done manually. Within the context of roster problems and models, there are three main factors to work out the differences: the integration of days off scheduling with line of work construction and task assignment, roster construction, and demand type. These complexities thusly require that each and every workplace must optimize employee scheduling software based on their own unique set of rules, issues and needs. Additionally, it is difficult to determine optimal solution that minimize costs, meet employee preferences, distribute shifts equitably among employees and satisfy all the workplace constraints. In many organizations, the people involved in developing rosters need decision support tools to help provide the right employees at the right time and the right cost while achieving a high level of

employee satisfaction Job satisfaction, employee satisfaction or work satisfaction is a measure of workers' contentedness with their job, whether they like the job or individual aspects or facets of jobs, such as nature of work or supervision. Job satisfaction can be ...

. Due to constant change within work environments, new models and algorithms must be created in order to allow for flexibility as needs and demands arise. For example, when a large number of new employees are hired, as in the total workforce is increased, the scheduling software likely will need to be updated in order to allow for such a change.

Features

Although employee scheduling software won't necessarily improve business practices by itself, it does automate typically tedious business administration. It can also have positive effects on aspects of the business indirectly, including

employee engagement Employee engagement is a fundamental concept in the effort to understand and describe, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the nature of the relationship between an organization and its employees. An "engaged employee" is defined as one who is ...

, and lowered labor costs. By providing management with large amounts of data, this software can assist management in making decisions and automatically create a work schedule that fits as many constraints as possible. Also, the software may be a part of an ERP package or other

human resource management system A human resources management system (HRMS) or Human Resources Information System (HRIS) or Human Capital Management (HCM) is a form of Human Resources (HR) software that combines a number of systems and processes to ensure the easy management o ...

. Features vary depending on software vendor, but some typical features include: *

Gantt chart A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule, named after its popularizer, Henry Gantt (1861–1919), who designed such a chart around the years 1910–1915. Modern Gantt charts also show the dependency relationshi ...

or calendar view of the schedule *Approve employee requests for time off * Reduce unproductive workforce due to over scheduling * Use weather forecasts to predict staffing needs * Days off scheduling * Allow employees to swap shifts. * Templates to roll out shift plans over medium term * Interface to payroll and/or management accounting software * Ability to easily identify unassigned shifts. * Ability to create reports for invoicing and payroll. * Manage the task of

automation Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...

and

data collection Data collection or data gathering is the process of gathering and measuring information on targeted variables in an established system, which then enables one to answer relevant questions and evaluate outcomes. Data collection is a research com ...

. * Workplace analysis * Mobile application integration * Interface agents

Future trends

As the modern workplace becomes more complex, it is likely that rostering will need to be more flexible to cater to more individualistic preferences. Artificial intelligence also looks to play a bigger role in scheduling software, requiring less oversight by management to correct issues.

References

{{Reflist Administrative software Business software Project management software Automated planning and scheduling