For businesses that have more part-time staff than full-time employees, it can be a real challenge to manage all of the many different variables that go along with the staffing. From scheduling to time off to benefits, it can be considerably more challenging to manage employees. Fortunately, there are several things you can do to solve the problems and difficulties associated with handling a business that operates primarily with part-time employees.
A Robust Time and Attendance System
One of the best starting places is ensuring that your time and attendance software is easy to use and something that your employees will remember to use when they arrive and leave. By having your system readily available online, you have more control over the schedule and tracking hours. This can give you an easy way to analyze how each employee is doing in terms of arrival and departure. Those who are willing to put in the additional time or pick up hours can be provided better positions.
Automatic Scheduling Software
One of the most trying and time-consuming aspects of managing a large staff of part-time employees is how long it can take to make a schedule. By having a system where employees can enter their available time, holidays, request days off, and schedule appointments, you can spend less trying to work around all of the tweaks and requests. The software can create an optimal schedule based on requests by the staff. This can ensure that all requests and employee scheduling conflicts are taken into account as much as possible.
Scheduling is vital to keeping employees satisfied with the work. You want to keep your top performers, which means ensuring that their requests and restrictions are honored as much as possible. The better an employee feels about being able to keep from having scheduling conflicts, the more likely they are to remain with the company.
Ease of Benefits
There are many regulations, from local to state to federal, that can make it difficult to employees to know what their benefits are. A robust system can help you better relay benefit information, let employees know when they qualify for certain benefits, and things they could do to gain benefits later. By making this sort of information readily available online, you free up your own time as well. While you should still have HR personnel available to answer questions, a dedicated system can handle the majority of questions so that HR can focus on hiring and other aspects of personnel management.
Individual Attention and Reviews
Employee reviews are important for every business, even if reviews are not terribly popular. A great system helps you more quickly review employee performance, something that is considerably more difficult to do with a business that has more part-time employees. You can also use these data points to help employees see where they can improve their performance.
As much as employees may complain about reviews, everyone likes to get feedback on their performance so they know where they stand. Evaluations give your part-time employees a greater sense of importance. Too many businesses ignore part-time staff, which tells those employees that they are not important enough to the company to get feedback on their performance. You can see an increase in productivity and motivation by giving your part-time employees a chance to discuss how they have performed, what they can improve, and what they have done better than other employees. It is also a great chance for them to discuss the problems they have and where you can assist them.
