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We all heard about airport delays over the 2022 holidays as Southwest Airlines passengers and airline crews were stuck in the terminals. If you were there, you may have witnessed gate agents trying to team up flight crews who wanted to go home with flights they could service to get there. Then, they would call headquarters, and the call would not go through. If it did, the agent was often told that a certain member of a flight crew wasn’t legal to fly because either they worked too many hours or they had a deadline of when they had to be in the air. By the time an agent was finally able to contact a scheduler, that deadline had passed. The ramp agent would then redouble efforts and look elsewhere. Customers, frustrated beyond measure, were yelling at pilots and flight attendants who wanted to be in the air as much as they did.

The experience was terrible for employees and customers. Southwest Airlines has acknowledged this publicly and apologized profusely. It is working on replacing what has been reported as an antiquated scheduling system.

The days of expecting employees to put up with inadequate scheduling are ending. One of the reasons unions have had such good luck organizing Starbucks is due to employees wanting fair scheduling practices. The unionized stores have made headlines, and some worker strikes have disrupted store hours. The situation is not a customer-service win for Starbucks.

Traditional industries where scheduling is key include hospitality and transportation. Now that employers are scheduling employees to be in the office or work from home, there may be more complicated in-office scheduling with service professionals in legal or finance fields, for example. That is partly driven by a reduction in office size in those industries as employers respond to the effects of more employees working at home more often.

Employers must come up with scheduling plans that are effective and efficient for employees and customers. To understand what that will be in your workplace, consider the following:

• Employees’ needs. While you may want to begin with customers’ needs, ignoring employees’ needs is too often the outcome, which will not drive a positive customer experience if overlooked. Employees typically want to work certain schedules. Do you know an individual employee’s preference? To what extent can you match that preference to a schedule? Even if there isn’t a way to do so all the time, how often can it be done?

• Customers’ behavior patterns at your workplace. Your call logs or appointment calendars may indicate the busiest times for customer contacts. The logs and calendars may also point to how customers want to interact with your staff. While in certain industries in-person contacts are either a requirement or a priority for the customer, you may find that at your organization, that has changed, and actual data does not bear out expectations or assumptions of in-person meetings.

• Capacity of the workplace and the workforce. What protocol do you have in place when there is an unforeseen event, such as inclement weather or a large group of customers coming at the same time due to a local event or time of year?

• Scheduling software that meets the needs of your workplace. Getting the right software isn’t always easy. This article on finding HR software might be helpful. Use a clear process for finding the right software that will meet the needs of your employees and customers.

If you need help creating an action plan to solve your scheduling dilemmas, contact Employers Council.