Schedule (workplace)

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An example of a weekly workplace schedule WeeklySchedule.png
An example of a weekly workplace schedule

A schedule, often called a rota or a roster, is a list of employees, and associated information e.g. location, department, working times, responsibilities for a given time period e.g. week, month or sports season.

Contents

A schedule is necessary for the day-to-day operation of many businesses e.g. retail store, manufacturing facility and some offices. The process of creating a schedule is called scheduling. An effective workplace schedule balances the needs of stakeholders such as management, employees and customers.

A daily schedule is usually ordered chronologically, which means the first employees working that day are listed at the top, followed by the employee who comes in next, etc. A weekly or monthly schedule is usually ordered alphabetically, employees being listed on the left hand side of a grid, with the days of the week on the top of the grid.[ citation needed ] In shift work, a schedule usually employs a recurring shift plan.

A schedule is most often created by a manager. In larger operations, a human resources manager or scheduling specialist may be solely dedicated to creating and maintaining the schedule. A schedule by this definition is sometimes referred to as workflow.[ citation needed ]

Software is often used to enable organizations to better manage staff scheduling. Organizations commonly use spreadsheet software or employee scheduling software to create and manage shifts, assignments, and employee preferences. For large organisations employee scheduling can be complex,[ citation needed ] and optimising this is framed as the nurse scheduling problem in operations Research. [1] Advanced employee scheduling software also provides ways to connect with the staff, ask for their preferences and communicate the schedule to them. [2]

On-call scheduling

An oncall shift, or on-call scheduling, is a practice that requires employees to be available to be called onto last-minute shifts without pre-scheduling. [3] In the United States, the practice has been opposed by labor rights groups as "unfair and detrimental to employees." [3]

Self-scheduling

Flexible self-scheduling is a practice used when a manager defines scheduling needs based on demand, but allows employees to select, trade, and fill shifts themselves. Allowing schedules to be created faster, with less effort, and gives hourly employees more control over their work life. [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

Management is the administration of organizations, whether they are a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body through business administration, nonprofit management, or the political science sub-field of public administration respectively. It is the process of managing the resources of businesses, governments, and other organizations.

Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include manpower, labor, or personnel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">24/7 service</span> Available 24 hours a day, seven days a week

In commerce and industry, 24/7 or 24-7 service is service that is available at any time and usually, every day. An alternate orthography for the numerical part includes 24×7. The numerals stand for "24 hours a day, 7 days a week". Less commonly used, 24/7/52 and 24/7/365 service make it clear that service is available every day of the year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Temporary work</span> Type of employment

Temporary work or temporary employment refers to an employment situation where the working arrangement is limited to a certain period of time based on the needs of the employing organization. Temporary employees are sometimes called "contractual", "seasonal", "interim", "casual staff", "outsourcing", "freelance"; or the words may be shortened to "temps". In some instances, temporary, highly skilled professionals refer to themselves as consultants. Increasingly, executive-level positions are also filled with interim executives or fractional executives.

Flextime is a flexible hours schedule that allows workers to alter their workday and decide/adjust their start and finish times. In contrast to traditional work arrangements that require employees to work a standard 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. day, flextime typically involves a "core" period of the day during which employees are required to be at work, and a "bandwidth" period within which all required hours must be worked. The working day outside of the "core" period is "flexible time", in which employees can choose when they work, subject to achieving total daily, weekly or monthly hours within the "bandwidth" period set by employers, and subject to the necessary work being done. The total working time required of employees on flextime schedules is the same as that required under traditional work schedules.

Shift work is an employment practice designed to keep a service or production line operational at all times. The practice typically sees the day divided into shifts, set periods of time during which different groups of workers perform their duties. The term "shift work" includes both long-term night shifts and work schedules in which employees change or rotate shifts.

A retail manager is the person ultimately responsible for the day-to-day operations of a retail store. All employees working in the store report to the retail/store manager. A store manager reports to a district/area or general manager.

Hot desking is a work office organization system where each space is available for any worker, rather than reserved for a specific worker, so different workers may use the same spot along the day or week. The "desk" in the name refers to a table or other work space being shared by multiple workers on different shifts as opposed to every staff member having their own personal desk. A primary motivation for hot-desking is cost reduction through space savings—up to 30% in some cases. Hot desking is especially valuable in cities where real estate prices are high.

Time-tracking software includes programs and applications that allows its users to record time spent on tasks or projects. Multiple industries utilize this type of software, including those that employ freelancers and hourly workers. These include lawyers, freelancers and accountants.

