5 Tips For Multi-Location Employee Scheduling

Managers can find it daunting to manage employee schedules across multiple locations. They must adequately staff each site while considering employee preferences, availability, and labor laws.

As companies expand, coordinating schedules becomes increasingly complex, making it challenging to maintain seamless operations. Implementing practical strategies can streamline multi-location employee scheduling, reducing stress and boosting productivity.

The guide will discuss five tips that will help you effectively manage employee schedules across multiple locations.

Key takeaways

• Multi-location scheduling ensures the right people are in the right place across facilities.
• Common challenges include staffing, tracking schedules, communication, and conflicts.
• Efficient scheduling reduces gaps and improves satisfaction, morale, and consistency.
• Centralize scheduling, use geofencing, communicate, plan, and automate to be more accurate and efficient.
• When I Work offers geofencing, automation, and communication features for streamlining.

Table of contents

• What is multi-location employee scheduling?
• How does multi-location scheduling work?
• Common challenges of multi-location employee scheduling
• Importance of efficiently scheduling your staff across facilities
• 5 tips for multi-location employee scheduling

What is multi-location employee scheduling?

Multi-location employee scheduling is creating and managing work schedules for employees across multiple facilities or locations. It involves coordinating staffing needs, employee availability, and scheduling requirements for various sites. The approach simplifies assigning shifts, ensuring the right people are in the right place to handle tasks effectively.

Employee scheduling in multiple locations helps maintain consistency in scheduling practices, optimize staffing levels, and ensure compliance with local labor laws. Central scheduling teams and regional managers must coordinate schedules that meet business needs, employee preferences, and regulatory requirements.

What types of organizations require multi-location scheduling?

Retail chains, healthcare networks, hospitality groups, and service providers must schedule employees across multiple geographical locations or facilities. However, multi-location scheduling is not limited to large enterprises. 

It’s also useful for small and medium businesses with multiple locations or remote teams. Retail, healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing, logistics, and professional services with distributed workforces are common industries that require this type of scheduling.

How does multi-location scheduling work?

Multi-location employee scheduling involves coordination between a central scheduling team and managers or supervisors at each location. The process considers employee availability, preferences, qualifications, and local labor regulations to determine appropriate staffing levels. 

Here’s how multi-location scheduling typically works:

• Staffing needs assessment: The scheduling team collaborates with location managers to determine the staffing requirements at each site based on customer demand, operational hours, and workload.
• Employee data collection: Relevant information about employees, including their availability, skill sets, certifications, and shift preferences, is gathered from all locations and consolidated into a centralized system.
• Schedule creation: Using workforce management or scheduling software, the scheduling team creates tentative schedules that meet each location’s staffing needs while adhering to labor laws, union rules (if applicable), and employee preferences.
• Coordination and approval: The proposed schedules are shared with location managers for review and approval, ensuring that they address site-specific requirements and constraints
• Schedule distribution: Once finalized, managers disseminate schedules to employees across all locations, often through online portals, mobile apps, or physical postings.
• Monitoring and adjustments: The scheduling team continuously monitors attendance, staffing levels, and any necessary schedule changes due to unforeseen circumstances, making adjustments to maintain operational continuity.

Common challenges of multi-location employee scheduling

Managing multi-location employee scheduling can significantly impact operational efficiency and employee satisfaction. Some of the most common hurdles organizations face when dealing with multi-location scheduling include:

Adequately staffing each location

Maintaining appropriate staffing levels at each location is a major challenge in multi-location scheduling. Understaffing leads to poor customer service, employee burnout, and decreased productivity, while overstaffing results in unnecessary labor costs and inefficient resource allocation. 

Finding the right balance requires analyzing customer demand patterns, operational hours, and anticipated workloads for each site. Flexible self scheduling can help optimize staffing levels based on these factors.

Tracking multiple schedules at the same time

Organizations with multiple facilities may struggle to track individual employee availability, shift preferences, and unique location requirements across various schedules. 

Conflicting schedules or errors can disrupt operations and lower employee satisfaction. Automatic scheduling tools can help coordinate and manage multiple schedules simultaneously, reducing the risk of conflicts and mistakes.

Making sure that employees know where they’re needed

Effective communication ensures employees know their assigned locations and shifts in multi-location scheduling. Failing to communicate schedules clearly and promptly leads to confusion, absenteeism, and understaffing. 

When employees rotate between locations, providing clear and timely shift schedule information prevents misunderstandings.

