Any aquatics center manager will tell you that lifeguard, cash handling, and lesson staff scheduling is a headache. Multiple shifts, part-time employees (each with their own set of scheduling requests), in-service trainings and staff meetings, varying skill sets or certification requirements, tightly defined lesson schedule, and a higher-than-average number of employees who are minors (requiring careful adherence to labor laws) – not to mention fielding endless inquiries about next week’s schedule (or worse, scrambling to fill a missed shift due to confusion over schedules) – make aquatics centers and pools one of the most complicated industries for shift scheduling and attendance monitoring.
Deft scheduling and attendance monitoring is tedious and time consuming. And essential.
Good labor management software allows aquatics center managers to cut employee scheduling and attendance monitoring time from hours to minutes. It helps prevent inconvenient mistakes – as well as mistakes that can lead to labor-law fines or lawsuits.
And the ability to manage schedules at one or many locations, schedule those with stronger skills in the high volume time slots, keep an eye on attendance, and monitor and forecast your labor costs makes labor scheduling software not just a time-saver but a money-saver. In fact, employee labor management software can increase aquatic center profits by 3-5%.
Add in the ability to integrate simply with payroll systems, to notify employees of upcoming schedules and schedule changes by email or text message (and the resultant drop in late or absent employees), and the ability to get out of the back office and focus your energies on the urgent managerial duties facing an aquatics center manager on any given day (rather than mind-numbing scheduling minutia), you’ll probably find that the time saved in the first week alone pays for the investment.
