jondotg

Hello TFPers,
I have recently been asked to hire 15 new employees (a process wholly new to me) and am having trouble scheduling them.
The old way (when there were a total of 8 employees instead of 18) was to put the semester's available shifts in front of them and just let them have at it. With all the new employees this doesn't work too well anymore.

I find myself in need of some kind of scheduling software. Our shifts are the same every week (bus driving: the routes don't change every week) so it is basically just a matter of filling up all the holes in my schedule.

Every program I have looked at is based on "so many days on / so many days off" but that does not apply. These are part-time students.

I don't know if I have explained myself very well, but if you understand what I mean, I would appreciate any recommendations you may have.

Thanks.

ASU2003

Could you make an Excel (or Open Office) Spreadsheet for each week (or day) listing the routes, then add in the names of the people who would drive them? Are your routes named or numbered?

Will the drivers be responsible for only one route or will they have to know a bunch of different routes? Are you trying to keep drivers close to their homes? Will this be on-line so the drivers can access it and see what their schedule is? Or are you trying to come up with something that says:

Driver A
----------------------

9/1 - Route 1
9/2 - Route 2
9/3 - Route 1

9/6 - Route 1
9/7 - Route 2
9/8 - Route 1

MiSo

when i used to be a restaurant manager, i had to write out the schedules. easiest way for me like stated above was to work out of excel. since i had all my shifts in front of me, all i had to do was plug in names.

if you're having difficulties scheduling because x person can't work during this day/time, well... that's just an issue you'll work thru after getting to know your employees.

we did eventually move to a program called Hotschedules but you'll need to subscribe to their services and i'm not sure if it'll adapt to what you need it for. we used it for the food service industry schedule. i'm not sure if it'll translate to your bus routing thing.
but it was a good program because once you put in your employee availabilities it only gave options to schedule people who were able to execute the shift.

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monkeysugar

When I was a student, I thought this was kind of a messed up way of scheduling. However, now that I am no longer a student, I agree with it. They supply their academic schedule/actual scheduling issues i.e. child care. You supply their work schedule based on that. If they show up to work, you train them and get a good employee. If not, you have a fairly ample pool of applicants to draw from. If the pre-existing employees have historically been good employees, give them precedence and priority on scheduling. If not, sucks to be them. Plug them in on their schedules. What I came to realize as a student and working with students is that their (and mine) perceived scheduling issues seldom are actually issues, it's just times that they'd rather not work. When it comes to being employed or not, priorities can change along with academic priorities being fulfilled as well. As far as software and spreadsheets go, sorry, can't help you there.

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snowy

I work as a manager for a small childcare operation that employs college students. I ask employees to provide me with their availability for the quarter, and plug that into an Outlook calendar. I plug all of the events we provide care for in another Outlook calendar. I then look at the two together and schedule my workers based on who's available. My most senior employees get more choice over their shifts/hours than my more recent hires, i.e. they can request a shift that they like working.

Using the Outlook Calendar Printing Assistant, I then print the Outlook calendar with the schedule to OneNote, which allows me to publish it as a PDF, which I then distribute to my workers via email. The Calendar Printing Assistant will give you a lot of different weekly options for printing if you need to do it on a weekly basis instead of on a monthly basis like I do.

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G~man

I used a company called Schedule Cafe, but it did not meet my constantly changing needs. Sounds like it might work for you...and best of all, it is free.

Can be found at schedulecafe dot com

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lslisa

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