March 14, 2014
Scheduling is a big part of being a SINC Site Manager (SM). Celia (SBS), Danny (RR) and Nam (FA) came into this week’s seminar to teach us the Do’s and Don’ts of scheduling.
We were given an activity that will introduce us to the difficulties of assigning shifts to students who have a certain amount of availabilities and also making sure we meet the requirements for each student.
We had to organize everyone on a chart to create a schedule that fit everyone’s availability, make sure they all had at least 8 hours, and make sure opening and closing shifts were set. It was a lot of work and we only scheduled for 8 students. It is hard to imagine the amount of time it takes for all the Site managers to schedule every consultant (>50)
We had a glimpse of the behind the scenes of scheduling but I can break down what we learned today in a few bullet points:
- Team work: In order for all the site managers to schedule everyone in their sites, they all have to work as a team to make sure there are no mistakes.
- Accountability: This goes under the umbrella of team work. This basically means that each site manager has to make sure to keep their list of consultants updated and make sure they do not overlap with any one else.
- Keep it Professional: Do not promise friend’s anything when it comes to hours.
- Do not procrastinate: This will save SM lots of time at the end when he/she needs to organize the hours.
- Be Serious: In regards to emails, it is very important to be serious in them and to make sure that consultants read the whole thing as well as listen to the directions in the email.
These points are very important because they keep the ball rolling. Everyone has to work together and everyone has to be sure of the times they are working (for the consultants). This day has definitely made me understand the difficulties of scheduling but it is a challenge. I can relate to this lesson because I schedule my days, weeks, months and I thought how important it is to have this kind of skill.
I also learned that scheduling is a lot like solving a puzzle.