Get Organised: 5 Ways To Make Staff Scheduling Easier

No two people are the same. When you’re managing your workforce, this comes to light in all manner of different ways. One of the biggest challenges is staff scheduling: knowing who can do what and when, and how long it’s going to take them to do it to the best standards!

Get things wrong and you’re likely to get your staff in a muddle, wasting valuable time and resources, whilst impacting on the overall business productivity. It’s imperative that you make every effort to make staff scheduling easier within your organisation – to ensure that you get the most out of every single member of staff.

Today, we’re focusing on five methods you can use to make things easier on yourself, and your staff.

1. Plan weeks in advance

Your projects aren’t going to organise themselves – you need to have a cogent strategy in place for what each person brings to the business, along with a decent assessment of the time they should spend on it.

Leaving things to the last minute is a recipe for disaster! Use some foresight and start planning well ahead: think about what needs to be done, consider your resources and staff skills, and think about the timescales. By planning in advance, you’ll have a clear plan to follow at the start of each and every week – driving efficiencies in your business.

2. Set mini deadlines for accomplishments

Splitting tasks, projects and any other work into stages and setting clear deadlines for each segment will help to make things much easier.

Think about all the elements of each piece of work, and split them down – marking out easy to follow steps and milestones towards a clear end goal. Splitting things down doesn’t just make them easier to organise, it will also make them seem easier to accomplish.

Once staff members can see what they’re aiming for piece by piece, they’re more likely to understand how each part of the puzzle will best come together. Discussing and reviewing each step once it’s reached will give your team a real sense of accomplishment, whilst giving you a better idea of how to motivate each individual.

3. Maximise visibility and empower your team

Communication is king! Keep your team in the loop and make sure everyone knows what everyone else is doing on a project – that way, you can effectively manage everyone’s time, improving organisation and driving efficiency in your business.

If you have a digital rota planner, or a time-tracking tool, then it’s never wise to leave someone out of the loop. Do the rounds with your workers, and make sure they have every account, password and access right they need. Not granting everyone the same visibility will breed resentment, whilst sending waves of confusion and scheduling problems through your organisation!

4. Communication is key

It’s good to talk – and having a proper sit down with each of your staff members to understand their skillset, the jobs they enjoy and the times of day when they’re most productive can help to shape your scheduling, and deliver benefits across your organisation.

If you can, being flexible with working hours can deliver real dividends – allowing your staff members to work flexi-time (as long as they work the same amount of hours), can improve productivity, staff wellbeing and efficiency. One worker may do exceptionally well in the morning, whereas another could work better in the late afternoon or evening.

5. Use digital scheduling aids

The right online scheduling tool, like Schedule It - will make everything easier! Bringing everything together into a single platform will improve your ability to share assignments and setting staff deadlines with everyone in the team, so you can maintain maximum visibility and control over your workflow.

That last point is what Schedule It does so well – compiling everything of importance, along with ‘active’ and ‘least active’ resource generators. Although these five tips are all worthy boosts to your organisation, our software is a big asset to teams of all sizes, including those with remote workers.

Take a look at our full list of features, and take the first steps towards eliminating time-wasting in your organisation today!