570: Choosing the Right Employee Scheduling Model
How do you ensure the right employees are available at the right times while keeping your business running smoothly? In this episode, we break down three popular scheduling models: Shift Scheduling, Employee Availability-Based Scheduling, and Route-Based Scheduling with Core & Flex Employees. We explore the pros and cons of each, from predictability and efficiency to flexibility and legal considerations. Choosing the right model can impact employee satisfaction, client experience, and overall business success. Tune in to learn how to find the best fit for your pet care business!
Main topics:
Shift Scheduling Model – Set work shifts, predictable but inconsistent hours.
Employee Availability Scheduling – Flexible but harder to ensure coverage.
Route-Based Scheduling – Assigned areas, efficient but limiting.
Legal Considerations – Compliance with labor laws.
Choosing the Right Model – Aligning with business needs.
Main takeaway: “Choosing the right scheduling model impacts your efficiency, your employee satisfaction, and your client experience.”
As pet business owners, how we schedule our team affects everything—from how smoothly visits run to how happy our employees and clients are. A structured shift model keeps things predictable, an availability-based model offers flexibility, and a route-based approach can maximize efficiency. But the best model depends on your business needs!
In our latest episode, we break down the pros and cons of each model and help you decide which one fits your pet care business best. 🐶🐱
Which scheduling model do you use?
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Pet sitter confessional, employee scheduling, shift scheduling, employee availability, route-based scheduling, team-based model, one-to-one model, labor laws, on-call work, client expectations, employee satisfaction, business consistency, hiring process, predictability, flexibility.
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:01
Hi, I'm Megan, I'm Collin, and we're the host of pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you for joining us today for episode 570 where we're going to talk about employee and staffing models. We also want to thank pet sitters associates and our newest Patreon person, Amber. Thank you Amber for finding value in the show and for your support. One of the perks of supporting us at the $15 level is that you get to be called an executive producer. So we want to thank our executive producers for today's show. Adriana, Barbie Beck, Erica, Jan Janie, Jenny, Julie Katherine, Keith Liz, Lori, Lucy, Sarah Savannah, Scott, Teresa and Yvonne. We appreciate you guys. Thank you for loving the podcast. If you're listening to this and want to help support as well, you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support, to see all of the ways that you can help out. So we have had a team of employees for several years now, and we are constantly tweaking our hiring and scheduling approach to make sure that it's a good fit for the kind of business that we run. We know that nobody runs their business the same way. Everybody has different preferences and what's going to work for them. So we wanted to share three popular scheduling models and break down some of the pros and cons of each and when they may or may not be a good fit. As always, we would love to hear your thoughts on this. We know, again, it's not going to work for everybody, but hopefully, by highlighting some of these options, you can learn more if you want to grow and scale, by having a team choosing the right staffing and scheduling model can really impact your efficiency, your employee satisfaction and your client experience. The first model is shift scheduling. So these are where you have specific time blocks for each employee. Each employee commits to a specific time block, maybe it's six to 10, and then you've got another time block, 10 to two, then a two to six and a six to 10. This is going to vary based off of your hours of operation for your business, but the business assigns visits as they come in, but there is no guarantee of a full workload in each shift, but the employee must be available during those time periods that both you and them agree upon. Some of the pros for this are that the shift is predictable for the employee, not necessarily that you can fill the entire six to 10 time block, but that they are going to be available during that time on the days that you guys specify. And
Collin 02:11
you know you have coverage, there's no question as to whether you're going to have somebody available for a particular visit, because there's already agreed upon time block that shift, you know, you know Jerry is going to cover this time block, so you just immediately add it to his schedule. Yeah,
Meghan 02:28
this is really ideal for businesses with a consistent demand, especially for dog walking. Middle of the day you're super busy. Lots of people who work need you. So, you know, automatically, you've got maybe five, six clients that use you on a consistent basis. Well, you can slot somebody in and know, okay, well, I can have them available during this whole time, because I'm able to fill that well, and it
Collin 02:48
helps you also make sure that you have coverage for last minute requests. I know that we get this an awful lot, where it's eight in the morning and somebody needs us for two in the afternoon. Having a shift schedule would allow you to instantly slot that into your availability, because you don't have to ask if somebody is available because they've already committed to that. This
Meghan 03:07
works really well for a team based model where multiple employees can care for the same client. You aren't doing one sitter to one client. Everybody can do everything. But there are some drawbacks to this model, where employees may not receive consistent hours if the schedule isn't full. So if your employee is supposed to be working mornings, but it's a slower time, maybe January or February, you don't have a whole lot of people traveling. You can't really fill their shift with a bunch of visits.
