When it’s time to create your monthly driving school schedule, do you get intimidated? Does it take you countless hours to figure out the best ways? If so, you’re doing it the wrong way. Follow these driving school scheduling tips to save thankless hours spent on paperwork and put an end to all that frustration.
Determine work shifts first
The key to effective and efficient employee scheduling is to plan your shifts ahead of time. This should be your very first step when creating a master schedule. After determining your shift needs, then you can think about plugging employees and instructors into these shifts. This plan will ensure that you have the right instructors in the right cars at the right time.
Hire employees to fill your shifts
Now that you’ve determined the shifts for your master schedule, it’s time to hire your shift workers. You should also follow this scheduling plan for your office staff. Of all these driving school scheduling tips, this is the most important. During the interview process, ask your potential employees when they are available to work, and when they are not. For example, a driving instructor might not be able to work on Sundays.
Create a master list of when your employees can work. Next, plug them into your available shifts. If certain shifts aren’t covered, hire employees to work these specific shifts. Once you know everyone’s availability, you’ll save major time and eliminate frustration when it’s time to create a new monthly or weekly schedule.
Assess your resource pool
After creating your master schedule and filling your shifts, it’s important to assess your resource pool. Do you have too many instructors? Do you need to hire more? In a perfect world, you now have just the right number of instructors to cover all of your shifts. You don’t have to ask them when they can work because you already know. Bringing people onto your team who are a good culture fit for the company is also essential to success. Shoot for this gold standard.
Scheduling software makes changes a breeze
Employees value work schedule flexibility more than anything. That means that you have to create a major schedule that meets your staff’s needs and available hours but is flexible enough to make last-minute changes.
Yes, it’s entirely possible to set schedule boundaries that blend flexibility and predictability. There are lots of reasons why work availability can change: people get sick, family emergencies happen. If you use a technology tool, you can easily adapt your schedule at the drop of a hat without having to text/call/email your office and instructor staff.
There are probably three major reasons for instructor schedule changes-
If you decide to move forward with our schedule tips above, be aware that changes happen every day like,
Changes in demand – In the driving school industry, the summer months are the busiest. You may need a standby pool of instructors that can fill in at the last minute. If you turn down business in the summer, you’re turning down profit. Turn down too much business and your driving school won’t survive during the slower months.
Changes to employee availability – This is often the number one reason for schedule changes. Scheduling software that provides shift-swapping capability is critical.
Employee no-shows – Reacting to same-day situations, such as employees who are ill or fail to show up, is stressful. Call lists and text messaging often won’t find you a last-minute sub quickly.
Automate your schedules
With the right software, you can quickly create a master schedule and make changes even more quickly. Schedule, reschedule, cancel an appointment within a few taps, manage your online calendar every morning to know your agenda, manage your students and instructors with software, like Picktime streamlines the scheduling process, giving you more time to focus on driving sales and helping students.