Shift Scheduling for the Effective Management of the Ageing Workforce

Abstract

Aiming to address the needs of the ageing workforce in the context of shift work, we introduce a Participatory Work Orchestration Support Tool, with the aim of supporting decision making in deriving the periodic shift schedule of an organization. The proposed tool comprises two main components, an extensive and intuitive web-based platform that enables managers to gain an overview of their workforce and schedule, and an optimizing shift scheduler that works in the background to propose suggestions to the managers to improve scheduling, based on considerations of worker welfare and specifically targeting the ageing workforce. Preliminary testing of the tool in simulation yields encouraging results.