Collin 03:30
Now it is then your job as the as the employer then to see, is this a good fit for that person, and are you hiring for the right kind of person who needs inconsistent work, and is okay with that, because if they're not, if they're expecting a consistent work schedule and consistent hours from week to week, or even day to day, you are going to experience potential turnover, especially if those employees don't get enough work to justify their commitment. Because we have to remember, this is a commitment you're asking them, please set aside 10 to two four hours. Block that out for me, the business to be available. But if we cannot consistently fill that, they're going to go somewhere else, because they can use that time for other things. But
Meghan 04:10
if they know that on the front end of okay, no guaranteed hours, then they may be totally fine with it. If they're a mom who has kids at school, she's just trying to fill her time with a little bit of extra work each day, then it would probably be a good fit. It's just
Collin 04:24
behold it's on you again as the employer, to make sure that you have that clearly outlined and explicitly stated in your hiring process. This
Meghan 04:31
model is not really ideal for overnights or extended pet sitting, because these don't fit neatly into shifts. If you do decide to go with this model, just be careful, because some states consider this on call, where you have to pay the person, even if they're not doing any field work, dog walking and pet sitting, you still have to pay them for their time because they are on call. So it may not work in every regulatory environment, we really see this shift scheduling model being great for those companies that are primarily dog walking. Walking. It's really great when there's a steady flow of midday dog walks or also short pet sitting visits, ideal for those 30 minute cat visits or check ins that don't require overnight stays. The shift scheduling model also fits in really well with a team based approach. So again, any employee can cover that shift, can cover that client, and allow multiple staff members to care for the same pet in any given day. It's not really ideal for the one to one one employee to one client model, because the shifts may not align with consistent client assignments. So if you have a cat that's usually one time a day, but now they want to do two times a day because they're being extra careful or watching something or medically needy client, then you're going to need to give that client to a different employee. Another really popular model is the employee availability based scheduling. So this is where employees provide their general availability for the week, and the business schedules them accordingly, or the company may post. Here are all of the clients that we have this week. You guys can pick and choose which ones you want to do. The company really hires the employees, to ensure all services and shifts are covered while allowing the flexibility really for the employees. This
Collin 06:09
is where you would say in your job ad, hiring pet sitters. And then in your questionnaire, you would ask, When are you available? Because you are not really hiring for a specific time block or a specific shift you are just seeing when can somebody work for you, and then you use that in combination with the other availability of your employees to then assign based off of when they can do things. A
Meghan 06:32
lot of pet sitting business owners like this because the employees have more control over their schedules. It's not the boss is saying you must work this time at this day, it's a lot of improving that work life balance for the employees. Also, the business owner can schedule employees based on demand, so it reduces that excess labor costs. If there aren't a lot of pet sitting visits that week, then they don't really need to be on call. This model works really well for both dog walking and pet sitting, especially when coverage varies by day, you don't really know what you're going to wake up to, so you need flexibility to move people around. It allows for both the team based and the one for one models really depending on scheduling needs. In contrast, though it is harder to ensure coverage if you have too many employees with similar availability, maybe nobody wants to work Friday nights from six to 10. Well, then you may have to cover that or hire somebody specifically for the weekend nights Well,
Collin 07:25
and what that leads to is it increase. It can lead to an increasingly complex schedule, because as available, changes from week to week, whereas you have some employees leave who were kind of heavies in the week, and they were covering a lot of visits, they can open up a lot of holes in your schedule unexpectedly. And then, yeah, then you find yourself having to hire somebody to cover Tuesdays, three to six and Thursdays, eight to nine and Fridays, you know, in the evenings or something, making it harder and harder, the more specific those kind of things get.
Meghan 07:57
Now this is assuming you as the business owner, don't want to be doing any field work anymore. If you're perfectly okay with filling in the holes here and there, then by all means, that this model would be a good fit for you again, like the last model of shift scheduling, this employee availability Based Scheduling is good for both dog walking and pet sitting. Businesses that have reoccurring clients and also one time requests, businesses that serve large service areas are really going to benefit from this, because, again, it allows that flexibility when assigning staff. The flexibility of this model also means that it can accommodate the team based approach here, where multiple employees can care for pets across different visits. For the one to one model here, if the employees are scheduled consistently, the same employee can remain assigned to a specific client's need.
