Six Tips to Create & Manage Schedules Your Transportation Employees Will Love

Effective employee schedules drive efficiency, predictability, and timeliness in the transportation industry – all factors that directly affect the bottom line for your operation. That’s why it’s crucial to create schedules that not only ensure customer satisfaction, but also help you retain your employees who keep the wheels in motion – literally.  Here are six tips to help you make an employee schedule that your team will love. 

1. Make schedules accessible

Paper schedules and spreadsheets can be an inconvenience to your crew. Employees often don’t know when a new schedule has been posted, and when it does become available, employees can only view the most updated schedule when they are at work. Online employee scheduling software give transportation employees and managers 24/7 access to up-to-the-minute schedules anytime, anywhere. Whether they’re working on-site or on the go, your team always knows when and where they work, and managers have peace of mind knowing everyone has the most current schedule information. 

2. Prioritize work-life balance
Work life directly impacts employees’ personal lives and relationships. Building schedules out in advance and giving employees 24/7 access to their schedules helps them plan future events such as vacations and family time. Some employee scheduling software allows supervisors to create schedules for any time frame and copy schedule patterns and rotations. This makes it easy for managers to build schedules out into the future.

3. Provide flexibility
Flexibility is highly valued among employees in every line of work, and your crew members are no exception. Offer a work environment where employees can adapt their schedules to suit their lifestyle. That might mean offering flexible shifts to accommodate life at home or giving them the ability to choose shifts with employee scheduling software that includes  self-scheduling tools. The more scheduling options you can accommodate, the more likely employees are to find one that is ideal. Not only does this help foster work-life balance, but it also shows that you trust them to make decisions that affect your operation.

4. Be accommodating
Keeping your crew happy with their schedules while ensuring accurate arrival and departure times can be challenging. Online staff scheduling software allows employees to easily submit time-off, swap, and other schedule requests, so they can work the shifts they want and take leave when they need it. With some employee scheduling software, managers can accept or deny requests and employees are instantly notified.

5. Foster communication
Your crew is constantly on the go, which can make it difficult to keep everyone on the same page. Tools that allow managers to instantly notify employees of schedule changes help alleviate miscommunication, which can lead to frustrating scheduling errors. Employee scheduling apps can also help managers fill open shifts fast or quickly notify the team when there is a need for additional manpower. Software that lets managers send messages to a select group of qualified and available personnel helps get messages to the right people at the right times.

6. Don’t forget about your managers
Managers in the transportation industry already have a lot on their plates and creating team schedules can be time intensive. Proving managers with tools to quickly create and easily manage schedules frees up their time so they can focus on other responsibilities. Software that allows them to organize and view the information most important to them makes it easy for them to stay on top of things and keep your operation running smoothly.

The transportation industry is driven by its workforce, and you rely on your team to maintain precise arrival and departure times and deliver top notch customer service.

Are you ready to improve the scheduling process and make life easier for your entire crew? Start your 30-day FREE trial of ScheduleAnywhere employee scheduling software today!

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