Scheduling conflicts

Multiple locations and varying staffing needs can lead to scheduling conflicts. During peak hours at certain locations, an employee may be unavailable due to high demand for their expertise or rotating schedules. Resolving such conflicts while maintaining fair and equitable schedules across all locations can be complicated.

Communication issues between facilities

Multi-location scheduling requires effective communication and collaboration between the central scheduling team and on-site managers or supervisors. 

Communication breakdowns can cause misalignment in staffing requirements, misunderstandings about local labor laws, and delays in addressing scheduling issues.

Importance of efficiently scheduling your staff across facilities

Maintaining an effective work environment requires precise multi-location scheduling. Organizations can benefit from implementing effective scheduling practices across all facilities.

Reduce coverage gaps

Coordination of staffing levels and schedules across locations minimizes the risk of coverage gaps where certain facilities are understaffed or overstaffed. Coverage gaps can lead to operational disruptions, longer customer wait times, and decreased productivity.

Efficient scheduling helps allocate the right number of employees with the necessary skills to each location, preventing such gaps and ensuring smooth operations.

Improve client satisfaction

Customer loyalty and a positive brand reputation depend on consistent service quality. Efficient multi-location scheduling helps ensure each facility has the appropriate staffing levels to meet customer demands, reducing wait times and enhancing the overall customer experience.

Satisfied clients are 2.4 times more likely to return and recommend the business to others, positively impacting revenue and growth. 

Increase employee morale and productivity

Effective scheduling practices can significantly contribute to employee morale and productivity. When schedules are well-organized, employees feel valued and respected, as management considers their schedule preferences and availability.

Fair distribution of shifts and workloads across locations can also help prevent burnout and foster a sense of equity among staff. Engaged and satisfied employees are more likely to provide better service and contribute to the organization’s success.

Provide consistent service across locations

Multi-location businesses often strive to maintain consistent service standards and quality across all their facilities. Efficient scheduling plays a vital role in achieving this goal by ensuring that each location has the necessary staffing levels with the required skills and expertise. 

Consistent service delivery helps reinforce the brand’s reputation and fosters customer loyalty, regardless of the specific location they visit.

5 tips for multi-location employee scheduling

Efficient multi-location scheduling requires a structured approach and the adoption of best practices. Following these tips, organizations can streamline their scheduling processes, improve operational efficiency, and enhance employee satisfaction.

1. Centralize your scheduling onto one platform

A unified system can better coordinate, visualize, and control staffing levels, employee availability, and shift assignments in multi-location scheduling. 

Managers can easily track and adjust schedules by consolidating scheduling data on a single platform, which should integrate with payroll software for seamless operations. Centralized scheduling systems accessible to all employees improve productivity by 20% and reduce scheduling errors by 30%.

2. Use a geofencing time clock

GPS technology creates virtual boundaries around each facility, allowing employees to clock in and out only within those boundaries when using geofencing time clocks. 

Accurately capturing employee hours and locations helps employers manage labor costs, ensure fair compensation, and comply with labor laws. Set up a geofence around each work site so employees must be present to start and end their shifts using the time clock.

3. Maintain an open line of communication between facilities

Regular check-ins or meetings with on-site managers help discuss staffing needs, address scheduling conflicts, and share updates or changes in multi-location scheduling. 

Use a consistent communication tool, such as a mobile app with team messaging capabilities, across all sites to ensure employees receive the necessary information instantly. The app should allow messaging between employees and management and send notifications, SMS messages, and emails.

4. Plan shifts a few weeks in advance

Managers should plan employee shifts several weeks in advance to minimize last-minute changes and ensure adequate staffing. It allows for better coordination between locations, accommodates employee preferences and availability, and provides ample time for adjustments if necessary.

Advanced planning also enables employees to manage their personal commitments and work-life balance better, leading to increased job satisfaction and productivity.

5. Automate the process where possible

Automating multiple-location scheduling can significantly reduce administrative burden. Look for scheduling software that offers features like automatic shift assignments based on predefined rules, employee availability tracking, and schedule optimization algorithms.

The When I Work scheduling platform offers various automation features, including auto-scheduling based on business rules, shift swapping, and schedule publishing, saving managers valuable time and effort.

Streamline your multi-location scheduling with When I Work

The right tools and strategies can make multi-location employee scheduling easier and more efficient. Employee scheduling software like When I Work offers geofencing and automated scheduling features, enabling you to seamlessly coordinate your workforce across facilities.

When I Work streamlines your entire scheduling process, improving communication and operational efficiency when dealing with multi-location scheduling challenges. Experience the benefits firsthand by signing up for a free 14-day trial of When I Work today.