How To Make a Schedule For Employees

Creating a work schedule that takes your employees’ needs as well as business objectives into consideration can be a real balancing act. A flawless work schedule that makes everybody happy is something many managers strive for, but some have more difficulty than others achieving that perfection. If that second person is you – no matter if you use a spreadsheet, the tried and trusted manual schedule, or automated software – your road to a great schedule requires you to keep a few important points in mind. Consider whether a compressed work schedule is right for you as part of your planning.

Why Employee Scheduling Matters

Before diving into the how of creating a schedule for employees, it’s important to understand why getting it right is so important:

• Labor costs typically represent 20–35% of gross sales for most businesses
• Poor scheduling leads to understaffing (lost revenue) or overstaffing (unnecessary costs)
• Employee satisfaction directly correlates with schedule flexibility and fairness
• Compliance violations from scheduling errors can result in significant penalties

What Should A Work Schedule Include?

First of all, the schedule you create should ensure that every shift is appropriately staffed for every role. As an example: Your restaurant probably doesn’t need two bartenders during lunchtime shifts, but you likely need at least two bartenders on busier weekend nights. Always make sure that you get these numbers right.

To make sure you’ve got the right amount of coverage, you need to keep an eye on business trends as well as events—both local and national—that could result an abnormal uptick in customers. Football games, theater performances and concerts are all events you need to keep track of. If the above referenced restaurant takes reservations, it’s important to keep a close eye on that list. There’s nothing quite like being unprepared when you don’t realize you’ve got a couple of party reservations booked for a normally slow weeknight… and you only have two servers on the schedule.

The second element of a good schedule is that it has to be error-free. Yeah, that seems like a “duh!” statement, but it’s a lot easier to make mistakes than to create the perfect employee schedule. These are a few of the most-made scheduling errors:

1. Double-booking a worker. Back to our restaurant: Watch out for an employee who sometimes works shifts as a greeter and also shifts as a server. Make sure you keep a close eye on names and not just jobs to ensure you don’t schedule the same employee for both jobs on a single shift.
2. Scheduling an employee for an incorrect job. Your line cook might be really great at what they do, but those skills don’t necessarily translate to grill cook. It’s important to not only check names, but also jobs so you don’t schedule someone for a job they’re not trained for.
3. Over- or under-scheduling an employee. Your full-timers should be scheduled with enough shifts to help them pay the bills, and your part-timers shouldn’t be burdened with shifts they can’t fill. Be sure to keep a close eye on each employee’s hours worked per week so you can manage labor costs and don’t get surprised by having to pay an hourly employee overtime wages.

If you can avoid these common scheduling errors, you’re headed in the right direction. But what else should you be doing to make sure you’re building the perfect schedule? Easy! The perfect schedule keeps you and your employees happy and also maximizes profits and productivity.

How to Create a Work Schedule for Employees

Creating an effective employee schedule requires careful planning and consideration of multiple factors. Here’s a step-by-step approach to make a schedule for employees that works for everyone:

Step 1: Analyze Your Business Needs

Start by understanding your operational requirements:

• Identify peak business hours and seasonal fluctuations
• Determine minimum staffing levels for each shift
• Consider skill requirements for different positions
• Review historical data to predict future needs

Step 2: Know Your Team

Understanding your employees’ needs is essential for creating schedules that work:

• Collect availability preferences from all team members
• Document any scheduling restrictions or accommodations
• Consider commute times and work-life balance
• Track certifications and skills for proper coverage

Step 3: Establish Clear Scheduling Policies

Set transparent rules that everyone understands:

• Define how far in advance schedules will be posted
• Create policies for shift swapping and time-off requests
• Establish overtime rules and fair distribution practices
• Ensure compliance with local labor laws and Fair Workweek regulations

Step 4: Build Your Schedule Framework

Start with a template that addresses your core needs:

• Create recurring shifts for predictable coverage
• Build in flexibility for variable demand
• Ensure adequate coverage during transitions between shifts
• Plan for breaks and meal periods according to regulations

Step 5: Optimize for Efficiency and Fairness

Fine-tune your schedule to balance multiple priorities:

• Distribute desirable and less desirable shifts fairly
• Minimize overtime while ensuring adequate coverage
• Consider employee preferences when possible
• Build in buffer time for unexpected absences

Step 6: Communicate and Publish

Make your schedule accessible and clear:

• Post schedules with adequate advance notice
• Use multiple communication channels to ensure everyone is informed
• Provide easy access through mobile apps or online portals
• Include all relevant shift details (time, location, role)

Step 7: Monitor and Adjust

Scheduling is an ongoing process:

• Track actual vs. scheduled hours
• Monitor labor costs against budget
• Gather feedback from employees and managers
• Adjust patterns based on business performance data

Common Scheduling Challenges and Solutions

Even with the best planning, scheduling challenges can pop up. Here’s how to address the most common issues:

• Last-Minute Call-Outs: Build a roster of on-call employees and use automated shift-filling tools to quickly find coverage.
• Budget Overruns: Implement real-time budget tracking that alerts managers when approaching limits.
• Compliance Violations: Use scheduling software that automatically flags potential violations before they occur.
• Employee Dissatisfaction: Provide self-service options for shift swapping and time-off requests to give employees more control.

