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A staff scheduling system that boasts to do everything will prove not to be the case, and may be over-engineered to deliver an outcome that can be delivered at much less cost. A better approach may be to give managers the tools and workflow necessary to promote good scheduling practice and let them get on with it – after all they will know better than most what the business needs.

With the right software providing the workflow, a good understanding of scheduling soon follows. Staff numbers and how they are distributed over time is the basis of all that is required for producing good schedules. A few good rules consistently applied will usually outperform a more complex system with many rules that tries to capture more.

The following are some items to keep in mind when thinking about how to go about defining workforce scheduling strategy:

• You need to be able to at least calculate staff by head count, job title or a combination of both, if this can include working hours and financial cost totals for the staff/job title numbers that is probably more than enough for monitoring the cost of your scheduling strategy.
• You need to be able to see how your staff are distributed over a timescale at least by headcount numbers. If you can zoom timescale information and compare distribution between sub-groups e.g. job title and/or teams this would add a further dimension how you think about your scheduling goals.
• Workflow is essential for a structured and disciplined scheduling strategy. If flexibility means doing what you do differently every time you do it then get rid of it. A principled workflow will support a structured approach that will save both time and money in the long run.
• If working and scheduling rules can be designed to automate and scale up scheduling this will be a real time saver and remove repetitive scheduling tasks. If this can be carried out without programming skills this will be a huge cost advantage in project time and consulting fees. More importantly it means it can be used by anyone with basic computer skills.
• Communicating scheduling information is as important as doing it in the first place. Publishing schedules to the web mean universal access from anywhere in the organization and email means it will get communicated more directly and faster than traditional paper systems.
• Finally scheduling activity generates a large amount of information about the function of the business. Make sure you can generate management reports that can help think about future scheduling strategy. If you can export the data in formats that can be used in other software applications that would be another bonus.

A good staff scheduling system will enable the conscientious manager to get involved, think further and act faster for both the benefit of the Business and the Team.