Employee shift handover is a crucial step of the employee onboarding process that can greatly impact your organization’s performance.
Providing effective employee handover helps ensure that new hires are properly prepared and ready to hit the ground running when they start their new job. But it’s also something that many organizations struggle with, which is why we’ve put together this list of common mistakes you need to avoid in order to ensure your employee shift handover goes smoothly. From not making sure your new hires understand their responsibilities to fail to provide adequate training before they start their first day at work, read on for our top tips on how to get it right:
Mistake #1: Overlooking the Importance of a Shift Handover Checklist
- You don’t have to be a professional chef to understand the importance of following a recipe. The same goes for shift handovers. If you want to avoid making mistakes and ensure that your employees are prepared for the next day, then a checklist will help.
- Checklists are great because they allow you to track what needs to be done by whom and when it needs to happen—and if something isn’t going according to plan or an employee forgets something important (like their uniform), it can easily be added onto the checklist later on in the process.
- Checklists aren’t just useful for preventing mistakes; they’re also handy for ensuring consistency across multiple shifts as well. For example, if one of your employees adds an item like “wash hands before clocking out” onto their list, another employee may decide that they should also include this step on their own list so that both employees follow through with this habit every single time without fail!
Mistake #2: Failing to Share the Right Information
How should it be shared? Who needs that information, and when? How can you ensure they understand it as quickly and easily as possible, so they can act on it effectively? And how can you ensure they retain what they’ve learned—so they don’t revert back to old habits or default settings? These questions need to be answered when you’re trying to share information—whether it’s about a new process, policy or procedure, an important change in workflow, or an innovative product feature with which you want employees to become familiar. Mistake
Mistake #3: Not Having One Standard Format for Shift Handovers
A standard format for shift handovers is vital. It ensures that all employees know what to expect when they’re starting a new shift, and it reduces the chances of mistakes being made by either the employee or their manager. Having a formal process in place also helps you track how many shifts are handed over each month so that you can measure your progress over time.
Mistake #4: Poor Communication Between Employees
Communication between employees is one of the most important things you can do during a handover. Employees need to know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, which means clearly communicating with each other.
This is one area where managers often fall short—or even worse, don’t even realize how important this aspect of employee shift handover automation really is! In fact, many managers fail at communicating with their own employees altogether! It can be hard for them because there are so many different levels of hierarchy involved:
- Managers need to communicate with supervisors about how certain processes work.
- Supervisors also need to communicate with workers about those same processes (and any new ones).
Managers must also make sure that everyone understands the company culture and values, which means setting clear expectations around communication between employees as well as customers and suppliers.
Mistake #5: Lack of Control in Shift Handovers
When you’re handing over your team to someone else, it’s important to know what will happen. If you don’t, you can’t plan for how things might go wrong and how you’ll fix them. Here’s how to make sure that doesn’t happen:
- Handover early in the morning before the handover starts. This way, everyone knows exactly what they need to do when they come to work and can focus on doing those tasks instead of trying to figure out who will be doing what and where they need to be at any given time during their shift.
- Make sure your team knows who they are responsible for contacting if there is an issue or question with customers or vendors during their shift. And make sure that all employees know where they should go if there is an emergency or problem (like a fire alarm going off).
Mistake #6: Too Many Different Locations for Shift Handover Reports
Regarding shifting handover reports, there’s only one place that makes sense: the same location where you store all of your employee’s timecards.
Why? Because if you have multiple locations for data storage, then you are moving away from a single system of record for payroll. This means that even if you have great employee management software already in place—and I know you do—if you don’t also have a single location for all employee timecard data, it will be much harder to manage and control your payroll costs.
Mistake #7: Badly-Timed Shift Handovers
If you’re not careful, your shift handover can be a major time waster. Here are some tips for avoiding this mistake:
- Make sure that your handover happens at the end of the shift when everyone is on their way out and not before they start. If you have to have an early morning meeting, try to schedule it for later in the day when everyone has had time to get their head around what’s happening next shift.
- Don’t make people stay late so that they can do their handover with you or someone else onsite—the last thing anyone wants is an extra hour added onto their workday!
Mistake #8: Ignoring the Roles and Responsibilities of Each Employee Type
When you have a new employee on the team, it’s important to make sure that their role and responsibilities are clearly defined. This will help facilitate smooth transitions and reduce the chance of any confusion or resentment.
Here are some tips for ensuring each role is covered:
- Have a conversation with your new employee about their past experience working on similar projects, so you can get an idea of what they’re capable of handling. You can also ask them what they would like to do if they had more responsibility in this area or project
- Make sure that any other employees on your team who are currently handling this type of work don’t feel overwhelmed by having too much on their plate at once. If there’s a need for extra hands during these times, consider hiring an agency (or outsourcing agency)
Mistake #9: Not Training Your Team to Use Your New Standard Processes
This can be one of the easiest mistakes to avoid. If you have a solid standard staff shift scheduling software, it should take just a few days for your employees to learn and become familiar with the new processes.
You need to train your team on what they should do once they receive their handover report, but there are other things than just the document itself that are important as well:
- The manual should be easily accessible by all members of your team, so they can refer back to it if necessary.
- You should use training sessions and/or videos when explaining new processes (if appropriate). This gives you an opportunity to cover any issues in real-time and answer questions from staff members who might have them about how things work or why something is done a certain way.
Final words
We can’t stress enough how important it is to avoid these mistakes when it comes to shifting handovers. If you have a good standard format, your team can easily follow the process and understand what they are supposed to do.
You will also need everyone involved in your business to be on board with this change so that everyone knows exactly what is expected of them when working with others throughout the day. This goes for both new and existing employees who may not know about this new system yet!
