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Hi Kathy,
Ages ago at Pacific Science Center we used to create 15-minute schedules for daily assignments, shifts at a particular post would vary between 30 and 60 minutes. In the summer we had roughly 20-25 staff to cover demonstrations, exhibit interpretation, and a whole host of miscellaneous positions like information desk, theater usher, etc. This was all laid out upon a grid, times running in rows, specific duties in columns. We had a standard schedule for each day of the week that was used throughout the summer. It was pretty complex and was a pain to create, but once created it lasted the whole summer, usually. It helped that the staff were scheduled to work a set schedule throughout the summer, so each Monday had the same set of people running through the schedule. It also helped that everyone was trained to staff the miscellaneous positions. Years later the model was changed and a new schedule was written each morning after staffing levels for the day had been established. This seemed insane to me, but I was out of the program by this time.
The shiftboard software looks interesting, but could be difficult to deploy unless everyone had access to a smartphone or a computer at their stations. Our old-school schedules were photocopied on paper and each person carried a sheet of paper with the entire schedule for the day on it.
It would have been great to have had a computer application to handle the scheduling, but with so many variables I wonder if you'd save any time after defining the various parameters?
Good luck!
- Len
Len Adams
Health Promotion Specialist
Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department
3629 South D Street
Tacoma, WA 98418
253-798-6129
"The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the right questions." (Levi-Strauss)
-----Original Message-----
From: Informal Science Education Network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Fournier, Kathy
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 8:54 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [ISEN-ASTC-L] staff scheduling
ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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For those of you who schedule education staff on a routine basis...this is for you.
We spend an increasingly inordinate amount of time on schedules; daily, weekly; monthly. I am not speaking of when staff actually come into work but what they are assigned to do throughout the day. Our duties include, but are certainly not limited to, greeting groups, going on outreaches, operating our high cycle, presenting at our Shark and Ray touch tank, being present at specific exhibits, presenting reserved programming, presenting public programming, opening and closing certain areas of the museum, etc.
We have 12 full time and 3-5 part time staff, 14 or so college work study staff and our volunteer staff to help us cover these items above and more.
With so many moving parts and so much of it depending on who has been trained on what it can take many hours to make a weeks' worth of schedules. This falls to all of us, which takes a lot of time and coordination, but is concentrated to 2 or 3 managers. It is a frustrating job o the best of days and we have tried a few different ways of accomplishing this but always fall back to a SharePoint and hand written system.
Do any of you know of scheduling software that has been successful in scheduling museum education staff that takes into account all of the human variables? I am hoping there is a system that once the time has been put in on the front end, all staff entered, all items that need to be covered on any given day and what each staff is trained on entered that it would then magically create a schedule that we could live with. Or is this magical system called a program administrator? Which of course is not in the budget. :)
That isn't asking for too much is it? :)
Kathy Fournier
Vice President of Education
McWane Science Center
200 19th Street North
Birmingham, AL 35203
205-714-8254
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For information about the Association of Science-Technology Centers and the Informal Science Education Network please visit www.astc.org.
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