The laws of scheduling people

For companies that need to schedule people, there are four laws that must be followed:

1. the right person
2. with the right skills
3. in the right job
4. at the right time

While this seems obvious, not many organizations follow this law. And its not because they haven’t tried… until recently, this challenge has been dealt with using manual processes.  But with the latest round of workforce managment applications, organizations around the world have the chance to stand up to these time-tested laws.

When companies schedule the right person with the right skills in the right job, at the right time, magical things happen. Labor costs go down, the customer experience goes up and sometimes employee satisfaction and morale go up.  Also, managers have more time to be on the selling floor. When you have more people on the selling floor and an increased customer experience, you can expect a corresponding uptick in revenues.

All in all, it would appear that a well executed workforce management solution with robust employee scheduling is a win-win scenario.  This begs the question though… why are so few companies doing this?