Workforce management: shift scheduling software at a glance

What workforce management does

Staffing demand, qualifications, availability and working-time rules are turned into a roster or shift plan – built manually by drag and drop, from templates or generated automatically. Employees see their assignments in an app, submit preferences, swap shifts and pick up open ones. Changes reach those affected by notification rather than via the notice board.

More advanced products forecast demand from revenue, order volume or footfall and check plans against rest periods, maximum working hours and collective agreements. The category also includes dispatching for staffing agencies and desk booking for hybrid offices.

What to look for in scheduling software

The more complex the operation and its rules, the more the planning logic matters. These criteria help when comparing:

• Planning depth: simple shift plans, or demand forecasting, auto-scheduling and qualification matching?
• Rules: support for statutory working-time rules, collective agreements and works agreements, with warnings when they are breached.
• Sector and size: suitability for several sites, changing teams and temporary staff.
• Interfaces: transfer of planned and worked hours to time management and payroll, connections to point-of-sale or order systems.
• Rollout: mobile use, training effort, support, and pricing per employee or per site.

Workforce Management, Time Management or Frontline Worker?

Planning determines who should work when; Time Management records what was actually worked. The two categories overlap, and many products cover both. Leave & Absence supplies holiday and sickness as inputs. Solutions under Frontline Worker mainly serve communication with the workforce.