<!––>Everyone knows that software developers don’t just program computers. What’s less obvious is how often they program human beings by writing software that tells people what to do and when.

In many situations, the extent to which a piece of software controls human behavior is quite limited. (Guess what happens when a fitness app says it’s time for a 30-second break followed by 30 push-ups – right at the end of a grueling workout. )

Advanced planning and scheduling (APS) software, on the other hand, does have a real impact on what people do.  It maximizes productivity by giving operators the right sequence of tasks. It plans optimal routes for drivers. And when someone calls in sick, it finds the best replacement and adjusts shifts to minimize any impact on operations. Whatever the task, APS optimizes the KPIs that are important to your business.

Which brings us to a KPI that has long been known to inspire productivity: employee satisfaction. Programming human beings is a huge responsibility, and a fantastic opportunity to optimize not just profitability but happiness. For example, a scheduling solution could enable employees to specify the relative importance of a request for time off. With this feature in place, when someone called in sick the software would automatically skip the father who asked for the afternoon off to attend his child’s soccer match (and marked it ‘important’), and choose the next most suitable colleague instead.

Employees are far happier when they have some control over how they are ‘programmed’, and the best kind of ‘people programming’ acknowledges this fact.

How good is your scheduling system at ‘programming’ your employees for the highest levels of productivity and job satisfaction? Take the workforce optimization challenge and find out!