Tips on scheduling

[videoguru]

Could some of you give me ideas how you go about scheduling your paid, part-time personnel during the week. We have 4 Media Assistants, 3 in college one high school, with varying availability. My boss and I are having issues on how we can get these guys on somewhat of a routine schedule. Our problem is that the weekly setups vary in intensity and quantity and stuff comes up last minute despite having a two-week notice policy. We like to have someone here each day because they are useful to do little things that come up in our day that would cause us full-time media staff to lose an hour or so of work.

How far in advanced are people scheduled?
How do you handle last minute requests, (couple hours to a couple of days notice) while being fair to your employees?
Are sundays and Wednesday night activities volunteer or paid?

Would it be beneficial to schedule people by tasks rather than time fram, such as: on person that does setups one week, another doing tear down, flip flop ocassional, someone coming in for 2 to 3 hours a day to do little things: tidy up, last minute setups, etc...?

Thanks for your input. I imagine answering might be difficult due to our ministries and needs being different, but I have zero administrative experience, so any insight or wisdom you have learned is appreciated.

-videoguru

[tdangelo]

Every church that I have been on staff with or volunteered with have had multiple Saturday / Sunday and mid-week services. A volunteer / part-timer would be dedicated to a particular service time. So, one guy would always do Saturday evening, a different guy would always do Sunday 8AM, someone else Sunday 10AM, someone else Sunday 12N, someone else midweek.

This would go on every week.

Personally, I would prefer to work Saturday evening, Sunday 8AM, Sunday 10AM and Sunday 12N all in one weekend and then be off for as many weeks as the quantity of techs will allow for in rotation. I also think this type of tech scheduling makes sense regarding content as the likelihood is (at the churches I have attended) that the same worship team and Pastor will be teaching at these services as well. I think the outcome would be better by not changing techs every service.

[tpichler]

I have seen some advantages with Tom's desire to have a shorter more saturated responsibility.

I concur that it does allow some improvement in quality as the weekend progresses. I also think that it helps your time off to be more "real". It also seems to improve situation cross training. The problems that occur at one service are not always the same type of problem that occur in another service. I think it is important to not get so comfortable in a certain slot that a person can not comfortably cover another slot.

However on our tech team I have also noticed that cadence matters. A volunteer who has been off for 6 weeks is more likely to make mistakes than one who was off for only 2 weeks. The quality improvement here is not within a weekend but within a season.

In my 15 years as a tech director I was never able to get these 2 scenarios to co-exist to my total satisfaction. I will add that we are 100% volunteer run tech support for approximately 600 attenders over 3 services per weekend. We schedule 4-6 weeks in advance based first on family schedules and next on skills required for any special activities. We accept changes down to the last minute including changes after the service has started.

I have never tried the task based system you outlined. If you try it please post highlights of your experience. I'm really interested in the number of job classifications and how that impacts the complexity of recruiting. My first impression is that it may make that easier too.

[videoguru]

I appreciate both the posts so far, and they are not irrelevant, but i feel like i need to clarify the situation.

Our "Media Assistants" I am trying to schedule are not the same as our tech teams. We have a volunteer pool for our big services in the worship center as well as mid-week practice/service.

These guys are our part-time staff, they setup TVs in Sunday school rooms as requested, project/PA setups, ProPresenter for small meetings, they run our college and Celebrate recovery weekly events b/c of the type of event. My boss may also request special tasks: picking up/delivering graphics, setting up display booths/signage, inputting sermon notices into ProP, Etc... There is quite a bit each week.
Pastoral assistants are suppose to request the A/V need 2-weeks ahead of time. Our guys setup their need and run it if needed.

When I started in their position, I was the only one, I came in each day, got a to do list from my boss, and did that, when i was finished, I left or worked on special projects which at the time was editing video.

Now I am the Media Manager/Video Director, and we have 4 guys I have to manage. This system does not work as well b/c we never know when they are going to be here, they are not here consistently to deliver new info to each of them at the same time, and they are not motivated enough to work with playing on the computer or working slowly. They don't want it, but they need a rigid schedule they have to adhere to. But as we all know, things come up in the real Media world, and so what system would work to help give them rigidity as well as leaving room (like an on-call) for special - last-minute needs??

Sorry to be so needy, just wanted to clarify.

[tdangelo]

Originally Posted by tpichler

A volunteer who has been off for 6 weeks is more likely to make mistakes than one who was off for only 2 weeks.

Very good point.

[tdangelo]

Originally Posted by videoguru

But as we all know, things come up in the real Media world, and so what system would work to help give them rigidity as well as leaving room (like an on-call) for special - last-minute needs??

As far as the last minute needs thing ... what I do at work (not church, but I think it could be successful there as well) is to have a cell phone and number dedicated for emergency calls. Each member of the department carries the phone for a week at a time before it goes to the next team member for a week in a specific order. It is understood that if it is your week to carry the phone you either need to handle the emergency call (if any) or if necessary call your supervisor if you cannot handle the emergency.

I have found this is the best way to make sure that emergency calls are addressed quickly without buring out any one person with emergency duties. The cost of the cell phone and minutes should be a easy sell to managment considering the increased level of service it brings.

[cgerrish]

Have you heard of CCB, it has a volunteer scheduling module