If you’re a business owner or manager of a successful business, whether you have four employees or twenty-four, you know the importance of scheduling. It can be said with full confidence that scheduling is one of the, possibly even the most important part of the employee-employer relationship. If you want to keep things running smoothly and effortlessly, avoid conflict and have a happy team of workers, you want that schedule to be a tightly run ship with no errors or room for problems.
Photo Credit: Bich Tran
However, in this day and age, when literally everyone is run off their feet busy, who has time to sit down and spend a huge block of time handwriting a schedule? Not to mention that doing a schedule by hand, especially if you have a large team of employees, is difficult. Keeping up with various people’s needs, preferences, requests, allotted hours, budget, etc can be really tough. The margin for error is high if you aren’t careful, and sometimes even when you are. Problems can arise for even the most diligent schedule maker.
That’s why more and more businesses of all types are utilizing work scheduling software and apps. The number of people converting over to apps especially is on the rise big time. It’s just so much easier for those who have super busy schedules to open up an app and with a few quick swipes and touches of the screen, the schedule for the week is done! Some apps make things especially easy by also streamlining with appointments, contact lists for promotion and marketing, tasks the employees need to do, inventory, and more. You’re basically getting a PA or office assistant right on your phone with some of these scheduling apps. And best of all, so many of them are super affordable, or even free!
Read about what we think are the best work schedule apps in 2020 below:
Sling
Sling is one of the most popular work schedule apps on the market, and for good reason. Sling takes all the guesswork out of scheduling, providing you with a synced, streamlined schedule that coincides with your employees’ various needs and preferences, while coordinating appointments, providing you with data on budget, overages, requests for time off, and more. Sling will send you and your employees alerts when someone is double booked, when an employee is late or getting too much overtime, will keep up with vacation requests and sick days, and can even coordinate your various meetings and appointments. Employees can log in and submit their own information and requests, and even check to see how their attendance stacks up over a period of time. The interface is bright, clean and simple, easy to read and easy to use. Check your scheduling and make changes from your computer, your phone or laptop, from your office, house or even your car. It goes wherever you go, always keeping the schedule on the point so you can focus on your job.
WorkTime
Worktime is an app that provides scheduling for the most simple working person. If you’re not interested in all the bells and whistles, and just want a straightforward app with a clean, simplistic look that you can check out at a glance, WorkTime is for you. It takes input data and makes a coherent, efficient schedule that you and your employees can look at quickly and move on with your day. It’s easy, functional interface has made it very popular.
WhenIWork
The WhenIWork app is for the entire team, but designed with the employee in mind. It’s not only a scheduling app, but a clock app, allowing users to sign in in real time to check out their hours, see when their break is, make sure they aren’t late or clocking too much overtime, and more. They can track their own attendance and performance via the app, and it’ll help you keep up with who is working when.
Shiftboard
The Shiftboard app handles scheduling, but its main focus is on shift changes. Users log into the app to submit shift-trade requests, to check for opportunities to get more hours, and to see if they’ve gotten overtime. The app is easy to update, easy to read and understand and allows employees and employers alike to interact on the adaptable format.
Shifty
Shifty is one of the easiest to use scheduling apps out there. With its simple and unique drag and drop interface, you can change around an entire schedule with the swipe of your finger. You can also use this app to manage your staff, assign tasks and duties, send quick messages, make changes to hours, and more.
Google Calendar/Docs/Excel
While not technically an app to begin with (though you can now download app versions on your phone that sync up with the computer version), there’s a lot to be said for the old standby; the cloud. Using Google to coordinate with employees for scheduling is an easy and streamlined way for everyone to stay on the same page (literally). Everyone can log in from their own computer or device, make changes, track changes, and talk to each other about any conflicts. It is easy to use, changes are automatically saved, and there’s no cost involved. Plus: literally everybody knows how to use it.
Snap Schedule
If your business often has extra hours up for grabs, Snap Schedule might be the app for you. In addition to scheduling, keeping track of availability and making appointments, Snap Schedule allows employees to bid on extra hours, put in requests for more time, and more. This saves the employer time they might have otherwise spent meeting with employees to offer more hours or trying to divide overtime between competing employees.
Calendly
Calendly is a cool app that appears in a calendar format, focusing on each individual employee and their available hours and time worked. The colorful interface allows you to single out each employee one by one to check availability and schedule them for hours. It also allows requests for time off or overtime, alerts you of conflicts and helps you plan meetings, conferences and events.
Doodle
Doodle is similar to other work scheduling apps in that it lets employees request time off or overtime, helps avoid scheduling conflicts and keeps up with appointments. It goes further in that it allows employers to invite employees to not only pick up shifts, but to other events such as meetings, conferences, and other events, and also lets you put up polls to let your workers anonymously weigh in on their preferences. You can then share the results of these polls and the schedules with the entire team, quickly and easily.
These are literally just a few of the many, many work scheduling apps that are out there. Depending on the size of your company and your unique preferences, there’s bound to be one scheduling app that is just perfect for you and your team. Sling is our favorite, because of it’s colorful interface, easy to use functionality and wide variety of features, but find the one that’s right for you!
More and more people are delegating these pesky scheduling duties to apps and pairing down the time they spend trying to coordinate schedules. It only makes sense. Not only are you saving yourself tons of time, but you’re taking your employees needs and preferences into account like never before, reducing the margin for error and conflict, and improving productivity across the board. It’s a win-win situation! Now go download that app!
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