When Creating Work Schedules, Start With These 6 Tips:

1. Build your shifts using your top employees. If you don’t know who your best workers are, you should make a list. Include traits like productivity, friendliness, experience, customer service skills, and how they work with other team members. Once you’ve created your list, build shifts around those key workers. This helps two-fold: First, it helps ensure that team members who are suited to each shift are working at those times. The employees who are most efficient should be scheduled during your rush times. They get stuff done fast! The friendly, chatty folks should get the slower shifts when customers tend to linger. Second, you can always be assured that you’ve got experienced team members working on each shift, creating a sense of stability.
2. Make sure you use team-wide communication tools. Of course, communication is crucial in any business, but in service industries, it can mean either having the appropriate number of employees covering a shift or being over- or under-staffed. Having a central location where employees can access their schedules; request, decline or change shifts; and notifications to all involved is key to a successful schedule. Everyone’s using the same tool so they’re all on the same page.
3. Send out work schedules quickly. Your employees need time to plan their lives around their schedules, so it’s important to be prompt. A good rule of thumb is to send out the new schedule at least two weeks prior to the end of the current one. The best way to distribute schedules is via a cloud-based app that’s accessible 24/7/365. Any changes are made instantly and are visible to everyone at the same time. This eliminates the confusion of having multiple iterations on paper or whiteboards.
4. Keep track of work preferences and time-off requests. This is an important part of scheduling (and a great reason to invest in time and attendance software). When you work with your team to make sure their work-life balance is good, you tend to retain your great workers longer. Along with the communication tools in #2, you should have a central location for work requests. You need to make sure that you’ve established guidelines around how employees submit requests and how far in advance requests should be made. You also need to determine what to do when multiple employees request the same days off. Do you take seniority, when the request was made, reason for the request or something else into consideration? Clearly outline these guidelines in your employee handbook.
5. Require employees to find their own substitutes. Allowing workers to find someone to cover their shifts when they can’t empowers them and takes a lot of work off of your plate. The team-wide communication system we mentioned earlier is a great tool for this. Of course, you’ll still need to set some guidelines to ensure no one takes advantage of the system, most importantly, making it clear that you still have final approval over all shift swaps.
6. Have back-up. Every manager knows there’s going to come a time when a shift swap doesn’t work out and you’re left with a hole in the schedule. Be sure to have a list of team members who are available to work on short notice.

How Paycor Helps You Make a Schedule for Employees

While manual scheduling is possible, modern workforce management solutions can dramatically simplify the process and deliver better results. Paycor’s comprehensive scheduling software transforms how businesses create and manage employee schedules.

Smart Scheduler: Your Automated Scheduling Assistant

Paycor’s newest innovation, Smart Scheduler, revolutionizes how to make an employee schedule by automating the entire process. This intelligent feature:

• Automatically generates complete schedules based on your predefined criteria
• Saves hours of manual scheduling time each week
• Optimizes coverage while respecting budget constraints
• Eliminates conflicts by considering all parameters simultaneously

Simply set your requirements—such as employee availability, budget limits, and minimum coverage needs—and Smart Scheduler creates an optimized schedule in minutes. What once took hours of juggling spreadsheets and availability requests now happens automatically.

Predictive Work Scheduling for Compliance

Stay ahead of Fair Workweek laws and other scheduling regulations with our Predictive Work Scheduling features:

• Set advance notice requirements and automatically track compliance
• Get alerts when proposed changes might violate regulations
• Automatically calculate and process penalties through payroll if violations occur
• Build employee-friendly schedules that meet legal requirements

Advanced Budgeting Tools

Keep labor costs under control with enhanced budgeting capabilities:

• Create and manage budgets by day or week, tracked by hours or cost
• Get real-time notifications when approaching budget limits
• Compare actual worked hours to remaining scheduled hours
• Make informed adjustments to future shifts within the same week
• Minimize last-minute disruptions while maintaining budget discipline

Labor Forecasting for Smarter Scheduling

Transform your business data into scheduling intelligence with Labor Forecasting:

• Import key metrics like sales data, foot traffic, or transaction volumes
• Generate data-driven staffing recommendations
• Identify patterns to optimize future schedules
• Reduce labor waste while ensuring adequate coverage

Integrated Time Off Management

Seamlessly handle time-off requests within your scheduling workflow:

• View time-off requests directly in the scheduling interface
• Approve or deny requests with full visibility of coverage impact
• Automatically block out approved time off in future schedules
• Give employees self-service access to submit requests

Additional Features That Streamline Scheduling

Beyond these major innovations, Paycor’s scheduling platform includes:

• Mobile access for managers and employees to view and manage schedules anywhere
• Automated notifications for schedule changes, shift reminders, and open shifts
• Shift swapping capabilities that maintain compliance and coverage
• Real-time reporting on labor costs, overtime, and attendance
• Integration with time tracking and payroll for seamless operations

Modern Scheduling for Modern Businesses

Learning how to make a schedule for employees effectively is important for business success. While the fundamental principles of good scheduling remain constant—balancing business needs with employee preferences while maintaining compliance—the tools available today make this process infinitely more manageable.

By combining best practices with powerful automation tools like Paycor’s Smart Scheduler and comprehensive workforce management features, you can:

• Reduce time spent on scheduling by up to 75%
• Improve employee satisfaction with fair, predictable schedules
• Maintain compliance with complex labor regulations
• Optimize labor costs while ensuring excellent service
• Make data-driven decisions about staffing needs

Ready to transform how you create employee schedules?

Explore Paycor’s Scheduling Software today!