As the business world evolves, more companies are moving away from traditional office space to more inclusive, collaborative work environments. The article, In New Office Designs, Room to Roam and to Think from an issue of The New York Times last month describes this growing trend in office design. We see this trend paralleled by changes we’ve noticed over the past handful of years with regard to flexibility in staff scheduling and overall workforce management. In fact, we’ve coined a term for it – it’s what we call “bottoms-up scheduling”.
Shiftboard has become a leader in collaborative and interactive workforce scheduling – we provide tools to maximise both operational efficiencies as well as workforce satisfaction. Today more than ever, we strongly encourage providing tools for flexibility and workforce interaction where ever it saves time, makes sense, and promotes better lifestyles. Not surprisingly, often, this kind of change can take courage on the part of management.
So, much in the same way that collaborative work spaces can aide productivity, creativity, and overall happiness within an organization, over our years in business it’s clear to us that letting employees more or less schedule themselves and to work with their colleagues to mitigate time off, flexible scheduling, and optimal coverage can provide similar results.
While changes to workforce management behaviours, expectations, and practices rarely come easily or happen overnight, those struggling to become (or remain) competitive should consider environmental and other in-direct means to promote job satisfaction, recruitment, and retention of key staff members.
OK, so here’s our shameless plug: Shiftboard offers tools for staffing flexibility. Our tools can ease the transition to a more collaborative, energetic, creative, and satisfying workplace while optimising key factors that touch the bottom line. Give us a call and find out how we can do it for you.
Try out Shiftboard for your organization or call us for information about how we might help.
