If you run a remote team with members located across different time zones, then you know the importance of scheduling firsthand. Proper scheduling helps you deal with capacity concerns in your operations and enhances the quality of your overall service.

If you make the wrong decisions, you could sabotage these aspects of your business.

Clearly, scheduling is a delicate balance. To help you stay on top of your workforce’s timetable, here are a few scheduling tips that can help grow your fledgling company.

Tip #1: Know your business

You won’t be able to properly schedule your workforce unless you’re intimately familiar with your business. There are several factors you’ll need to consider, including the following:

• Your company’s peak hours, days and months
• Your workers’ pay rates
• Your staffing budget

For example, if you run an e-commerce site with a global customer base, you need to know when you get the most traffic, how many queries you usually receive during these times, and if you can afford to hire several virtual assistants so you have someone available in more than one-time zone.

Tip #2: Cover the peak hours

Make sure that you always have someone in your team available during your operations’ peak hours, especially on important and busy days. Doing so will ensure you won’t miss out on opportunities to answer questions or make a sale (or three).

If you can help it, don’t let your team take their break during the same times in peak hours. This leaves a gap in your ability to service customers. Imagine missing out on possible leads or sales when you don’t have enough people to answer queries.

Tip #3: Know your employees

Having a good schedule isn’t just about addressing your startup’s requirements. It needs to serve your employees as well. You need to take several aspects into account, such as:

• Life schedule and shift availability of individual team members.
• Work preferences.

Try to give each employee their preferred work hours as this can affect their performance (e.g. some are night owls, others work best during mornings).

Tip #4: Offer shift options

To give your remote assistants more flexibility, offer them scheduling options such as split, extended or part-time shifts. Here’s the difference between each:

• Split shift – A split shift is a regular workday split into two (or more) parts by an extended unpaid period. They’re great for schedules with slow periods in the middle of the shift.
  
  
• Extended shift – An extended shift incorporates more continuous hours. This can be used to maximise your resources, but it can debilitate your staff if implemented for long periods.
  
  
• Part-time shift – This refers to any schedule less than full-time employment. This gives you flexibility to increase hours during peak seasons and decrease hours during slow ones.

Work the details together with your remote team so that when time comes and one of them asks for a different shift, you can adjust easily enough.

Tip #5: Stagger lunch breaks

Instead of giving team members one hour-long break, consider breaking it up into three 20-minute breaks. A 15-minute break should be enough to reduce fatigue, so several 20-minute breaks should be quite useful in keeping your remote assistants fresh and alert.

For best results, involve your team in fleshing out and implementing this policy. Describe the challenge to them, emphasise the objective, and then listen to the approaches they suggest. Letting them participate will make them more committed to making the staggered breaks work.

Tip #6: Set reasonable schedule limits

Your team members’ work availability can change at any time. Emergencies can occur, people sometimes get sick, or sometimes individuals just need time off to unwind.

See to it, however, that you establish reasonable rules for approving non-emergency changes. For example, all vacation leave requests should be handed in by 4 pm the day before (based on the HQ’s time zone). That way, your team can plan their requests and you won’t be taken by surprise.

Tip #7: Evaluate your staffing needs regularly

Good scheduling isn’t a one-off task; it’s an ongoing effort. If you don’t have enough people during the times your business is at its busiest, you’ll end up with overworked and burnt-out employees. Overstaff and you get the opposite: your team gets bored and you waste money.

Yes, it’s easy to simply copy the schedule from the previous period, but circumstances today might be different. Yes, you can predict your staffing needs through your knowledge of your business, but it also pays to assess such concerns regularly.

Expand your remote team

If you’re looking to grow your team to adapt to your scheduling needs, partner with Remote Workmate. Unlike freelancing marketplaces where you do everything yourself, we handle all the heavy lifting for you, including processes like recruitment and payroll.

In fact, you can choose from our pool of notable candidates right away. Just visit our Hotlist at: https://remoteworkmate.com/hotlist

You can browse a wide range of profiles on our Hotlist page. Once you find a qualified VA, simply fill out the form at the bottom of the page, and we’ll get in touch with you ASAP.