Ensuring employees are available is an important part of managing a workforce because it helps managers keep track of and plan their team’s work hours. This article will talk about the different kinds of availability, what they mean, and how businesses can use the information to make scheduling easier.
Availability helps managers keep an eye on and plan their employees’ work schedules properly. It lets you track when employees can and can’t work, making and keeping schedules easier.
Setting Employee Availability
Managers can set rules about when an employee is available each day of the week or at different times. Some companies let their workers set their availability or ask for it to be added to the calendar.
Types of Availability
The four types of availability that some options usually offer are:
- Available: Times when employees can be scheduled to work.
- Unavailable: Times when employees should not be scheduled to work.
- Preferred: Times when employees would like to be scheduled.
- Preferred Time Off or “Not Preferred”: Times when employees prefer not to be scheduled for work.
Employees’ availability is automatically set to “unknown” until a manager or administrator specifically defines it in the system.
Not all types of employee availability are universally used by all organizations or industries. These types of availability are used in different ways depending on the wants and rules of each workplace.
Setting Unavailability
Managers can manually set an employee’s time to “unavailable.” Also, the system can give unavailable time automatically while time off requests are being approved or when managers use certain pay codes in the schedule.
In some solutions, both the schedule and the staff calendar show different types of availability by color. This visual aid makes it easier to see who is ready to work at different times, which helps fill in coverage gaps.
To make scheduling even more efficient, companies can give workers future availability patterns that are similar to shift patterns. This lets managers focus on making last-minute changes to employees’ availability when it doesn’t follow the normal routine.
Understanding and making good use of employees’ availability is a key part of managing a team well. These tips can help companies make schedules that work for everyone, including employees who want to work from home. This will lead to a happier and more productive staff.
