Essential Scheduling Advice Every Successful Manager Needs to Know

A well-made schedule is your key tool in promoting and monitoring productivity. It helps you cut lost time, minimize absences, notice trends, and coordinate everything. That said, it’s a grind, and keeping everyone in the loop can be a challenge. Here are five ways you can make it easier.

Employees can and should contribute

When your team members request changes within reason, show some understanding and be flexible. Likewise, let them participate in putting together new schedules for, say, the new month or quarter. It helps employees feel appreciated while taking some of the load off of your shoulders.

If your team is trustworthy and reasonable, you might let them update the schedule themselves regarding the small day-to-day changes. Switching shifts is a great example. Let employees notify their team when they won’t be there for a shift. An available teammate takes it, and someone else does the same for them another time.

This way, all the work is done and you don’t have to deal with the hassle of personally arranging coverage in every situation. Of course, be ready to step in if it looks problematic. If nobody is picking up the dropped hours, if someone is abusing the system, or there is other friction, you need to identify the root issue and promptly troubleshoot.

Communication is key

When it comes to coordinating everyone’s time, there has to be open, clear, and timely communication. Firstly, everyone has to know what tasks are assigned to whom and where they fit into the overall process.

Secondly, everyone has to know when another team will be taking over so that they can prepare. Smooth transitions are a big part of effective schedule management. Keeping everyone on the same page also helps address staffing issues, delays, and the like.

The method of communication will vary with the type of work and the size of the team. Something like a notice board might suffice for a small startup. Group chats are great in office settings. Large companies might maintain their own platform with separate channels for departments and inter-departmental communication.

Technology is your best friend

Make the whole scheduling process easier on yourself by employing technology. There are several choices of dedicated business management software that make scheduling smoother for everyone. Look into apps and platforms tailored to managers who have to keep track of a team timeline.

Scheduling software keeps everything streamlined and greatly increases collaboration and productivity. Take some time to try different tools and find the one that best fulfills your requirements. Consider what functionalities your ideal scheduling program would have.

How far in advance do you assign shifts? Do you have deadlines instead? How is time off handled? How many holidays are employees entitled to in a year? How do they book those days? What about sick leaves, parental leaves, personal days, etc.?

A good tool will help you keep track of all the different factors that contribute to your scheduling dynamic, such as:

• Business volume
• Number of employees
• People’s availability
• Busy spikes vs. downtime
• Task deadlines
• Known holidays
• Unexpected absences (e.g. illness, emergency)

Schedule for the team, not vice versa

If people can’t fit the schedule you have planned, you haven’t planned a good schedule. It has to be tailored to your employees. Some factors to keep in mind include availability, personal strengths and weaknesses, everyone’s capacities, and specific skills.

If the nature of your work allows it, take people’s shift preferences into account as well. Try to schedule them during those times of day when they can contribute the most. For example, entrust the rush hours to team members who consistently excel under pressure. Leave the slower shifts to workers who don’t handle tension well, but show hyperfocus in a calmer environment.

Of course, people’s preferences and strengths may overlap. In that case, do your best to reach a healthy compromise. Try to provide everyone a fair opportunity to work in their preferred conditions. One popular approach is to rotate, e.g. everyone gets the quiet shift once a week.

Easy access is a must

Managers and employees alike must have quick, easy, and secure access to the schedule. Consider hosting it in the cloud and arranging a notification system to alert people when something changes.

Ideally, there would be a level of customization to it. Everyone gets notified of team-wide scheduling and their own tasks, but can turn off notifications for someone else’s shift swapping.

The main concern with all-access schedules is creating and sharing them in advance. Some team members may not see the changes immediately, but they still have to be able to plan ahead.

Try to put together and share any new schedule a few weeks before it’s supposed to apply. That way, if any changes suddenly become necessary, everyone will have time to catch up. Team members can adapt and you can redistribute the time and workload in the most optimal way.

Scheduling is a tedious task, but if you approach it the right way, it can be much more streamlined and effective. Utilize management software and cloud collaboration to stay on top of everything and keep everyone on the same page. Let team members contribute and self-regulate to a reasonable degree. Remember that the schedule should be tailored to the people, and maintain clear communication throughout.