7 Best Staff Scheduling Software (2024 Guide)

Staff scheduling software is a must-have for any company looking to run like a well-oiled machine.

It's a modern approach to save time and money and simplify the process of assigning shifts and tracking employee hours.

You'll be able to quickly and easily:

Create and update schedules
Make adjustments
Communicate with your team

And make sure your staff is getting the hours they need and the time off they deserve.

Plus, it's a breeze to use — no more spreadsheets or forms to fill out and submit.

We’ve compiled a list of the 7 best staff scheduling software for 2024 — to guide you in choosing the best software for your business.

We’ll cover:

What is Staff Scheduling Software?
The Challenges Of Shift Staff Scheduling
How Scheduling Software Is The Solution: 4 Benefits
7 Best Employee Scheduling Software
Staff Scheduling Software Evaluation Checklist
Staff Scheduling Software Levels Up Your Scheduling Process

What is Staff Scheduling Software?

Staff scheduling software is software used to create, manage, and organize the schedules of your employees.

Staff scheduling software will revolutionize your scheduling process.

Plus, it transforms the process into a more harmonious workflow for you and your employees.

It also allows:

Automatic schedule creation while considering employee availability.
Tracking of employee hours & labor costs.
Assurance of compliance with labor laws.
The ability to run audit reports for in-depth insight.
More say for employees in their schedules.
Easy schedule access on any mobile device.

The Challenges Of Shift Staff Scheduling Without Software

Shift scheduling can be a major challenge for any business, not to mention a dreaded chore.

It requires careful planning to guarantee the right staff members are on-hand to handle customer/patient needs while keeping your overtime costs low.

It can be difficult to maintain a consistent schedule that works for all your employees because everybody has different needs and availability.

When shift staff scheduling is done incorrectly, it can lead to lower employee morale, increased absenteeism, and a plunge in productivity.

You must ensure your shift staff scheduling is done properly in order to have a successful business and overcome the challenges below.

Challenge #1: Inconsistency in Hours

Many shift workers deal with inconsistency in their work hours which impacts their finances, their life outside of work, and their overall well-being.

20-30% of shift workers suffer from insomnia or other sleep problems.

Shift work often involves acute sleep loss, particularly in connection with night and early morning shifts. Unfortunately, 20–30% of shift workers suffer from insomnia or other sleep problems.

The problems above are a direct result of unpredictable scheduling, a typical problem when managing staff scheduling manually.

Using spreadsheets and social media channels for communication is clunky and chaotic, and it’s tough to create stable schedules.

Challenge #2: The Right Staff With The Right Skills

You know that having the right staff with the right skills makes all the difference. Whether in a hospital or The Gap — skill matters.

Not only does your business operation suffer when you don’t create skills-based schedules, but you end up with unhappy employees because they’re working in a position they aren’t trained for.

Staff scheduling software makes creating skills-based scheduling simple because you have employee info at your fingertips.

Challenge #3: Difficulty in Schedule Planning

Planning ahead to create on-point schedules that serve your employees and your operation is crucial.

And yet, if you don’t have an efficient, streamlined scheduling system that allows you to easily reference past schedules to determine your busy seasons and swamped shifts, planning future schedules will be a dreaded chore.

When you can’t easily run audit reports, you’ll have difficulty in predicting demand and most likely end up with inadequate staffing.

Challenge #4: High Employee Turnover

When scheduling is chaotic and unpredictable, there’s a good chance you’ll have a revolving door of employees.

Flexibility and a more balanced work-life are top priorities for today’s employees.

Unsatisfied workers won’t stay with you, and a low retention rate makes it tough to recruit new employees.

So, how do you counteract these scheduling challenges?

We’ve got the answer…

How Scheduling Software Is The Solution: 4 Benefits

Scheduling software can address and help eliminate the above challenges while streamlining scheduling and making it more interactive for your employees.

Let’s look at the benefits of staff scheduling software:

1. Streamlined Scheduling

Staff scheduling software cuts out manual processes that are daunting and time-consuming.

