Managing Expectations for Employee Availability

Managing employee availability in a retail or restaurant setting can be a complex balancing act. With fluctuating demand, diverse schedules, and unexpected challenges, it’s essential to have a system that benefits both employees and management. Setting clear expectations around availability is about ensuring coverage and fostering an environment of mutual respect and reliability. Here’s how to navigate this critical aspect of operations effectively.

Establish Clear Communication From Day One

When onboarding new employees, clearly explain the company’s expectations regarding availability. Whether the business requires open availability on weekends, flexibility during holidays, or the ability to pick up shifts at short notice, laying out these expectations upfront helps avoid misunderstandings later.

Tips for Clear Communication:

• Include availability expectations in job descriptions
• Discuss availability during interviews to gauge flexibility
• Provide written policies on scheduling during orientation

Use technology to facilitate availability expectations during onboarding:

For example, committed hours for availability refer to the specific number of hours an employee agrees to be available for work within a given scheduling period (e.g., weekly or monthly). Employees typically set these hours based on their preferences or contractual obligations, which helps employers plan and optimize labor scheduling more effectively.

Legion’s Committed Hours feature can preserve availability discussed during the hiring process and incorporate it into employee onboarding. When employees are asked for their availability, those committed hours are shown and enforced as part of the expectations management from hiring through onboarding.

Develop a Collaborative Scheduling Process

Scheduling shouldn’t feel like a top-down, rigid process. Creating schedules that work for both the business and the team requires collaboration and input from employees. Offering tools for employees to submit their availability and preferences fosters a sense of ownership and can reduce conflicts. Employee-initiated swaps and cover requests are another great way to involve employees in managing their schedules when last-minute changes in their lives mean they have disruptions to their availability. By incorporating employee data into scheduling, Legion Workforce Management (WFM) bridges the gap between operational demands and employee satisfaction, driving performance and engagement. Employees can and should be able to influence things like whether they get scheduled for long or short shifts and how many hours or shifts they want to work each week.

Key Considerations:

• Use scheduling software like Legion that allows employees to input their preferred hours, preferred shift lengths, and number of hours or shifts per week.
• Encourage employees to swap shifts or request changes when they have last-minute conflicts with their schedules.

Prepare for Peak Periods and Seasonal Variability

Demand in retail and restaurant settings often fluctuates based on seasons, holidays, or special events. Preparing for these periods requires proactive planning and clear expectations for increased availability.

Communication is key during these peak periods, and it can be helpful to use a tool like Legion to show when availability is required for peak periods so employees can easily plan their time around them and request time off only when they have unavoidable conflicts.

Preparing for peak periods also means scheduling your top performers at these times. A scheduling solution that enables managers to automatically track employee performance, compute rewards or infraction points, and objectively and effortlessly recognize top performers by scheduling them at peak times is essential.

Productivity optimization in scheduling focuses on assigning the right employee to the right task at the right time. Managers can enhance overall performance by considering individual productivity metrics without overstaffing or underutilizing resources. Employees can earn reward badges based on their scores, which can be tied to scheduling rules and optimal shift assignments.

Be Flexible but Maintain Boundaries

Flexibility is important for employee satisfaction, but it needs to be balanced with operational needs. Creating policies that allow for occasional flexibility while maintaining minimum coverage ensures fairness and consistency.

How to Strike a Balance:

• Allow employees to submit requests for time off with reasonable notice.
• Implement a minimum availability requirement or institute some level of minimum availability through committed hours.
• Set limits on how many employees can be off at the same time.

Recognize and Reward Reliability

Employees who consistently meet or exceed availability expectations contribute to a more stable and efficient work environment. Recognizing and rewarding this reliability can encourage others to follow suit.

Ideas for Recognition:

• Publicly acknowledge reliable employees in team meetings or newsletters.
• Offer rewards such as preferred shifts, additional open shift offers, or preferential time off.
• Use Legion’s Employee Performance and Rewards tool to award badges for availability and give top shifts to employees based on performance.

Conclusion

Managing expectations for employee availability in retail and restaurant settings is a dynamic process that requires proactive communication, collaboration, and adaptability. Businesses can maintain a well-staffed and motivated team by setting clear guidelines, being flexible yet firm, and recognizing employee contributions. The result? Smoother operations, better customer experiences, and a happier workforce.

Tools like Legion WFM help your organization through this process, facilitating these communication best practices, enforcing availability through scheduling to build trust, and seamlessly managing employee preference input from onboarding through scheduling. Schedule a demo now to learn more.