9 Ways Online Employee Scheduling Software Saves Casinos Money

If you’re fed up with all the annoyances and inefficiencies of your casino’s scheduling process, we feel you. Paper-based scheduling, excel sheets, and all the other piecemeal, Frankenstein-esque, wrong-tool-for-the-job scheduling processes used by casinos (and other businesses) just don’t get the job done or make anyone happy.

Online employee scheduling software offers a better way.

Here are 9 ways the best online employee scheduling software will help your casino reduce time spent on scheduling, slash errors down to near-zero, make employees and managers happier because they get along better, and save money you’re currently hemorrhaging on these sorts of problems.

1.    Employees Can Check Schedules from Anywhere

If your casino’s scheduling system requires your employees to call someone, check their email, or come in to work to see their schedules, you are losing time to scheduling inefficiency and creating all kinds of avoidable problems and delays.

Most online employee scheduling software systems let employees check their schedules using their phones. They log in to their account and see their upcoming schedule for days, weeks, or months in advance. 

Employees LOVE this feature. They don’t need to wait for the schedule to ‘come out’ like before. It just shows up on their phone and they can view it at any time, from anywhere. It could not be easier.

2.    You Can Adjust Quickly to Mis-Scheduled Shifts

If a particular shift is overscheduled because the crowds you were expecting aren’t showing up, you can quickly adjust your casino floor employees’ schedules. Maybe you were expecting big crowds for a basketball or baseball playoff game, but the series ends in four games and you were expecting a crowd for game 5.

You can adjust that by sending messages to your employees who were scheduled and whose shifts you want to move.

Or, perhaps a shift is underscheduled and a big crowd shows up. You can quickly see your part-timers who are available for extra shifts so you can avoid calling people who might trigger overtime for that week.

With online employee scheduling software, you can do this on the fly. It takes just minutes to make big on-the-spot scheduling decisions that directly affect your bottom line.

3.    Employees Can Easily Make Shift Swap Requests

As a casino manager, you can set up your online scheduling software so that you get to approve every change request. For casinos, this is critical because there may be certain employees you do not trust to work with certain other ones or on certain shifts or locations.

And, you also want to be sure you have highly skilled employees distributed across your table games areas during all the most important shifts. Typical employees may not realize how important that is when they make shift swap requests. But with scheduling software such as Casino Schedule Ease, you can quickly determine if their swap will cause problems or not.

4.    You Can Map Out the Schedule Weeks or Months in Advance

With employee scheduling software, you’ll be able to schedule as far out as you want. For instance, maybe you have a big event coming up in a few months. You may not schedule every day between now and then,
but you can schedule the dates clustering around that big event to be sure you are adequately staffed with your best people on those high-revenue days.

You don’t want your best people taking vacations when you need them most. Especially your most high-skilled table game employees!

Scheduling software also allows you to respond factually and confidently to shift swap requests. You won’t have to guess. You won’t risk making the employee feel unfairly treated. You will know if the swap will work because you can see the whole department’s schedule weeks in advance, whether it’s table games, food and drink service, security, housekeeping, or any other department.

5.    Employees Can Easily Make EO Requests

When there’s a slow shift or a worker has something come up in their personal life, online employee scheduling software enables them to
make early out requests quickly and easily.

Most casinos are big places. Sometimes it can take forever to track down the person you need to talk to. And if the scheduling manager isn’t in the office when an employee needs him, frustration mounts.

Just like the shift swaps, employees can make EO requests from their phone, right where they are, and you can approve or deny it, or ask to discuss it by sending back a personal message.

6.    Easily Plan Ahead for Anticipated Busy Days

Being understaffed is a terrible thing for a casino. Online employee scheduling software allows you to be ready for the big days you know are coming. Whether that’s weekends, certain holidays, special times of year, or dates with big events in town, your software will help ensure your table games and other key money-making departments are ready for prime time. 

7.    Staff Can Access Their HR Data

It’s not just your scheduling managers and operations people who will love online employee scheduling software. Your HR people will love it too. They don’t like fielding calls asking “How much vacation time do I have? What? That’s it?”

Calls regarding FMLA, accrued vacation, overtime, and other schedule-related HR information can all be accessed through each employee’s scheduling software portal. And if you get the best casino employee scheduling software, that data will be stored securely in the cloud, so you don’t have to worry about a room full of servers to guard with your life.

8.    Staff Can Select Shift Preferences

With the hundreds or sometimes thousands of employees working at casinos, you have a great diversity of people on your staff. Parents will have different needs than part-time students. You’ll have people who hate working days, people who hate working nights, people who don’t care, people who can only work certain days, certain hours on those days, and everything in between.

With online employee scheduling software, all that preference information will be right at your fingertips once it has been uploaded, and you can use it to craft the perfect schedule.

9.    You Can Automate the Entire Scheduling Process

The eight previous reasons are more than enough to justify scheduling a free demo of our casino scheduling software.

But this last reason is the best one of all so far.

When you read #8 and started thinking about “crafting” the perfect schedule, it might have crossed your mind that, if you had to do all that work yourself, making the schedule would still be a challenge. Yes, it would. Creating a schedule still won’t be easy in terms of who to assign where, and when.

Yes, you’ll have all this information at hand, but you’ll
still have to navigate it all to produce a workable schedule.

Wouldn’t it be so much simpler if a computer could produce the
schedule instead? Isn’t this the age of technology?

Yes! And the best online employee scheduling software will empower
you to automate your entire scheduling process. The computer considers all the known variables, including each employee’s preferences and history, and creates a schedule that in theory will work – for everyone. And it can do this at the touch of a button.

If you’re still creating schedules the hard way, again – we
feel for you. But now is the time to look into making a change.

Not all Online Employee Scheduling Software Products Are Equally Good

Casinos are not restaurants. They are not hotels. They are not bowling alleys. Casinos are more like small cities. The big ones have restaurants, AND hotels, AND all kinds of games and activities, AND so much more. 

Beyond all this, your revenue is tied to the skill levels of particular employees. You can’t just put any dealer at the high-roller tables.

Casino Schedule Ease was created specifically for casinos.
Though there are hundreds of online employee scheduling software options out there, almost none of them were built for casinos, and they will struggle to achieve what you really want and need, particularly in the area of employee skills. 

One thing that sets Casino Schedule Ease apart is what we call ‘assignment-based scheduling.’ This means, our system ranks each employee on their skill level, so you can be sure your best skilled workers are all staffed on the right days and the right shifts – but also at the right spot. Same with average skilled workers and brand new hires.

And yes, this too is automated. Once the data is uploaded, the system creates the schedule – including the very important skills-based factor.

Schedule a Free Demo of Casino Schedule Ease Today

You have nothing to lose, and a much easier and less stressful workplace to gain.