HR Insights
December 5, 2024

People-centered scheduling isn’t just valuable — it’s easier than you think

An entire class of American workers are seeing their personal and financial health decline due to unstable, unpredictable work schedules. Here’s how better scheduling can positively impact both them and their company’s bottom line. 

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Many American workers are seeing their personal and financial health decline due to unstable, unpredictable work schedules. Here’s how better scheduling can positively impact both them and their company’s bottom line.
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There’s been a lot of talk about “where” work should happen, especially in the ongoing debate around return-to-office (RTO) policies post-pandemic. But for a much bigger part of the American workforce, it’s the “when” of work that really matters. Many frontline workers in industries like retail, service, and hospitality never got to experience the benefits of remote work that office workers had. Instead, they’ve always had to physically show up at their jobs, often on unpredictable schedules, and that lack of predictability can take a big toll on both them and their families. 

At Dayforce, our mission is to make work life better. That’s why we launched WorkWell, a research series that leverages our millions of internal data points, expertise from leading third parties, and surveys of the American public to help organizations deliver meaningful impact in four core areas: pay, leave, retirement, and scheduling. Today, I want to talk about the importance of scheduling and how it can impact both people and companies when it’s unpredictable and unstable. I also want to talk about simple ways employers can better balance business and workers’ needs when creating schedules.  

Let’s start with the costs of unpredictable scheduling. 

The costs 

The human cost 

An unpredictable work schedule makes it very difficult for workers to balance their job against other needs like childcare, education, other jobs (which many shift workers need to make ends meet), doctor’s appointments, and any number of other responsibilities, to say nothing of their own free time. A growing body of research has shown that exposure to routine instability in work schedules is associated with psychological distress, poor sleep quality, and unhappiness. In a study titled “Uncertain Time: Precarious Schedules and Job Turnover in the US Service Sector,” researchers Joshua Choper, Daniel Schneider, and Kristen Harknett found that “these precarious workers’ position on the margins of the economy become more entrenched as schedule instability begets family and economic stability, which then begets employment instability.” 

Unpredictable and unstable schedules also contribute to poor financial health. One study found that on average, low- and moderate-income households were seeing fluctuations of 25% above and below average monthly income for five months of the year. This kind of income volatility often compounds financial problems, as a 2017 survey from the Federal Reserve Board’s Division of Consumer and Community Affairs showed that 40% of American families would have trouble coming up with $400 if needed in an emergency. Simply put, unpredictable schedules don’t account for the realities faced by most workers. But a growing body of research is starting to show that they don’t work for companies either.  

The business cost 

Some companies in industries like retail, hospitality, and service schedule their workers using a system called just-in-time (JIT) scheduling. That basically means they’re scheduling workers with very little advance notice to support immediate business needs. The upside of this approach is keeping labor costs low and removing some of the uncertainty involved with customer demand and employee no-shows. But Qiuping Yu of The Brookings Institution points out that there’s a significant tradeoff involved in this approach, writing that “[w]hile JIT scheduling can be effective in reducing firms’ labor costs, it also leads to highly unpredictable and fluctuating schedules for workers, which negatively impact their quality of life, especially among low-income workers. In short, firms have been using JIT scheduling to transfer business risks to their employees.” 

A growing body of evidence also shows that whatever companies gain in reduced labor costs from JIT scheduling, they often give back in lost productivity, higher employee turnover, and higher absenteeism. Stable, predictable scheduling has been shown to increase employee productivity while driving down the costs associated with high staff turnover and absenteeism. Simply put, JIT scheduling might make leaders feel like they’re saving money in the moment, but when you look beyond the money saved on a single shift, this can be an illusion that harms both business outcomes and worker wellbeing.  

Fair, stable, and predicable scheduling made easier 

One of the reasons companies don’t adopt more predictable scheduling is the fear that they’ll miss out on the advantages of JIT scheduling. But another is the sheer logistical challenge of balancing predictability with schedule efficiency, especially in sectors where customer demand can vary a lot from one day or hour to another.  

This is why we’ve come up with nine core standards for generating more people-centered schedules. Better yet, we’ve created an option via Dayforce where employers can use these measures as rules within their HCM platform to ensure managers are following these principles when scheduling new shifts.  

These measures are:  
 

  • Employee schedules are released to employees at least two weeks in advance of the workweek.   
  • Employees are scheduled for a minimum of 75% of their normal hours of work per week. 
  • Employees are scheduled for shifts that are at least 11 hours apart.  
  • Shifts are a minimum of four hours in length. 
  • Employees can pick up shifts for coworkers without prior manager approval if the employee is pre-qualified for the type of work. 
  • Full-time and part-time employees should receive at least two consecutive days off per week. 
  • Employees are allowed the option of at least one weekend off every four rolling weeks. 
  • Employees can refuse changes to the published schedule that are proposed within seven days of the start of the shift. 
  • Employees are scheduled within their stated availability and employees can update their stated availability on a regular basis. 

Dayforce has developed these standards to help employers achieve the optimal balance between business and employee outcomes. To make these standards easy to follow, we’ve even created a new option during implementation that allows our customers to automatically load this rule policy in Dayforce, helping to ensure that schedulers are following the standards at all times.   

“At Dayforce, we believe that what’s right for you people is what’s right for your organization,” says Dave Christian, RVP Solution Advisory at Dayforce and a key contributor in the creation of these standards and rules. “That’s why we wanted to give forward-looking employers the option to implement scheduling practices that benefit everyone.” 

So now that we’ve addressed the why and how of stable, predictable scheduling, we’re back to our original concern: the when. This one’s easier to answer, because it’s never too soon to explore how people-centered scheduling can make work life better for everyone at your company, from the front lines to the corner office.  

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