Efficient scheduling looks like this:

Employees can set their availability, view their schedules, and request shift swaps or time off right on their phones.
You’ve got up-to-date info available for schedule creation and can approve requests or post available shifts on the go.

2. Employee Engagement

Employee involvement in scheduling boosts morale, culture, and engagement.

Employee engagement is a critical factor in job satisfaction and retention. Studies show that companies with highly engaged employees have a 31% lower turnover rate and increased employee loyalty.

Companies with highly engaged employees have a 31% lower turnover rate and increased employee loyalty

3. Better Schedule Planning

When you know better, you can do better, right?

The insight you gain using scheduling software helps you plan more accurately for future schedules.

Any staff scheduling software worth its salt offers a shift audit option where you can run reports that’ll help you:

Reduce excessive overtime
Prevent employee burnout
Plan better shift coverage

4. Improved Communication

Employee scheduling software enables you to drastically improve your team communication without time-consuming effort on your part.

Better communication increases the cohesiveness of your team as well as productivity.

Improved communication & collaboration through social technologies can raise productivity by 20-25%

According to a McKinsey report, improved communication and collaboration through social technologies could raise productivity by 20-25%.

Improve communication with a team chat app and make mobile schedules and shift swapping easily accessible.

Improve communication with a team

7 Best Employee Scheduling Software

Staff scheduling software provides an efficient and cost-effective way to manage employee schedules, cut labor costs, and optimize your workforce.

You can automate creating, managing, and tracking staff schedules, making it easier to properly utilize your staff and ensure they get time off to rest and recharge.

Choosing a staff scheduling software solution best suited for your business can feel overwhelming. We’ve researched for you and compiled a list of our top 7 picks that’ll streamline your employee scheduling in no time.

1. MakeShift

MakeShift was recognized as a Leader for Employee Scheduling Software and for the Highest Adoption Rate in G2’s Winter 2023 Grid® Reports.

MakeShift was developed to fix scheduling in the healthcare industry and began with a nurse and her frustrating experience with scheduling.

She was constantly scheduled when she wasn’t available and could never access her schedule on her phone while on the go. As a result, she couldn’t easily swap shifts with other nurses or see available shifts that she preferred.

Over time, we found that healthcare wasn’t the only industry in dire need of a different approach to scheduling.

Not by a long shot — so we’ve expanded our reach and expertise to level up staff scheduling for a diverse range of industries.

MakeShift was built on a people-first approach — we make scheduling smarter and more straightforward for managers and employees. And we’re proud to say that using MakeShift results in a 50% reduction in time to build a schedule and an 83% reduction in time to fill shifts.

Features:

Available Shifts Access — Your employees can readily view available shifts when they want to pick up an extra shift.

Rotation-Based Scheduling — Easily create a rotating shift schedule to evenly distribute the workload.

Employee Shift Exchanges — Your staff can easily swap shifts, and you can approve those requests on the go.

Time Off / Leave Management — Managing and approving time off requests is a breeze on mobile or the web.

Overtime alerts — Fatigue management rules and alerts help prevent employee burnout.

Team communication — Send all-staff announcements and receive push notifications when an employee clocks in on their phone.

Payroll Integration — MakeShift integrates with leading HR and payroll systems like SAP® SuccessFactors® and ADP to offer an intuitive scheduling solution that automatically syncs schedules and timesheets. They also offer a public API that allows integration to a vast number of systems.

Mobile app for staff and managers — Our app provides on-the-go flexibility when accessing and managing the schedule.

Skills-based scheduling — Ensure you have the most highly skilled employees in the right place and time.

Pricing:

Starting from $2.75 /user/month (Free Trial)

Best For:

Healthcare, hospitality, recreation, retail, or any other fast-paced industry

Customer Review:

“It takes the thinking out of staffing; our company has variable amounts of staffing needs between 1-14 days in advance at different locations. Makeshift enables us to publish availability, and our staff members take care of the rest!” — Matthew A.

2. Connecteam

Connecteam is a workforce management app that allows managers to put their business processes on autopilot and focus on business growth while also freeing up employees to be more flexible.