Manual scheduling is slow, error-prone, and draining for both managers and employees.
Managers relying on outdated scheduling practices struggle to meet rising organizational expectations without the time or tools they need.
According to Legion’s 2025 State of the North American Hourly Workforce report, 59% of managers spend between 3 and 10+ hours a week on scheduling. Over half report the same for time and attendance. That adds up to as much as 20 hours a week, which could be used for coaching, hiring, or helping the team hit their performance targets. Today’s teams expect flexibility, accuracy, and fairness, with the immediacy that has become expected in today’s digital world. Yet 39% of managers still rely on paper, spreadsheets, or basic software to build schedules, and 40% still text or call employees individually when shifts open up.
Many of these tools use static rules, manual inputs, and siloed data, leaving managers without a clear view of floor operations—the result: wasted labor hours, coverage gaps, compliance risks, and higher burnout.
The problem? Managers aren’t given access to tools that work. With the right AI-based workforce management software, businesses can solve both efficiency and employee engagement challenges.
Key Benefits of Automated Scheduling
Automated scheduling brings speed and brains to help solve any scheduling challenge. AI-powered tools eliminate guesswork, help avoid costly mistakes, and build schedules that work for both the business and its employees.
Improved Accuracy and Coverage
AI scheduling systems align staffing with actual demand by automatically factoring in availability, roles, preferences, skills, budgets, and productivity metrics when generating the labor plan and schedule.
As costs increase and margins shrink, retailers must ensure every labor hour directly contributes to sales and service.
With Legion, employee productivity is automatically calculated, and top performers can be automatically placed during high-impact times, ensuring maximum performance, conversions, and service quality. 84% of managers say they are interested in technology that identifies high-performing employees and schedules them during peak hours, according to our survey of 780 frontline managers across North America.
Less Time Spent on Manual Scheduling
Legion Automated Scheduling uses intelligent automation to streamline schedule creation. It seamlessly matches business needs with employee skills and preferences 96% of the time. Forrester’s Total Economic Impact (TEI) study on Legion WFM found managers saved 5 hours per week on scheduling after implementing Legion Automated Scheduling.
Intelligently automated scheduling gives managers more time for leadership and coaching and delivers the flexibility and control hourly employees crave.
Better Compliance, Lower Risk
Legion ensures compliant, predictable schedules with up-to-date templates, skill- and seniority-based shift bidding, and built-in schedule attestation with alerts, reports, and audit trails.
Compliance rules for U.S. and U.K. labor laws, predictive scheduling regulations, and union agreements can be applied automatically.
Legion’s compliance automation reduced overtime pay by 10% for the composite organization in the TEI study by preventing scheduling violations before they happen (Forrester TEI, pg. 13).
Higher Schedule Adherence and Fewer No-Shows
When employees shape their own schedules, they’re more engaged and reliable. Legion customers using self-service scheduling and Legion InstantPay features report lower rates of absenteeism.
Why a Strong Mobile Scheduling App Matters
In today’s digital, mobile-first environment, most hourly workers expect to manage work schedules and deal with scheduling changes on their mobile devices.
Nearly half of managers polled still text their employees when facing a last-minute scheduling issue. Texting adds stress to a manager’s already stressful job, and often has a slow resolution.
Legion’s 4.9-star-rated mobile app puts all scheduling, communication, and pay tools in one place, lowering stress and increasing efficiency:
- Work Preferences: Employees set availability, preferred locations, and shift lengths, which are automatically factored into the schedule before generation.
- Schedule Management: Self-service tools for swaps, shift claims, and availability changes that are automatically compliant with labor laws.
- Compliance & Consent: Timesheet views, break attestations, and schedule consent features help businesses meet regulatory requirements.
How Legion Automates Scheduling at Scale
Legion’s “Perfect Scheduling” framework combines:
- AI-based Demand Forecasting delivers automated, advanced forecasts that factor in a unique labor model and staffing policies. It accurately predicts demand in dollars, transactions, or foot traffic.
- Labor Optimization transforms accurate forecasts into optimized, compliant, compact labor plans with down-to-the-minute task-based modeling across every channel.
- Automated Scheduling instantly creates optimized schedules based on productivity, labor rules, budget, compliance, and employee preferences and skills—aligning business needs with employee preferences 96% of the time.
Key differentiator: Unlike competitors, Legion incorporates employee preferences before schedule creation during the optimization process, ensuring they are part of the labor plan.
An example of Legion’s automated scheduling in practice: Before Legion, ALDO Group managers created paper schedules by hand and posted them in stores for associates to photograph.
Communication ran through shared store emails, slowing responses and making it difficult for employees to swap shifts or receive timely updates.
With Legion, schedules are generated in minutes, factoring in availability, skills, and preferences.
Associates now manage shifts and time-off requests in the mobile app, and communication happens instantly through schedule-aware messaging. On-demand pay access boosted clock-in performance by 72% for Legion InstantPay users. (ALDO Case Study)
Smarter Scheduling, Stronger Teams
Automated scheduling is a shift toward data-driven labor management that benefits everyone. With the right platform, businesses can reduce costs, protect compliance, and give employees more control over their work lives.
Legion’s AI-powered scheduling is built for scale, speed, and satisfaction, helping organizations thrive while boosting employee engagement.
Want to see what automated scheduling could look like for your business? Book a free demo with Legion and explore how our mobile-first platform improves accuracy, saves time, and puts your people first.
