Staff Scheduling

Checklist for staff scheduling:

Schedule is due on Wednesdays at 6pm. If it will come out after that, make sure that an email is sent to paidworkers@

Each Year

Make sure all holidays are in the database for the next year.

Done for 2012 RfS 01:26, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Each Month

Make sure all meetings from the Perpetual Meeting Calendar are correct for the upcoming month.
- Note that weekly meetings are pretty easy to maintain. Also meetings occurring on specific weekdays of the months (third Thursday, second Tuesday, etc.) are also easily maintained. Any others would need to be handled as one-off meetings.
- Do check regular attenders for new and exiting staff members.

Each Week

(The schedulers may want to print out this section and manually check off each step.)

Figure out the beginning and end of the new week. Weeks begin on Mondays and end on the following Sundays. Write these dates down here:
- Start Date: ________________________.
- End Date: ________________________.

Look at the ongoing schedule

Are there new people that need to be put on the schedule? Put them on the ongoing schedule.
Review all tickets in schedule RT queue:
- Make sure all ongoing changes have been addressed (wherever possible). These are usually a. tickets
- Make sure all vacation tickets in RT have been approved or denied, and add approved ones to the vacation list in the scheduling software. These are usually v. tickets
- Make sure all one-off meeting tickets in RT have been added to the meeting list in the scheduling software. These are usually m. tickets
Generate a tentative schedule for the new week.

Look at the generated schedule

Review the tentative schedule and run the problems report.
- Are any problems of an ongoing nature? (Fix them on the ongoing schedule and re-generate.)

Check for sanity by area.
- Review Recycling schedule.
- Review Front Desk schedule. Two people at all times.
- Review Thrift Store schedule. Two people at all times. Three people to account for break coverage in afternoons on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
- Review Receiving schedule. Two people at until at least 3 pm.
- Are any of these problems of an ongoing nature? (Fix them on the ongoing schedule and re-generate.)
If the week ends and/or begins a month, schedule inventory shifts.
Check Offsite Donations Schedule and add the scheduled offsite donation worker.
Re-review tickets in schedule RT queue:
- Fix any one-off changes that have not been dealt with above. These are usually b. tickets. (This could generate more shifts with "nobody" assigned to them.)
The tentative schedule is now the actual schedule, albeit with holes in it.
Delete certain non-floor shifts that have no workers (mostly admin- and project-type shifts) from the new schedule. These are shifts that are not worth filling when someone is away.
Fill remaining empty shifts with available staff people first, before calling for substitutes or eliminating floor work.
- This will require splitting some shifts and implementing some trades.
Run the problems report again. Make sure everything is fixed.
Double-check for sanity by area (see above list).
Print an error-free version of the problems report for posterity
Print a hard copy of the actual new schedule for posterity
Roll out the schedule to the end date of the period. This should be done by 6pm on Wednesday.

Each Day

Early in the day, check for people calling/emailing in being sick.
Change any shifts that are now uncovered due to absences to worker = Nobody.
Delete certain unstaffed non-floor shifts (as above).
Fill empty shifts with available present workers first, then use substitutes or eliminate floor work as needed. Contact workers who have been re-scheduled to alert them.

When you must delete a floor shift

If volunteers are involved, check with the area coordinator.
- Maybe volunteers can still come in, but need some minimal support.
- Maybe volunteers need to be notified that their shifts are canceled (contact Front Desk to cancel shifts).