Efficient and effective team scheduling management is vital for ensuring the success of any construction project. It can be a complex task for project managers and site managers. In this article, we will guide you through the 5 essential steps in order to help you successfully manage the working hours and schedules of field workers.
These steps will enable you to optimize your team management, maximize team efficiency and minimize delays and additional costs for your company.
Employee scheduling management in companies
Managing employee schedules is a key element within a company’s time and activity management. It is a task that needs to be well managed for any business seeking to achieve its objectives within the shortest timescales.
Implementing an efficient schedule enables a company to maximize its time and resources, minimize scheduling conflicts and monitor progress for possible delays.
To achieve this, businesses often use tools such as monthly, weekly or even daily schedules, depending on the complexity of the project.
A monthly schedule can help to visualize the large phases, chronology of tasks and general time periods, while a weekly schedule enables closer monitoring of the jobs that need to be completed each week. A daily schedule makes it easier to manage an employee’s day-to-day priorities and adjust tasks according to the project progress.
Companies are increasingly turning to professional scheduling software in order to organize both teams and jobs.
Managing team work schedules in the construction industry: the difficulties
The management of team work schedules in the construction sector is often a source of difficulties. In fact, when many employees are working on a construction project, it is vital to manage each individual’s schedule in order to minimize down time and avoid clashes. Furthermore, a manager must take into account the specific constraints of each project (duration, number of people required, availability, etc.).
In addition, the use of external labor is common practice in the construction industry. Managing this sub-contracted or temporary workforce makes organizing work schedules more complex in the sector. As well as the company’s own employees, it is crucial to be able to see the availability of all these workers, as well as be able to manage and track their work time in detail.
Another factor to take into account is the significant variability of working hours in the building trades. It is not uncommon to work overtime! Or even be required to work on-call shifts, which can be compensated with time off in lieu. Hence, scheduling management necessitates incorporating these rest periods, ensuring fair rotation between workers, taking into account unexpected absence for bad weather… In short, being capable of managing great complexity in arranging shifts and schedules.
Let’s review together the 5 steps to follow in order to ensure efficient and effective management of team schedules in the construction sector.
The 5 steps for successful management of staff scheduling for worksites
Let’s go through the 5 key steps to successful management of your worksite team scheduling: define your objectives, define the requirements by project, plan absences, allocate staff and lastly, share the schedule with teams.
1. Define the objectives and budgets allocated to each project
The first step towards creating a work schedule for a team is to clearly define the team’s objectives and the budget allocated to achieve these objectives.
The established objectives must be aligned with the strategic goals of the company, and the allocated budget must be sufficient to enable these objectives to be achieved.
Regarding the workforce, labor costs are generally stated in work hours (or days). Defining these labor budgets by task is essential to enable responsive financial monitoring and identification of risks of budget overruns before they occur.
2. Identify and communicate the staffing requirements for each project
The second step is to identify and detail the staffing requirements for each project for the upcoming period. Planning requirements can be done for the coming days, weeks or even months.
In addition to the time period in question (from Monday morning to Tuesday evening, all week…), it is important to specify the type of personnel required: the trade of course, but also the category of worker (temporary, intern, sub-contractor…), the qualifications, required accreditations, etc.
All this information must be transmitted from the field to managers. Without a suitable tool, this is not always an easy task.
Collaborative scheduling tools, such as Traxxeo’s Resource Planning, enable works managers to specify the requirements of each project directly in the scheduling tool where workers will be allocated.
3. Create the staffing schedule of absence and leave
To define the working hours, it is vital to have an up-to-date view of employee availability. An essential step is therefore to create a schedule of absences, including leave requests, planned training, sickness absence, public holidays, etc.
Collecting and centralizing this information can become complex without a suitable solution. Traxxeo’s Absence Planning enables you to manage the planning of absences directly in the scheduling tool. This means you will know exactly who is available at all times and be able to plan projects by taking absence and leave into account.
4. Allocate team members across sites and projects
Once the needs have been identified and absence has been planned, it is then time to allocate team members across the various sites and projects. To do this, you need to take into account their skills and availability, as well as any other constraints already specified (does the worker have a certain accreditation? Are they qualified to use a certain machine? Etc.).
Without a suitable tool, this stage can become a real headache. In effect, you need to juggle the absence and leave schedule, together with the competency framework, different staff registers, etc.
Traxxeo’s Resource Planning solution enables this stage to be significantly simplified: in one click, you can filter staff who meet the specified requirement and are available for the stated period! A major time saving in your planning process, which also enables you to eliminate any scheduling conflicts.
Once the schedule has been created, it is important to share it with team members. Communication with teams is vital to give them sufficient time to review it and organize themselves accordingly for their shifts. It is also important to be sure that they are happy with their allocations and hours.
How to schedule teams: tools for worksite team scheduling
Scheduling staff for projects and sites is critical to ensuring smooth progress of the works. To do this, there are many tools available, in particular scheduling software and human resource management software. These tools provide the ability to manage team scheduling, staff leave and absence.
1. Excel templates, a free tool but with limited capacity for organizing employee schedules
Excel templates are a free tool that are easy to use to create a team schedule. However, this tool has limits, due to its lack of functionality and complexity.
Once larger teams are involved, it is no longer suitable. Furthermore, it cannot be shared in real time and it is difficult to modify the schedule once it has been created.
2. Generic team scheduling software, tools that are not suited to site teams
Generic team scheduling software are tools that enable managers to manage the working hours and schedules of team members. They can be useful for businesses that do not have complex time management requirements.
However, as their name indicates, they are designed for traditional team management, and are not suitable for the specific characteristics and requirements of construction site teams, who need to be allocated across a number of sites.
Managing the various trades, skills, accreditations and training is another important element in the management of teams in the construction sector. Generic software solutions do not provide the ability to meet these needs effectively.
Due to the complexity of the construction industry, the functionalities of generic software have turned out to be too limited.
3. Traxxeo’s suite of software solutions, designed solely for the construction sector to enable efficient and effective team scheduling
Traxxeo is a suite of software solutions designed specifically for managing staff in the construction industry.
Traxxeo’s Resource planning is a team scheduling software solution created for the construction sector and related industries. It enables companies in these sectors to easily, effectively and efficiently plan the work and time of their staff, all within a simple and intuitive web interface.
The platform enables you to schedule your internal employees as well as your interims and sub-contractors within a single user-friendly tool and in just a few clicks.
Managing skills, allocating staff across different projects, filtering by availability, staff category, employer… discover a flexible scheduling solution that is perfectly suited to your needs.
Schedule your worksite teams with ease in a customized scheduling app