Workforce management (WFM) is an institutional process that maximizes performance levels and competency for an organization. The process includes all the activities needed to maintain a productive workforce, such as field service management, human resource management, performance and training management, data collection, recruiting, budgeting, forecasting, scheduling and analytics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Schedule</span> Planning of tasks and events

A schedule or a timetable, as a basic time-management tool, consists of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place, or of a sequence of events in the chronological order in which such things are intended to take place. The process of creating a schedule — deciding how to order these tasks and how to commit resources between the variety of possible tasks — is called scheduling, and a person responsible for making a particular schedule may be called a scheduler. Making and following schedules is an ancient human activity.

A virtual workplace is a work environment where employees can perform their duties remotely, using technology such as laptops, smartphones, and video conferencing tools. A virtual workplace is not located in any one physical space. It is usually a network of several workplaces technologically connected without regard to geographic boundaries. Employees are thus able to interact in a collaborative working environment regardless of where they are located. A virtual workplace integrates hardware, people, and online processes.

Employee scheduling software automates the process of creating and maintaining a schedule. Automating the scheduling of employees increases productivity and allows organizations with hourly workforces to re-allocate resources to non-scheduling activities. Such software will usually track vacation time, sick time, compensation time, and alert when there are conflicts. As scheduling data is accumulated over time, it may be extracted for payroll or to analyze past activity. Although employee scheduling software may or may not make optimization decisions, it does manage and coordinate the tasks. Today's employee scheduling software often includes mobile applications. Mobile scheduling further increased scheduling productivity and eliminated inefficient scheduling steps. It may also include functionality including applicant tracking and on-boarding, time and attendance, and automatic limits on overtime. Such functionality can help organizations with issues like employee retention, compliance with labor laws, and other workforce management challenges.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Break (work)</span> Period of time

A break at work is a period of time during a shift in which an employee is allowed to take time off from their job. It is a type of downtime. There are different types of breaks, and depending on the length and the employer's policies, the break may or may not be paid.

Employee monitoring is the surveillance of workers' activity. Organizations engage in employee monitoring for different reasons such as to track performance, to avoid legal liability, to protect trade secrets, and to address other security concerns. This practice may impact employee satisfaction due to its impact on the employee's privacy. Among organizations, the extent and methods of employee monitoring differ.

Workforce modeling is the process by which the need for skilled workers at a particular point in time (demand) is matched directly with the availability and preference of skilled workers (supply). The resulting mathematical models may be used to perform sensitivity analysis and generate data output in the form of reports and schedules.

Compensation and benefits (C&B) is a sub-discipline of human resources, focused on employee compensation and benefits policy-making. While compensation and benefits are tangible, there are intangible rewards such as recognition, work-life and development. Combined, these are referred to as total rewards. The term "compensation and benefits" refers to the discipline as well as the rewards themselves.

Occupational health nursing is a specialty nursing practice that provides for and delivers health and safety programs and services to workers, worker populations, and community groups. The practice focuses on promotion, maintenance and restoration of health, prevention of illness and injury, and protection from work‐related and environmental hazards. Occupational health nurses (OHNs) aim to combine knowledge of health and business to balance safe and healthful work environments and a "healthy" bottom line.

The nurse scheduling problem (NSP), also called the nurse rostering problem (NRP), is the operations research problem of finding an optimal way to assign nurses to shifts, typically with a set of hard constraints which all valid solutions must follow, and a set of soft constraints which define the relative quality of valid solutions. Solutions to the nurse scheduling problem can be applied to constrained scheduling problems in other fields.

Shift-based hiring is a recruitment concept pioneered in Singapore that hires people for individual shifts, rather than hiring employees before scheduling them into shifts. Originally, it was intended as an efficient way to schedule shift-based part-time work, but it is now known that this concept can be applied to any job that requires a number of consecutive hours of commitment as a shift. This hiring concept focuses on employing workers for a particular shift on that particular day, rather than focusing on employing a worker to work recurrent shifts that can become part-time or full-time work, although the latter can be a result of employing a worker to work shifts that run at the same timing periodically. Every shift or a group of recurring shifts may be a unique job posting.

References

  1. Math.edu "Nurse scheduling problem"
  2. Steven Greenhouse (October 27, 2012). "A Part-Time Life, as Hours Shrink and Shift". The New York Times. Retrieved October 28, 2012.
  3. 1 2 Sciacca, Annie (August 27, 2015). "Gap decides not to keep its store workers waiting". San Francisco Business Times . Retrieved August 28, 2015.
  4. "Innovative for Hourly Workers Workplace Flexibility Option" (PDF).