Global News Makes Their Newsrooms More Efficient with ScheduleAnywhere Shift Scheduling Software

Canadian news station, Global News, now uses ScheduleAnywhere to avoid double-booking employees and give offsite access to shift schedules

Fargo, ND - June 2, 2016 - Atlas Business Solutions, Inc. announced today that Global News, a Canadian news company, has deployed  ScheduleAnywhere, a new, easy-to-use system for assigning shifts and scheduling their entire news team. In the past, each of their 12 locations across Canada prepared schedules differently. One used an Excel spreadsheet and then posted it on the station's board. Another used a combination of Illustrator, Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar to prepare the employees' schedules. Now, with ScheduleAnywhere  shift scheduling software, the news teams are able to ensure all shifts are covered across all newsrooms in a cohesive and coordinated manner.

There's no room for staff shortages at Global News. The media outlet provides Canadians up-to-the-minute news cycles complete with coverage on breaking news, local matters and world issues. To continue providing the best news coverage, it is imperative that all shifts are covered. To accomplish this, Global News decided to move away from the offline, manual method of posting schedules to a web-based solution that offered more visibility, flexibility and made communicating changes easier.

The old scheduling methods left countless "holes" in Global News'  schedule coverage. For example, there was no process for preventing double-booking an employee, which resulted in gaps in staffing. On hard copies of schedules, everyone on the team had the ability to scribble notes and make changes, which caused tremendous confusion. Global News tried some other online tools to create schedules, but there were still limitations on space and significant time invested in making updates.

ScheduleAnywhere has simplified the entire scheduling process for the Global News team. "Color-coding helps to ensure all shifts are covered. Just need to hit a couple of buttons to post and people are notified," said Tracy Boesel, Senior News Assistant. She added that, "People have access anywhere to their schedule. We enter vacations right on the schedule so it's easier to plan and approve or deny holidays."

At another station, Yopie Hage, Graphics Supervisor, said, "ScheduleAnywhere has streamlined the approach (allowing for) easier updates, feedback and results. I can see the tally of my employees working per day and hours for the week. It allows me to plan ahead and get a semi staff rotation happening as well."

With the constant flux of the news industry, having this kind of flexibility in a scheduling system is invaluable. Now, the team can spend more time covering the news and less time on administrative tasks like staff scheduling.

What is ScheduleAnywhere?
ScheduleAnywhere is online employee scheduling software from Atlas Business Solutions. This Software as a Service (SaaS) works for any business that schedules shifts, including healthcare, public safety, energy, government and business services. The software ensures proper shift coverage, eliminates scheduling conflicts, manages shift rotations, tracks time-off and hours scheduled, handles staff availability and time-off requests, tracks skills and certifications, and estimates payroll costs. ScheduleAnywhere is used by thousands of managers and businesses daily to streamline the employee scheduling process. Free trial accounts are available and pricing is based on the number of employees scheduled. For more information, please visit www.scheduleanywhere.com.

About Global News
Global News is the news and current affairs division of Global Television Network in Canada, overseeing all local and national news programming on the network's twelve owned-and-operated stations. Globalnews.ca has 12 local newsrooms across Canada. Each newsroom provides up-to-the-minute local news, including weather and traffic, national coverage feature stories, analysis of world issues and other engaging content nationally and internationally. Canadians are able to consume the news through a variety of channels, including video, text, photographs and other interactive features. All news is delivered via the web, mobile devices, email alerts, RSS feeds and on social media.

About Atlas Business Solutions
Atlas Business Solutions, Inc. is a leading developer of easy-to-learn, easy-to-use, and affordable business management software. Founded in 1991, the company is recognized as an industry leader in employee scheduling software and was named as one of Software Magazine's Top 500 Software Companies in 2004 through 2007, 2010, 2013 and again in 2014.