How to Take the Chaos Out of Multi-Location Employee Scheduling

The challenges of scheduling an hourly workforce increase as businesses expand across multiple locations. Different staffing rules, varying customer demand, and a lack of centralized visibility can quickly lead to inefficiencies. Managers may find themselves juggling spreadsheets, calling employees one by one to fill shifts, and dealing with compliance headaches that put the business at risk.

The experience is equally frustrating for employees. Associates may have to manage multiple schedules or miss out on opportunities to pick up shifts at nearby stores. The result is inconsistent staffing, higher absenteeism, and lower morale.

Modern staff scheduling software solves these problems by streamlining processes, improving coverage, and making scheduling fairer for everyone.

Understand the Root Causes of Scheduling Inefficiencies

Many scheduling challenges stem from the same root issue: too much manual work. Creating a perfect schedule requires automatically factoring in critical employee data and inputs—such as position, skills, work preferences (where, when, and how long they want to work), and performance metrics. Equally important are labor policies and regulations that ensure schedules remain compliant and equitable. Finally, operational constraints such as budget and staffing levels must be applied. Only by seamlessly incorporating all these elements can organizations create a schedule that effectively balances business needs with employee satisfaction. According to Legion’s 2025 State of the North American Hourly Workforce report, 39% of managers still rely on spreadsheets or basic tools to build schedules, and 40% still text or call employees individually to fill open shifts. These outdated methods create inconsistencies across locations and leave teams vulnerable to costly errors.

Another weak spot is a lack of precise, granular forecasting by location, channel, or item. Without accurate predictions of labor needs, stores are often overstaffed when traffic is slow or left scrambling during peak hours.

Without the ability to generate compact labor plans and automatically assign employees to those shifts based on role, productivity, and preferences, businesses risk wasted labor hours, higher costs, and compliance issues. Limited employee flexibility only adds to these scheduling problems. Workers who are given schedules that don’t match their preferences or can’t easily swap shifts or pick up extra shifts are more likely to be absent or disengaged, and businesses miss opportunities to maximize capacity and employee earning potential.

Automate Scheduling Processes

The key to consistency is automation. When scheduling is fragmented across locations, businesses face inefficiencies and blind spots. With an intelligently automated scheduling platform, managers gain full visibility across all sites and can seamlessly schedule, spot gaps, and share resources. Standardized rules and templates ensure fairness and compliance everywhere, while allowing flexibility for local needs—reducing errors and eliminating the burden of manual processes.

Legion’s workforce automation software supports centralized scheduling while maintaining the flexibility needed to manage every location.

Use Demand Forecasting to Align Labor with Need

Staffing decisions should follow customer demand, not gut instinct.

When choosing staff scheduling software, make sure to find one with AI-powered demand forecasting that provides highly accurate predictions in 15-minute, 30-minute, or daily increments, factoring in your unique labor model and staffing policies, external drivers like weather and local events, and demand across channels, locations, or even SKUs—whether measured in dollars, transactions, or foot traffic.

When staff levels consistently match customer demand, businesses see lower labor costs, stronger sales-to-labor ratios, and better customer experiences.

Empower Local Managers with Smart Tools

Managers need the ability to respond quickly when things change.

Smart scheduling tools make this possible, allowing them to fill open shifts faster and more fairly.

With Legion’s Workforce Management software:

• Managers can automatically assign employees across locations based on skills, availability, and preferences.
• Targeted shift offers are sent instantly, matching business needs with qualified employees, making filling shifts fast and frictionless.
• Built-in compliance checks reduce the risk of errors, ensuring every schedule aligns with labor laws and internal rules.

Give Employees More Flexibility and Visibility

According to Legion’s 2025 State of the Hourly Workforce, flexibility has become one of the top reasons hourly employees stay in their jobs.

Employees gain true flexibility when employers allow them to set granular preferences—such as when, where, and how long they want to work—and manage schedules across multiple locations in one mobile app. On-demand pay provides an extra incentive for picking up open shifts. Employees can see exactly what they’ll earn if they pick one up, creating more transparency. The ability to pick up extra shifts and get paid immediately results in higher engagement and stronger business retention.

Mobile access makes managing schedules easier for managers and employees. Managers can manage shift offers, swaps, and approvals in real time without back-and-forth calls or emails.

Automate the Tedious

The biggest gains often come from automating the most repetitive scheduling tasks. Rules around qualifications, wage limits, and fairness can be set once and applied automatically to every schedule.

According to Forrester’s TEI report on Legion’s platform, organizations using Legion WFM saved five hours per week per manager on scheduling tasks, freeing up time for higher-value work.

Legion automates over 70 workforce management use cases with AI, unburdening managers so they can focus on meeting revenue targets, coaching employees, and serving customers.

Help Managers React to Change With Confidence

Scheduling is never “done.” Businesses need to monitor key metrics like no-shows, late arrivals, overtime, and shift coverage, and have the tools they need to adapt quickly to any changes

With Legion WFM, managers can seamlessly adapt as conditions shift—reducing scheduling time by 50% while maintaining oversight and control. Intelligent automation streamlines approvals for time-off requests, shift swaps, and shift claims, while the Schedule Summary Assistant provides a conversational interface to analyze and compare schedules across timeframes instantly.

Managers can generate visual summaries, track changes in real time, and quickly spot gaps or anomalies without digging through spreadsheets.

Combined with the Shift Editing Assistant, which enables on-the-go edits, coverage adjustments, and compliance-checked updates, managers can confidently respond to last-minute changes. This continuous feedback loop between employees, managers, and the system ensures that schedules evolve with business needs, driving greater accuracy, agility, and cost efficiency.

Scheduling Smarter at Scale

Great scheduling is more than matching names to shifts—it can improve retention, increase topline revenue, and refocus managers on the business. For businesses with dispersed workforces across locations, embracing data-driven scheduling results in lower costs, happier teams, and better customer experiences. With the right tools, operators don’t have to choose between efficiency and fairness.

Legion’s AI-powered staff scheduling software was designed to simplify complexity, helping businesses generate accurate, fair, and compliant schedules in minutes, across every location.

Ready to streamline scheduling across your business? Book a demo and see how smarter scheduling can reduce costs, improve coverage, and boost employee satisfaction at scale.