The perfect schedule is every manager’s dream. All shifts covered, all tasks in the best hands, productivity is soaring and everything is getting done before the deadline. In reality, there are hiccups all along the way. Here are a few pro tips to make that journey a lot smoother.

Identify past problem areas

Your perfect work schedule has to build on the imperfect ones you had before. Analyse them to identify common bottlenecks, frequent problems, and overall behaviour patterns of your team members. That way your new schedule can be better aligned with everyone’s expectations.

Strive to pinpoint the mistakes in past schedules. They will tell you why changes had to be made and what improvements you have to make now. To ensure optimal compliance with your perfect schedule, be prepared to analyse it as well. It may take you several iterations to reach the ideal setup.

Identify team strengths and weaknesses

This applies both to the team as a whole and the individuals that make it. Your job as a manager is to know everybody’s unique strong points and how they can function towards a common goal.

Outline a list or a table with each team member’s:

• name,

• position,

• one thing they excel in,

• one thing they’re dreadful at, and

• (if you can) other areas in which they perform noticeably well or noticeably poorly.

You could also have an auxiliary list or table of skills and abilities that the business demands. That way you can immediately see who fits where in the process and tailor project teams that are suited to each job.

Utilise scheduling technology

Companies worldwide rely on management tools to make the scheduling process easier and more efficient. For example, if you look at the results of the various job scheduling software Australia has implemented you can notice a sharp increase in productivity. Those businesses are taking advantage of dedicated technology to streamline their time management and improve results across the board.

Join the trend! Scheduling software lets you keep track of:

• availability,

• weekly and monthly shifts,

• sick leaves,

• holidays,

• emergencies,

• life events, etc.

In addition, you can track business volume, idle time, overlooked uncovered shifts, and various other factors. With all relevant scheduling data in one central hub, sharing, coordinating, and timely updating become much easier.

Assign the appropriate people

Commit to the principle of “the right person for the job and the right job for the person”. Utilise your skill set table in the scheduling process for each project by identifying the right employees for every step.

First, establish what skills are needed for the whole project. Then select team members who are both proficient in those skills and available to work at that time. Choose people whose abilities complement each other so that the whole “project skills” list is covered.

Assign everybody’s expected contributions based on their strengths. Select a few from the team who are prudent and proactive. These employees will be the coordinators who handle the most critical tasks.

Layer your backups

In addition to knowing the ideal employee for each job type, you need to know which team member might replace them when needed. Maybe your first choice has to handle an emergency in another project, or they’re sick, or otherwise unavailable. In these cases you have to have another employee lined up.

You don’t want to wait for an emergency to happen to start looking for a backup. Effective crisis management heavily relies on smooth transitions, and you can’t achieve that if you’re scrambling for people.

There are two proactive strategies you can adopt:

• have shift workers or part-timers to fill in as needed, or

• assign backup roles to employees on lower-priority jobs.

Likewise, have a backup for your backup. For critical assignments, you want to make sure work will go on even if your Plan B person can’t come through. Having a plan C lined up ads a layer of security to the most important aspects of a given project.

So to sum up, creating the perfect work schedule for your team comes down to analysis, strategising, and optimisation. Have a clear list of each team member’s strengths and weaknesses so that you can always assign the best person to the job. Have backups for emergencies. Have backups for your backups in case of a crisis.

Take advantage of tech tools to keep track of everyone’s availability and make updating on the fly easier. Finally, make sure everyone knows the schedule well in advance, so that you have breathing space for sudden adjustments.