One click of the mouse is all it takes to place the order. While the consumer sits back and reads the delivery confirmation message, the wheels start to rotate in the distribution warehouse of the webshop. In order to fulfill the promise of the delivery date, you’ll need to have set up a logistics process that is fully outlined. A solid employee schedule lies at the basis of this process. Employee scheduling can be a tedious task, but with the right employee scheduling software it becomes easier and helps you gain many benefits in several ways!
Tip 1: Plan based on the number of expected orders
E-commerce companies have the great advantage that there is an abundance of analytics data available. This makes it a lot easier for you to find out what the busy times of the year are. When you sell personalized gifts through your online store, you will have noticed that the shopping carts are fuller around Valentine’s Day or Christmas than in other periods of the year. Use this historical data to make predictions of the number of expected orders and adjust the work schedule accordingly. Dyflexis employee scheduling software can be linked to various API and ERP systems that ensure that personnel planners have insight into the daily expected orders, turnover (forecast), stock and other business information required to calculate the optimum occupancy rate during the scheduling process. This allows personnel planners to determine a cost-efficient personnel capacity for the warehouses at an early stage and they are not faced with any surprises.
Tip 2: Smart scheduling based on contract data
Do you employ many on-call workers in your warehouses? Keep in mind that since the introduction of The Balanced Labour Market Act, a minimum call-up period of 4 days applies to these workers. In addition, remember to take hourly wages and overtime into account when scheduling staff. Suppose your employees receive a night shift allowance of 150%, then it is wise to give night shifts to employees with a lower hourly wage during times when you want to keep personnel costs low. The Dyflexis employee scheduling software shows various contract information during the scheduling process, so that personnel planners are continuously able to make the most informed decisions.
Tip 3: Plan based on skills and certificates
Some employees have specific skills, which they may or may not have learned to perform special tasks. In a warehouse, for example, the forklift may only be driven by someone who has obtained the correct certificate. To prevent that too few of these employees are put on the work schedule, be sure to take into account which employees have these types of skills when engaging in the scheduling process. This way you can see who is capable of certain skills and where these people are missing. The Dyflexis employee scheduling software offers users the ability to label employees with specific qualifications. If too few of these employees are placed on the schedule, the system will show a warning to the personnel planner, so that the work schedule can be adjusted immediately.
Tip 4: ensure short lines of communication with a personnel planning app
If an employee reports sick for a shift, it is important that a replacement is found quickly, especially during busy times. In that case it is very important that you can contact your employees quickly. A mobile phone application is a very effective means of establishing short communication lines. With the Dyflexis personnel planning app, employees can respond quickly to open services that have been created, for example, because an employee has called in sick. In addition, employees receive a push message via the Dyflexis app when the work schedule has been changed and it is also possible for them to exchange services.
Tip 5: Implement a time clock system for an integrated time registration solution
By integrating personnel planning with a time clock system, you save a lot of time on the time registration of your employees. A second advantage is that you can see the planned hours next to the actual worked hours in one overview. This way you can immediately see when employees have worked more or less hours than they were supposed to. With the Rex-O-Matic NOA time clock system created by Dyflexis, employees can clock in and out by scanning a personal card such as an OV chip card or bank card. Start and end times are automatically registered in the personnel planning system. You can then approve the registered hours at the touch of a button.
With Dyflexis you are assured of a personnel planning system that is fully in line with all your wishes regarding the scheduling of personnel. Click here to discover more ways in which Dyflexis can help e-commerce companies!