Collin 08:43
So it really boils down to, at this point, choosing model one shift based versus the employee availability, how much control do you want to have and consistency Do you want to have from week to week, and availability to availability, and the kind of people that you're trying to attract, and this also is dependent solely on the kind of business that you're running, predominantly pet sitting, predominantly dog walking. Do you just see month after month, week after week, a lot of high fluctuation and a lot of variability from needing nobody for a little bit and then needing everybody on board. Then you need to have a lot of flexibility, the more consistency that you can build in the larger pipelines that you can get in for onboarding new clients and staff, and having that consistency in scheduling allows you to pick one of these over the other, something
Meghan 09:30
you should definitely have in your business no matter what is pet sitters associates. As a pet sitter, you know how much trust goes into caring for someone's for a family member, but who's got your back for over 25 years, pet sitters Associates has been helping pet care pros like you with affordable, flexible insurance coverage, whether you're walking dogs, pet sitting or just starting out, they make it easy to protect your business. Get a free quote today at pets@llc.com and as a listener, you get $10 off your membership when you use code confessional at checkout. That's pets@llc.com because your peace of mind. Is part of great pet care. We've covered shift and we've covered staff availability. The third model is route based scheduling with core and flex employees. So here is where the employees are assigned specific routes or service areas where they handle a mix of dog walks and pet sitting visits. A core team of employees is guaranteed a minimum number of hours, while flex employees cover additional demand or fill in the gaps. So if you only want your employees to serve a two mile radius around their house, this is perfect for that. It really reduces the drive time by keeping the visits geographically efficient. They don't have to go to Timbuktu in order to serve Fifi. They can do it maybe even potentially walking down the street. It creates that predictability for employees as they work with the same clients pretty regularly, because they're all close to where they live well.
Collin 10:49
And it also strengthens that client relationship and predictability for the client themselves, because they're cared for by the same familiar staff, which also reduces the mental burden and mental fatigue for your employees, constantly having a ton of new clients thrown at them week after week, month after month, does become draining, because they can never develop a relationship. They can never become into a routine. So something like this really does help with that aspect.
Meghan 11:14
So yes, this works great for one on one models where a single employee is responsible for a client. But on the other side, it can be harder to implement in rural areas if your next client is truly 20 minutes away because there's just cornfields and cow pastures, well, that is something that you have to take into account when thinking about this model. Another con is that this model does require a steady stream of clients to ensure that consistent route, even though the clients are potentially close to the employee's house, if you only have one or maybe two a day, they the employee may not be happy with that,
Collin 11:46
so then it's beholden on you as the employer, to try and build out the clientele around where that employee lives. I will say another downside to this is that if that employee does leave, then you are left a hole in your coverage of your routes, and do have to scramble to find other people to cover those until you can replace this with someone more local. So it does stress out the other people who are further away might not, as you know, increasing drive time for that because this does limit the flexibility of a true team based scheduling, because those clients are dependent on the proximity of that employee, it means that it limits the ability to flex in other people and say, Here's where you need to have extra coverage because they are tied to those specific routes. Now,
Meghan 12:27
of course, that wouldn't be true if you have multiple employees that live in that area, where they all are basically neighbors and they all serve the same clients, right?
