According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), productivity losses linked to absenteeism cost U.S. employers $225.8 billion annually, or $1,685 per employee. For your hourly workforce, unscheduled absenteeism costs roughly $3,600 per year, per worker.
Complex scheduling environments that require labor 24 hours a day, 7 days a week run on the hope that positions are never understaffed. How confident are you that your current workforce management strategies achieve this?
What Causes Schedule Gaps
Scheduling gaps happen when shifts are left unfilled, leaving operations understaffed. Understanding the root causes makes it easier to address them proactively. Common reasons include:
- Unexpected Absences: Employees may call out sick, face personal emergencies, or take unplanned time off. Even a single absence can create a ripple effect across the schedule.
- Seasonal Demand Fluctuations: Certain times of year—like holidays or product launches—can increase staffing needs. If schedules aren’t adjusted ahead of time, gaps are inevitable.
- Inefficient Scheduling Processes: Manual scheduling, lack of visibility into employee availability, or last-minute changes can all result in unfilled shifts.
Scheduling gaps can disrupt workflow, increase stress for managers, and negatively impact team morale. Identifying the causes is the first step toward effective solutions.
Strategies to Fill Schedule Gaps
Filling gaps in your schedule doesn’t have to be chaotic. With a little strategy, you can keep the schedule tight without turning every day into a fire drill:
- Cross-train employees. When workers can jump between roles, one absence doesn’t stop the whole machine. Versatility is your secret weapon.
- Offer shift swapping. Giving employees some control over their schedules—like trading shifts—keeps gaps from becoming crises.
- Leverage technology. Scheduling software can automatically match available employees to open shifts, saving hours of back-and-forth emails or calls.
- Keep a small backup team. Part-time, on-call, or floating employees can cover last-minute gaps without exhausting your core staff.
When you combine flexibility, tools, and a little foresight, filling scheduling gaps becomes less stressful and more routine. It’s like turning a problem into just another part of the workflow.
Prevent Scheduling Gaps Before They Happen
Absences happen, and they can’t always be planned. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t plan for them.
When an employee is unexpectedly sick or simply a no-show, you need to find someone to replace them, and quickly—without an automated vacancy-filling tool, however, the process is anything but.
You find yourself wasting time flipping through Rolodexes and dialing numbers until your fingers are sore. While you are busy leaving voicemails, you may not be taking into account the person’s ability or qualifications to fill that shift; the more contacts you go through, the less mindful you may become. If you cannot find someone to cover the shift, other employees may need to be paid overtime to get all the necessary work done and meet deadlines.
Here’s what the process would look like had you used Indeavor Backfill, a module that integrates seamlessly within our automated employee scheduling system. The system will automatically call or text your contacts on a pre-configured call-out list, sequentially or all at once, to solve scheduling vacancies for you. All you need to do is click a few buttons to initiate the automated reach-out.
Now, you can focus on business-driving initiatives instead of leaving voicemails.
Ensure Shift Compliance with Audits
There are repercussions to asking just about anyone who picks up the phone to cover a position that they aren’t qualified—or allowed—to fill. Without automation, this can happen very easily. Especially if you’re just looking at papers and spreadsheets with a list of names and phone numbers and no certifications associated with them.
For one, you risk slowing down (or sometimes even endangering) the rest of the team when an unskilled person fills in for a job that requires certain credentials. For another, you risk employee grievances and dreaded fines that not only hurt the organization’s wallet, but also its credibility.
With Indeavor Backfill, you ensure that the system will call only qualified employees to fill in any scheduling gaps. What’s more, each action is auto-logged for future traceability and auditing, allowing you to easily settle grievances with a centralized system of record.
Scheduling That Puts Employees First
You can improve both process efficiencies and employee satisfaction.
Rather than having a sick employee or someone dealing with a personal emergency feel pressured into finding their replacement, the automated call-out list can be initiated in seconds by the manager or scheduler. Now a once aggravating process has never been easier!
You’ll also find that you’re empowering employees because you’re providing them more flexibility to approve or deny that automated call or text. It eliminates the discomfort of having to say “no” directly, whether to their coworker or management.
Since Indeavor announced an open shift opportunity, no one feels directly called out and pressured to say “yes” to someone asking them if they can fill in. On the flip side, all qualified and available employees have the opportunity to fill in for a shift, meaning that someone who isn’t close to or doesn’t know the absent person gets an equal chance of being asked to cover.
There’s no better way to ensure scheduling fairness.
Fill Vacancies With Indeavor Backfill
You can fill a schedule vacancy in minutes with Indeavor Backfill. Easily call or text qualified employees to meet any need based on your pre-set compliance rules. Integrate with your human capital management and enterprise resource planning systems to create a robust platform that provides you with real-time employee data.
Click here to request a demo, and we’ll show you how it works!
