Think push notification is only for marketing purposes? Think again.
This newest communications platform has many uses in your business.
More than informing customers about your latest products, upcoming sales, and other company updates, push notifications can also be used to manage your staff.
Yes, you read that right. Your staff.
Employee management is one of the most challenging aspects of running a business. Without some tools to help you, making sure that your staff does their work effectively can take a lot of time… and effort.
What are push notifications, by the way?
A push notification is a message that pops up on a mobile device even if the user is currently not using the app. Initially considered as a nuisance, push notifications evolved to be a very useful tool for communicating with specific people. Now, it is a feature integrated into many all-in-one marketing platforms to engage users.
Push Notifications in Workforce Management
Modern workforce management systems now incorporate a push notification service for employee scheduling. There are many benefits to it, such as:
It offers a simple way of notifying employees.
With push notifications, your staff need not access their inbox to know about their schedule for the week or the day, especially when there’s a sudden change on it. Your message goes directly to their phone notification tray. All they need is to tap the box and they will be redirected to their schedule update.
It’s real-time.
Push notifications let employees know when the schedule is posted, when there’s a change in schedule, when there’s an open shift that they’d like to take advantage of, or when they need to clock out to avoid overtime. What’s more, push notifications can be used to notify employees when their vacation requests or shift change was approved.
It gives managers better control of their employees.
The use of push notifications also benefits managers in many ways. First of all, it can inform them when the shift isn’t adequately covered or when the employee didn’t clock in as scheduled. What’s more, managers can receive an alert if someone in his team is currently on leave, or when an employee requested an open shift or attempted to schedule in violation of a fair scheduling law.
Push notifications are better than emails and texts.
Not so long ago, employees greatly rely on their emails to check scheduling information. Most of the time, they have to go through a long list of memos, or access Excel files just to see their schedule for the week. And when they need to file a leave request, they either send an email to their managers or fill out a form.
With push notifications, however, there’s no need to access their emails anymore. There’s no reason not to miss an important update from their manager and other relevant messages. Meanwhile, managers will be notified when there is an issue with scheduling.
All these important messages can be accessed anytime, anywhere. Even if the employee or manager is taking their rest day or is out of the office.
Push notifications are cheap and easy to set up.
To make use of this tool, you need to set up an employee scheduling app. The app lets your staff access an online clock in the portal to enter their work hours. Then, managers process these time cards in the system from their end. Since all data concerning scheduling and communications are done through the app, it’s easy to incorporate push notifications in your workforce management. To make sure the right message reaches the right recipient, you will have to segment your list based on certain criteria.
Push notifications are not only helpful for marketing. It also has great benefits for employee scheduling. When utilized properly, it makes a cost-effective tool to drive engagement and productivity among your employees.
