Alberta Motor Association Reduces Scheduling Process

Alberta Motor Association needed a solution to eliminate paper-based schedules and enable its members to quickly create, edit, and publish new schedules. TimeSimplicity streamlined and standardized the employee scheduling process for multiple AMA organizations.

We recently completed a comprehensive study that showed 100% of the business using TimeSimplicity would not go back to the old way of doing things. That finding is a testament to the ability of TimeSimplicity to improve the way we schedule our employees. Now, I can’t even imagine scheduling at AMA without TimeSimplicity.

Challenge

The Alberta Motor Association (AMA) is a non-profit membership organization in Canada that serves customers in Alberta and the Northwest Territories. The AMA believes its members are practically family. This means that if customers are in a jam, need advice, or even a “shoulder to cry on,” AMA will always do its best to help customers get the most enjoyment from their travel and leisure time.

To operate a business that makes customers feel as if they’re part of a family, it’s critical to constantly evaluate and improve business processes. For example, when a motorist needs help, does a special service request quickly get from the call center to the person who can deliver what’s needed?

With about 2,100 people working across multiple business units including membership, travel bookings, insurance, vehicle registration, and roadside assistance, scheduling employees is a monumental task. For several years, the AMA examined various solutions to automate its paper-based time, attendance, and scheduling processes, yet none of the products were able to meet all of the organization’s needs.

Solution

Recently, AMA found the right solution to automate its time and attendance processes. During the rollout, TimeSimplicity was suggested as a way to automate the AMA’s scheduled workers and replace the various paper-based scheduling methods including wall calendars, spreadsheets, and word processing documents.

“After thoroughly evaluating TimeSimplicity, we determined it was just what we needed and was a great fit with our time and attendance solution,” said Erv Krawchuk, Program Manager, Business Process Improvement for AMA.

TimeSimplicity from SwipeClock is an advanced, cloud-based scheduling solution that eliminates over staffing, reduces overtime, quickly detects gaps in coverage, and identifies employees who are the best fit to cover open shifts. TimeSimplicity seamlessly integrates with leading payroll solutions as well as with SwipeClock’s time and attendance software—TimeWorksPlus and TimeWorks Mobile.”

Results

“I have learned the key to improving processes is to implement solutions that allows people to focus on doing their jobs, not on the tools they are using,” said Krawchuk. “In the past, schedulers were focused on creating, filling in, and updating various paper-based calendars—a very inefficient use of their time and converting those calendars to paper time sheets for data entry. Now, they can do more strategic work, which is critical in helping us deliver the family-like service we’re known for.”

For example, prior to using TimeSimplicity, it took the Roadside Assistant business unit one to two months to create a 42-month rolling schedule just for their team. Now, they can build a schedule for the entire year in less than one hour. “This really highlights the power of automation to significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to create and manage a complex process like scheduling,” said Krawchuk.

TimeSimplicity makes schedules available online and allows schedulers to notify employees via email or text messages when a shift has changed or a requested shift becomes available. This is a significant benefit for AMA. In the past, it wasn’t easy for schedulers to see if they had full coverage for the shifts they were responsible for. Now, they can see it all including pending time off requests. They can also see the impact that a time-off request would have on the overall schedule, allowing them to make informed scheduling decisions.

As an added benefit, TimeSimplicity allows AMA to implement standard business processes across the organization. In the paper world, people were making their own rules based on their understanding of what needed to be done and their group’s unique needs. With TimeSimplicity and its seamless integration into AMA’s time and attendance solution, these issues have completely disappeared because everyone is on the same system.

“We recently completed a comprehensive study that showed 100% of the business units using TimeSimplicity would not go back to the old way of doing things,” concluded Krawchuk. “That finding is a testament to the ability of TimeSimplicity to improve the way we schedule our employees. I can’t imagine scheduling at AMA without TimeSimplicity.”

See it in Action

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