5 Employee Schedule Mistakes Every Beginning Business Owner Makes

Your restaurant is packed and you’ve only got one waitress on duty. She’s growing frantic, you’ve got customers complaining about waiting too long for their food, and some people are even walking out. How could you have avoided this nightmare?

By coming up with a proper employee shift schedule. Forgetting to account for a shift is a rookie mistake that many new business owners make. If you do it too often than not only will patrons be annoyed but you may lose valuable employees as well.  

To help you avoid disasters like this, here are a few scheduling mistakes that are easy to make and how you can avoid them.

1. Giving Special Treatment on Accident

We know, you like to reward hardworking employees. It seems like a good idea to do this in the form of giving them better shifts. If you do this too often then it won’t go unnoticed from your other employees. 

When they see other workers getting special treatment like this, they will grow angry and feel underappreciated. They may even start to take their anger out on the very employee that you’re trying to reward.  

2. Ignoring Time Off Requests 

Forgetting an employee’s time off request once because you lost it is okay as long as you fix the issue. If you keep doing it every time they ask for time off though they will grow frustrated. 

To avoid requests getting lost, create a book and keep it in a place that’s easy for your employees to access. Always check the book when you’re making the schedule and give them their time off if you can. 

3. Relying Too Much on Your Software 

Using shift planning software is a great way to get your schedule made quickly and get it out on the floor for your workers to see. The problem is that it’s easy to make mistakes when using the software if you don’t take the time to learn it. 

Make sure you read up on the program that you’re using and be ready to alter your schedule on a whim if something comes up. 

4. Not Letting Your Business Dictate the Schedule

You don’t want to only have one employee around during your busiest time of the day. Not only will that poor employee get overwhelmed but your customers will get angry. 

So, learn fast when your busy and slow times are so you can plan accordingly. This will help you avoid burned-out employees and overtime. 

5. Forgetting to Schedule a Shift 

When you get busy it can be easy to forget to schedule a shift. If you forget then you’ll be faced with a shift window being empty. You may double-shift on accident too. 

Make sure that you read over your schedule multiple times before you put it out. This way you can spot mistakes and fix them before they become a problem.  

Employee Shift Schedule Mistakes You Should Stop Making 

One of the worst things that you can do as a small business owner is to mess up the employee shift schedule. It can lead to angry employees and frustrated customers. Use these tips so you can avoid the most common schedule mistakes and keep your business running like a well-oiled machine. 

Scheduling isn’t the only aspect of being a business owner that you have to worry about. Visit our blog daily for more advice like what you read here.