A schedule, often called a rota, is a list of employees

Employment

Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. An employee may be defined as:- Employee :...

 who are working on any given day, week, or month in a workplace. A schedule is necessary for the day-to-day operation of any retail store

Retailing

Retail consists of the sale of physical goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as a department store, boutique or kiosk, or by mail, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the purchaser. Retailing may include subordinated services, such as delivery. Purchasers may be...

 or manufacturing

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...

 facility. The process of creating a schedule is called scheduling. An effective workplace schedule balances the needs of employees, tasks, and in some cases, customer

Customer

A customer is usually used to refer to a current or potential buyer or user of the products of an individual or organization, called the supplier, seller, or vendor. This is typically through purchasing or renting goods or services...

s.

A daily schedule is usually ordered chronologically

Chronology

Chronology is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time, such as the use of a timeline or sequence of events. It is also "the determination of the actual temporal sequence of past events".Chronology is part of periodization...

, which means the first employees working that day are listed at the top, followed by the employee who comes in next, et cetera.

A weekly or monthly schedule is usually ordered alphabetically

Collation

Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. One common type of collation is called alphabetization, though collation is not limited to ordering letters of the alphabet...

, employees being listed on the left hand side of a grid, with the days of the week on the top of the grid.

A schedule is most often created by a manager

Management

Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...

. In larger operations, a Human Resources

Human resources

Human resources is a term used to describe the individuals who make up the workforce of an organization, although it is also applied in labor economics to, for example, business sectors or even whole nations...

 manager or scheduling specialist may be solely dedicated to writing the schedule.

A schedule by this definition is sometimes referred to as workflow

Workflow

A workflow consists of a sequence of connected steps. It is a depiction of a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person, a group of persons, an organization of staff, or one or more simple or complex mechanisms. Workflow may be seen as any abstraction of real work...

.

In some cases scheduling software

Employee scheduling software

Employee scheduling software automates the process of creating and maintaining a schedule. Such software will usually track vacation time, sick time, compensation time, and alert when there are conflicts. As a database of schedules are accumulated over time, it may analyze past activity and...

 is used to allow organizations to better manage staff scheduling. Organizations commonly use spreadsheet

Spreadsheet

A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...

 software or employee scheduling software to create and manage shifts, assignments, and employee preferences. Advanced employee scheduling software also provides ways to connect with the staff, ask for their preferences and communicate the schedule to them, via email or SMS

See also

• Shift work
  Shift work
  Shift work is an employment practice designed to make use of the 24 hours of the clock. The term "shift work" includes both long-term night shifts and work schedules in which employees change or rotate shifts....
  
  
• Graphical or at a glance staff scheduling
• Timebar scheduling
  Timebar scheduling
  Timebar scheduling is a method of staff scheduling that may be adopted by organizations with highly variable staff scheduling requirements.The primary advantage of timebar scheduling is that it makes it visually clear how many employees will be working or on break at any given time.To implement...
  
  
• Field Service Management
  Field Service Management
  Field service management is an attempt to optimize processes and information needed by companies who send technicians or staff "into the field" . Optimization is difficult, since it involves intelligent scheduling and dispatching of multiple technicians to different locations daily, while...
  
  
• Employee scheduling software
  Employee scheduling software
  Employee scheduling software automates the process of creating and maintaining a schedule. Such software will usually track vacation time, sick time, compensation time, and alert when there are conflicts. As a database of schedules are accumulated over time, it may analyze past activity and...