A study promoted by Sesame points out the urgency of digitizing work shift planning and its direct impact on productivity. According to the report, which has had the participation of more than 570 HR managers. HH. In Spain, one in three companies in the country continues to organize shifts with Excel or shared sheets (34.9%), a practice that slows down productivity and operational efficiency.
The “Hot Topics RRHH” study, promoted by Sesame, a leading comprehensive software in talent and human resources management, together with its VP of Community & Growth, Tiago Santos, confirms that this form of organization remains widespread among Spanish companies, limiting productivity and the ability to adapt to increasingly dynamic work environments.
Operational inefficiency
The progress towards digitalization is uneven among companies, since only 31.6% of those surveyed acknowledge that they use a specific platform to plan shifts, while 6.3% say they do not have any tool. As a consequence, Sesame points out that this leads to greater exposure to overlapping errors, an inequitable distribution of hours and breaks, extra costs for unplanned overtime and poor traceability in the event of last-minute changes, which negatively affects daily productivity and increases the risk in inspections.
Furthermore, they warn that this management penalizes daily operations, complicates compliance with agreements and labor legislation and deteriorates the employee experience in environments with distributed teams, rotating shifts and demand peaks, directly affecting the productivity of the teams.
The report also places Artificial Intelligence as a declared priority for HR teams. HH. (71%), ahead of culture and commitment (54%) and People Analytics (48%), although its practical adoption is still incipient: only 15% use it regularly in processes such as recruitment, 30% in some phases and 43% have not yet taken the step.
Strengthen operational productivity
Making the leap from spreadsheets to specialized solutions allows you to parameterize agreement rules and legal limits, balance workloads with objective criteria – key to improving productivity -, automate coverage, exchanges and notices, and connect planning with time registration and payroll management to eliminate mismatches and reinforce operational productivity. In addition, it centralizes information with permission systems and change auditing, improving data security and quality to make decisions in advance and sustain long-term productivity.
35% of Spanish companies continue to manage employee shifts with Excel or shared sheets
“Planning shifts with Excel in 2026 is like managing production without inventory: it is possible, but at the cost of efficiency, equity, productivity and legal certainty. Companies that professionalize this function gain operational time, reduce errors and improve predictability for teams,” says Tiago Santos, VP of Community & Growth at Sesame HR.
