Increase efficiency and sales with retail employee scheduling

Retail scheduling software is a set of tools that managers can use in the process of creating shifts and organizing employees to work specific hours, in specific jobs, and on specific tasks.

Some of the more advanced scheduling apps come with tools that allow managers and employees to:

• Schedule complicated shifts (for one to 100+ employees)
• Manage multiple locations
• Assign, track, and manage task
• Track time for a specific task as well as a full day of work
• Control labor costs
• Keep a tight rein on overtime
• Access information through the cloud
• Establish clock-in/clock-out rules
• Make the most of geofencing
• Communicate with one employee, a group, or everyone on the team

The Sling app incorporates all of these features (and more) into one powerful solution that can help busy managers keep their retail teams organized, efficient, and effective.

One way to streamline the scheduling process is to use software to build each shift around one or two anchor employees before adding other employees around them.

Those anchor team members will typically have the experience and skills necessary to provide a foundation upon which the other employees you assign to that shift can learn and work.

To make this process easier, use the retail scheduling software to set eligibility requirements for the first one or two spots on each shift and then fill in those spots for the entire week before organizing the rest of your team in the remaining openings.

Another way to streamline the scheduling process is to allow your employees to self-schedule or bid for open shifts with Sling’s cloud-based group access.

To help ensure you have the right mix of employees working each shift, consider adding an anchor employee or two to the schedule before opening things up to everyone else.

With the right tools, the process of scheduling can actually help you control — and even reduce — labor costs throughout your retail business.

The Sling app, for example, gives you the option to set a labor budget for your operation and then shows you what each shift will cost as you schedule. The software will even notify you when your schedule approaches or exceeds the budget you’ve set.

With these features in place, you won’t have to guess or spend extra time trying endless combinations of employees in an attempt to stay within your labor budget.

Digital time clocks — those built into workforce management apps like Sling — provide numerous benefits for managers and employees alike.

Sling, for example, turns any phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop into a time-tracking station. With Sling in place, managers have the flexibility to allow team members to clock in at a single point of entry or on their own device.

Everyone will have the ability to start and stop their time — for the full workday or an assigned task — on any device with a single click or tap, regardless of where they’re working.

Sling’s digital time clock also allows managers to import their employees’ work hours into one of many reports and even integrate the time-tracking data into other common programs to make workforce management and payroll as streamlined as possible.

Advanced retail scheduling software, like Sling, can help you manage multiple locations with tools that make it possible to:

• Separate schedules by location
• Filter schedules to find information quickly
• Communicate with one person, a specific group of people, or everyone regardless of their location
• Assign tasks and monitor employee progress
• Create reports by location or region to gain valuable insight into your operation
• Manage payroll
• Control labor costs

With Sling, you can even set up geofences so employees can’t clock in until they’re inside the boundaries of the location they’re assigned to work. You can use those same geofences to automatically stop tracking time when an employee moves outside the border.

Whether you manage a retail team of 10 in a single location or a team of 100+ across multiple locations, Sling can help you keep everything running efficiently.

Sling’s powerful workforce management tools make it easy to:

• Build effective schedules in less time
• Organize shift trade request
• Allow your employees to sign up for available shifts
• Manage time off
• Coordinate availability
• Track employee hours (on both stationary and mobile devices)
• Reduce absenteeism
• Minimize late arrivals
• Control labor costs
• And much more

Right now, you can get all of the essentials to help you organize and optimize your workforce and handle internal communication for teams of up to 50 for free with just one click.