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Obviously, every scenario is going to be different, however there are a few principles

that need to be followed that will help in every scenario.

 

Strategy is vital. You need to know what you want as a business and how you are

prepared to achieve it. Business growth is critical, if you are forecasting business

growth in your business plans, then it must be reflected within this strategy, as if you

grow as you propose, and you do not have the right strategy in place then you are

setting yourself up for a bump.

 

Planning is the next vital step. The natural conversation from the strategy session is

the planning, the strategy is all about the theory of what you would like to happen,

but it is the planning that starts to make it happen. At this point the Workforce Plan

needs to reflect the people that are required to deliver your business plan and the

growth element within it. Recruitment is a key activity during this stage and the

approval and authorisation for heads needs to be sought.

 

Terms and Conditions This is the third step, but is relevant within the first two

steps, as if this step is out of line then the other seven steps will be hard to achieve

or very expensive to achieve. The most cost effective, efficient schedules /Rotas / Rosters are ones where the terms and conditions are aligned. Step six is all about flexibility and if the T&C’s are wrong then steps five and six will be useless. If you are a progressive developing company, then your workforce needs to progress and develop with you. Keeping up to date with T&C’s must be done in conjunction with your progression. Not aligning these two critical paths with cost money and efficiency.

 

Coverage is the next subject. It follows naturally after the first three steps as you

should now know, what your business needs to achieve and when it needs to be

achieved. You should know who your customers are going to be and when they

operate. It is pointless having everyone in 8-4 Monday to Friday if your customers

 

work 10-6 Tuesday to Saturday. Working out the busiest time of day is critical at this

point too, making sure your people are where you need them, when you need them.

 

Structure is the fifth element. Collating all the intelligence that you have learned

from the first four steps, you now need to start to build your structure to embed all

the principles collated. Structure is key! Especially if you are a seven day a week

operation. If you employ thirty people and you operate seven days a week you don’t

want to have twenty-eight of them in Monday to Friday and only leave two to cover

Saturday and Sunday. (Unless that is reflective on your business activities/tasks).

The structure is key to your business model, the first four steps should give you

enough information to make the decisions you need, during this phase.

 

Flexibility is number six and counting. As mentioned above, step three is key to the

realising the potential of this step. If you get it wrong in step three, then there is no

benefit to this step. This is the step where you start to save some money and get the

maximum productivity out of your Workforce. Likewise, it is the step where you can

get the reverse. Flexibility is key to your company’s success and progression, a

flexible Workforce, works well and efficiently. This flexibility works both ways too, if

you want flexibility from your Workforce, then you should be prepared to give it as

well.

 

Flow All  Schedules Rota’s / Rosters need to flow, again especially if you are a multishift seven-day operation. You can’t have three shifts in force over seven days if they don’t

progress from day to day and week to week. A week of nights cannot go straight into

a week of mornings. Likewise, you can’t have a night shift followed by a rest day

then go into a morning shift. Although you might not be a regulated industry,

adopting regulated industries practices are generally good practice, I agree you

might not want to adopt the restrictive elements, but the work-life balanced ones are

good to have. This must be realistic with cost though. I do not support doing this if it

is at a cost to your business without any business benefit or return. (Step three is

applicable here too)

 

Contingency What are your contingency plans? How are you going to deal with,

Holidays, Sickness, Resignations, Promotions etc. Coverage for contingency is vital

to the smooth operation of your business. I f you know six people are going to be off

every week, how are you going to deal with that? Do you need extra people built in

at the Planning and Structure stages? Do you need a General-Purpose Relief cycle

to cover the absence? Or are you happy to just cover it on overtime? These are all

points that need to be explored and agreed before the day so there is a Contingency

plan, ensuring everyone knows what it is and what part they play in it.

 

Delivery All your hard work is now about to be realised. You have gone through the

pain of ensuring the Strategy is right, then put a plan together based on the Strategy,

you have considered the T&C’s, adapted the coverage, built the structure, made it as

flexible as possible, worked the attention to detail ensuring it flows, added some

contingency and signed it off for delivery.

 

This is where it all kicks in. You now (Hopefully) have the right people in the right

place at the right time. Working as efficiently and as cost effectively as possible.

Delivering the business aims and objectives and making your customers happy. It is

at this stage that you now need to capture the data. You have put a base structure in

place to get you here, but now the real-time reality is somewhat different. Deviation

from the base plan is where the nightmare of administration comes in. Capturing the

actual data of what happened. Is this a manual process or is it automated? Manual

processes are costly and not as accurate as they should be, at this stage an

automated process is critical to cost efficiency and accuracy.

 

 

And Finally – Continuous Improvement....

 

Continuous Improvement is not as bad as it sounds, especially if your processes

are automated, because it is with this data you are looking to see if any

improvements can be made, this can be highlighted automatically, and can be

reviewed realistically with the presentation of facts.

 

Facts are a wonderful thing, they tell you what is happening, they do not make up

any stories, they just report on what took place. Decisions should always be made

on the information and evidence available, facts provide that. The art of continuous

improvement is not to reinvent the wheel, but just inflate the tyres a little bit more. If

the wheel is not fit for purpose, then sourcing another one is obviously an option that

needs to be considered. But if all the above is working as it should be then the

continuous improvement cycle should allow you to make a few tweaks to oil the well-

designed cogs.

 

The processes above are supplying you with lots and lots of data, analyse this data

and be reactive within your continuous improvement cycles, you are not changing

something that’s is wrong, you are just changing something that is just not right.

 

Don’t change for the sake of changing but for a realisation of benefit to your

company to achieve the goals you set out with.

 

That is what we believe are the 10 steps to making a good schedule / Rota / Roster.

 

For more information, please don’t hesitate to contact us.