Spreadsheets are inexpensive and easy to use, especially for basic purposes. You can use them to keep track of payroll, expenses, simple schedules, or inventory of your stock. Over the years, companies that eventually computerized their data used spreadsheets like Excel to manage their employees’ schedules.
Managers and administrative offices used worksheet templates for various purposes at work. These templates were often modeled after hard copies or chalkboard calendars. They typically had employee names in one cell and assigned shifts in other cells. Copies are then usually printed and distributed to everyone in the office for reference, or sent via email.
Of course, this simplicity is not true for all businesses, due to many factors. One thing to keep in mind is that the complexity of the schedule and workload varies from organization to organization. That being said, other spreadsheet programs are more complex than others, requiring the use of more cells, formulas, and calculations.
Problems with spreadsheet employee scheduling
While it is possible to use spreadsheets to schedule tasks, workloads, and other management-related items, this method has its own drawbacks. These are some of the disadvantages that most people experience when using spreadsheets for staffing and employee tasks.
- It is difficult to integrate information from different departments, such as workload distribution, attendance, payroll and management. Therefore, incorporating all of these into one file takes time and effort.
- Lack of multi-user access. If you’re sharing the file across the office, not everyone can immediately make changes or access the same file if other users are updating it.
- Most administrative employees spend too much time with Excel files, taking time to update and re-enter data. Manually resizing, aligning, and color-coding cells takes valuable time away from other tasks.
- It is complicated to use and can seem intimidating, especially for the novice or uninitiated user. While businesses can make the spreadsheet available for everyone to access, a simple mistake or change to cells can wreak havoc on all content. This requires care for all users, a need that can be difficult to meet in an office with hundreds of employees.
- Simple spreadsheets make it difficult to detect conflicts for worker and employee shifts. In fact, the people using the programming material still have to look and check thoroughly to see which slots have not been filled or assigned.
- Spreadsheets limit you to set hours with set hours, and it can take time and effort to model flextime or multi-hour work weeks.
Enhance your spreadsheet programming experience
If you’ve been relying on spreadsheets for the past few years, then it may be time to step up and upgrade your experience. This can be done by using reliable programming software. Good scheduling software is basically like your typical version of a spreadsheet, but much more flexible and powerful. They are generally designed for many purposes, these include:
- task assignment
- work schedule
- employee attendance
- record of leaves and absences
- paysheet
- reservation of facilities and resources
Most scheduling software is designed with the entire workplace in mind, allowing you to plan and schedule as many needs as possible, so you don’t need separate software for each. They’re easy to use and easy to share too, allowing workers to use the program and do things themselves. Programs like these save time, effort, and money by reducing administration tasks and the time needed to focus on employee scheduling.
While most programs cost a bit compared to free Excel templates, switching to this type of technology is not without significant benefits. By saving time, effort and manpower and avoiding the lack of resources for other tasks, great scheduling software is a must in the office.
So, what are you waiting for? Take your scheduling to a new level and find out more about employee scheduling software today!
