Eliminate Missed Shifts with Self-Led Security Guard Scheduling Tools

Empower your security guards and improve retention with self-scheduling options for your hourly employees.

Missed shifts can mean financial trouble for your hourly workers. A recent study of over 1,000 U.S.-based hourly employees and employers found that missing a single scheduled shift meant up to 49% of employees not being able to afford basic living expenses like utilities, groceries and rent. In addition to missed shifts, scheduling problems also lead hourly workers to feel dissatisfaction with their jobs.

The same survey reported that 71% of hourly workers are dissatisfied with their jobs and cite unstable schedules and trouble reaching their managers as reasons for wanting to leave their jobs. The security industry already faces high turnover, so these feelings could mean disaster for your employee retention and bottom line.

So how do you ensure employees feel in control of their shifts and find stability with their scheduling? By providing your hourly employees with a self-scheduling option within your security guard scheduling tools.

What is Self-Scheduling?

Self-scheduling allows your employees to do things like claim open shifts, post shifts for others to claim or swap shifts with other employees. For example, when one of your guards has a shift they need to change because of an outside conflict, they can take care of it without waiting on a manager to reschedule the shift, or potentially miss the shift because they don’t feel they have any other options. In turn, this also saves your management time and money when they don’t have to handle one-off and individual schedule changes.

Empower Your Employees

Employees feel empowered when they can not only take control of their own schedules but are encouraged to do so by their managers. Remember the 71% of hourly workers are dissatisfied with their jobs stat? Well, studies also show when an employee feels empowered by management, their routine job-task performance improves and their participation in non-mandatory work functions increases. At a time when you’re facing new challenges and industry trends like smaller pools of job applicants, keeping your already-trained workforce engaged and satisfied with their jobs is important to your business’s success.

Find the Right Self-Service Technology

There are plenty of technology platforms on the market that handle employee self-scheduling, but for a specialized industry like security, look for an option built to meet your business’s unique security guard scheduling challenges. Industry-specific software built for security businesses will have additional features like execution on necessary compliance items and automatic notifications when schedule changes occur. It should also offer exception testing for all actions, so employees are prevented from claiming or swapping shifts that would cause compliance issues or overtime requirements, ensuring schedule coverage is accurate and profitable for your business.

While it may seem impossible to keep 100% of your security workforce happy all the time, improving your overall workforce satisfaction is possible with the right tools and processes. To read more on streamlining processes with security guard scheduling tools, download our quick guide to reducing overtime in the security industry.