Schedule Template — Advantages and Disadvantages of Flexible Work Schedules
Flexible scheduling, also known as flex time is a work schedule structure that makes it possible for employees to work based on their private responsibilities such as family and other responsibilities conveniently.
While it is true that flexible scheduling comes with a lot of benefits, a business can suffer if an employer doesn’t implement flexible scheduling properly. Fortunately, with the right scheduling tools, such as a schedule template or an employee schedule template, it is possible to create flexible schedules that actually work in favor of both parties.
Effective flexible scheduling may mean compressing 40 hours into 3 or 4 days, it could also mean starting and ending work at different times, or it could mean working from home. Whatever the case, the key lies in implementing a relevant policy and making sure employees understand it to the letter.
In addition to using an employee schedule template, which can either be built from scratch or downloaded from the web and adjusted accordingly, to make scheduling easier there are other ways to make flexible schedules more effective and they include the following:
· Proper planning
· creating trial runs
· making communication a top priority
· understanding that not everyone can makes a great flex worker
· training managers to manage flex employees
Advantages: —
Some of the advantages of flexible work schedules include being able to hold on to a dependable workforce, reducing absenteeism, increasing productivity and commitments, benefiting from a wide talent pool, and so on.
However, such benefits will not come overnight. It takes a lot of trust, practice, commitment, and effort for both employee and employers to enjoy the benefits. For starters, it will take excellent managerial skills to create a flexible schedule that works. This is where scheduling tools come in handy. The faster a manager makes his or her schedules, the more time he or she has to focus on more pressing issues.
A schedule template, which can either be downloaded as a word schedule template or an excel schedule template has quickly grown into one of the most preferred scheduling tools among modern managers because of its ability to free up a lot of time while at the same time allowing the templates to be imported to scheduling software for easier and more effective schedule distribution.
Disadvantages: —
Even with the most relevant word schedule template or excel schedule template, or with the best scheduling software in the market today, flexible work schedules, just like other work schedules, still carry a number of disadvantages. For starters, team work and communications gets disrupted when everyone works a schedule according to his or her preferences. This kind of scheduling is also likely to trigger workplace conflicts when some shift preferences get rejected by management.