Collin 12:36
But here's where you have that flex schedule, where you have a few employees who maybe they are required to drive out and cover where they're where you don't have extra coverage. So that's the key aspect of this. It's not putting all of your eggs in one basket for one employee to cover the 15 clients that you have right around two miles from their house. You need to have those flex employees who can cover periodically. So it's not solely reliant on that one person, because
Meghan 13:03
obviously that person's also going to want to take a sick day or a vacation, and the clients are still going to need to be covered. This model works really well for cities or high density areas where reoccurring visits can be grouped into efficient routes. Again, if you're driving through cow pastures, it's probably not going to work, but it also can work for pet sitting, where there are short visits and not a lot of overnights. So
Collin 13:25
again, this model is really best suited for a one for one assignment model, where employees are assigned a set of clients because they are in close proximity to them, meaning pets see the same caregiver each time. There's a lot of predictability and familiarity between them. This is obviously very less suited for a team based approach, as East employee is responsible for their own specific route. And I did want to circle back here and talk about the importance of this on call work. If you're not working with a labor attorney or the Department of Labor where you live, you really do need to run how you want to operate your business by their laws, and this is where we as business owners have to understand that just because we may like the way a particular model works, or we feel like our clients would benefit from a particular model, if the laws prevent this, we can't use that. So some of these models that we've talked about do require employees to be available without guaranteed work, which can, in some places, be called on call. Megan mentioned that earlier, many states require that these on call employees be compensated, especially importantly here, if they are restricted in their activities while waiting for the work, if you prevent them from doing anything else within that assigned time, it means that you may have to be paying them and compensating them for that time while they are waiting to go out do dog walks and pet sitting visits for you. So the best practice here is clearly define your policies when an employee is supposed to be actively working versus be simply available to avoid any sort of labor law issues and check your state labor laws again, we have to always. Come back to that again, I'm going, I want to operate my business in XYZ way, but can I legally operate that way? It's better to check on the front end than find out on the back end and have a lot of penalties and fines and other things assessed towards your business. So before implementing any of these kind of practices, go and talk to somebody about it. If your
Meghan 15:20
business is mainly dog walking, shift scheduling or route Based Scheduling will likely be best. If your business solely focuses on pet sitting, the employee availability Based Scheduling is the most adaptable for that. But if you want a strong team based approach, shift scheduling and employee availability Based Scheduling really allow for shared client care. But if you prefer a one for one model, one employee to one client, the route Based Scheduling really works best for maintaining consistent caregiver client relationships. We personally use the team based shift scheduling model where everybody can do everything. We do not have a one for one, but each model has its strengths and trade offs. So it's important to align your scheduling method with your business structure, your client expectations and the employee needs, and also what you as the business owner ultimately want. If you think one is going to be a really big headache, well then choose something else. So when
Collin 16:13
we were looking to put together how we were going to staff and hire and schedule, there were several things that kept bubbling up to the surface for Megan and I, and why we ultimately went with the shift based the first one was just consistency. Megan and I really did not want to have to continually check and change and switch and always be on kind of the edge of the seat wondering when are we going to be able to schedule somebody, because what is their available going to be? It also made it a lot easier when we were going to hire, we could be very specific with what we were looking for and when we were needing people. We found that that was a common question, When are you needing this? What are you actually needing from me as an employee? And so for us to say, Oh, we're hiring for mornings during the weekdays, or we are hiring for evenings on the weekends, and it a lot of allowed for a lot more specificity when communicating with our potential hires. And then we also found that it added predictability to our employees. They were able to go, Okay, I can't schedule anything on the afternoons because I am giving that time over to pet sitting and dog walking. This allowed them to schedule other things, take on other jobs, and added, actually, extra flexibility in their life and predictability so they could schedule around this. Now we did go talk to a labor attorney, and worked with the Department of Labor to understand exactly what on call meant for where we live, and we learned that we do not have the obligation to pay for those on call hours. Now we do our best to schedule as far out in advance as possible and get our clients to do likewise. But one of the things that we loved about this shift based model was that we were able to rapidly and easily take on last minute bookings that really is a fundamental thing about our business and kind of what our clients expect from us, of being able to wake up in the morning, schedule a dog walk in the afternoon, and us be able to take care of it, and because of how we staff and how we schedule, we are able to do that. I know that just because our afternoon employee, they right now, they end at 1230 but their shift goes until two o'clock. It means that I can fill the rest of that time without needing to check in. Now, of course we do, and we give them a heads up, and we ask them, you know, we still have that conversation to make sure, but it just makes sure that everything is out on the table, that those expectations are outlined clearly, and that's who we hire for. That's how we hire now we have that kind of culture in our business, and regardless of what kind of staffing model and scheduling model that you want to take on and are legally allowed to take on, the best way to make sure that that works for you is to make sure that you are hiring the right people for that model, that they truly understand those expectations, that they have a lifestyle that can accommodate and is accommodating to what you are needing. That takes being upfront and honest, that takes clear communication and consistency with you. It all starts with us as the business owners, when we are clear, when we are consistent, how we want to operate. Everything else flows from there. So look at the kind of services you're offering, the client, clients that you're serving, and the kind of business that you want to run. I'm
Meghan 19:27
sure we missed something here. So if you have opinions on this, or you prefer one over the other, we would love to get your input. You can email us at Pet Sitter confessional@gmail.com or look us up on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Sitter confessional. Thank you again to our Patreon supporters and pet sitters associates for sponsoring today's episode, we will talk with you next time bye. You.
