Get Shift Done: Management
With intermittent outages a fact of life in the Internet fast lane, you need to think “contingency plans” when beefing up on online services like workforce scheduling. After all, every manager wants their employees to show up on time for work, or at least know who’s on that day.
Internet Outages? Remember the Salesforce.com outage in May? Or how about Google Drive and Google Docs hiccup outage last November? And, of course, there is always the potential your own Internet connection will go down.
But, pssst…don’t freak out when your Internet goes down and that “OMG-how-will-I-access-my-employee-schedule?!” takes hold. Here’s a handy collection of survival prep tips to get you over the hump:
- The best offense is a good defense. So, that means finding out whether the online workforce scheduling service has the ability to operate offline and then sync back up when the Internet is humming again.
- You should also ask your vendor whether you can make offline copies of the schedule using such common, everyday tools such as Microsoft Excel.
- Along those lines, it pays to develop a contingency plan, like having a backup copy of the schedule housed on-premise so you can get at it locally when the Interweb takes a nose dive.
- Another way to plan ahead is by emailing yourself a copy of the schedule whenever a change is made. That will keep you current if either the Internet or your vendor has an outage.
- If it’s your company’s Internet connection that goes dark, there’s always the nearest Starbucks, McDonald’s or some other public hotspot to access your online scheduling app. Alternatively, you can try the same thing by tethering off of your cell phone for connectivity.
- And finally, there’s the old standby of physically printing a copy of the latest schedule for the ultimate just-in-case situation.
Whether you’re a large enterprise or a mom and pop operation, the financial impact of an Internet or online solution outage can be significant so take a line from the Boy Scouts and, “Be Prepared.”
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