Weekly Work Schedule Template

A clear weekly work schedule template is the perfect tool for a project manager to effectively handle their employee resources and control a project’s workflow as it progresses towards completion. Listing the involved team members, their location and working times, as well as their responsibilities over a definite period of time, a weekly work schedule helps everyone be more productive and efficient.

Using a weekly work schedule template in project management has several benefits because it helps to:

• better plan and track a team’s workflow.
• get the underlying tasks completed in an organized manner.
• reduce the cost of resources and maximize the amount of work done in the timeframe scheduled for the project.
• enhance focus on goals, make the workload more manageable and, thus, meet deadlines more easily.
• define and clarify the efforts required to bring a project to fruition.
• prioritize tasks by laying out what needs to be done and when.
• improve team members’ work-life balance.

On this page, you will find useful information on how to create a well-defined weekly work schedule, as well as a professional template that you can download and customize for free to get started faster. 

How do I make a weekly work schedule?

To build an effective weekly work schedule, follow the steps below:

1. Make a list that include your employees’ names, their full- or part-time status, skills, responsibilities and overtime restrictions. This will help you better understand your team’s capacities.
2. Assign work shifts to your employees – make sure to delineate the shifts around the employees best suited for that particular time. You also want to ensure that enough time between a person’s shifts is allowed.
3. Liaise with employees and allow them to have a say in the schedule – consider scheduling one or two of your employees for the first shifts, and then give everyone access to this incomplete schedule so they can fill in  the rest of the schedule.
   This way, you not only delegate and take some of the scheduling burden off your shoulders, but you also make the employees more engaged in their work. Allow changes to the initial schedule for a set period of time, and then close it to external alteration.
4. Review the schedule – go through the work calendar that has resulted so far and make the necessary final adjustments.
5. Create an availability chart – this will act as a backup solution for the situation when a team member cannot cover their shift. Creating a list of substitutes ensures that no one falls behind with the set workload.
6. Create a timeline that clearly illustrates the structure of your work schedule and share it with the entire team. Using a visual plan will make it easier for everybody to understand who is scheduled to work and when.
   You can build your weekly work schedule either by using a timeline template like the one available on this page or explore our tutorials to learn how to make a timeline with the help of various office tools.

How do I create a weekly schedule template in Excel?

You can manually create a weekly schedule template in Excel by following these steps:

1. Open a new Excel spreadsheet.
2. Type in the weekdays along the first row of your spreadsheet, starting with the cell under Column B.
3. On the second row of column A, type in the time at which your schedule starts (e.g. 8:00 AM). Then drag the cell handle down the column until Excel fills it through to the time that marks the end of the working hours.
4. Enter the name of the person who will cover the first shift in the cell next to the starting hour of your work schedule.
5. Select all the cells down the same column until you include the allotted hours of that person’s shift, and then click on the “Merge” button on the Excel ribbon.
6. Continue inputting the rest of the team members.
7. Format and color-code the shifts to better demarcate them.

If you want to learn more about how to make a timeline or a work schedule using Excel and other office tools, please check out our tutorials.

Using and updating the Weekly Work Schedule Template

The free weekly work schedule template was built to help business and project managers schedule work for their staff and teams. Designed as a clear, simple-to-communicate PowerPoint slide, it can be used for a wide range of planning needs, from simplifying staffing schedules and coverage charts, to creating weekly agendas or shift schedules.

The template is a free, downloadable slide, enabling you to quickly make a weekly work schedule, coverage plan or graphical timetable which will be easy to view, update, print and share. Creating a work schedule as a visual, rather than as a list or table, is a useful scheduling technique because visuals are easier to understand and simpler to communicate. Update this weekly work calendar sample and send it to your team members or work force so they are focused on their assignments over the duration of a week, ensuring that tasks will be completed on time.

The template can also help you plan shifts more efficiently. It was created in an hourly Gantt chart style that will be familiar to teams, management and other staff. Additionally, the template supports schedule overlapping, which makes it easier to see shift scheduling overlaps or if there are any gaps in coverage that require attention. It was created to help people or organizations who need to manage work schedules that vary across departments, employees, time zones or shifts.

The weekly work schedule template was created natively in PowerPoint, so customizing it to communicate or publish work schedule plans is easy and familiar. All you have to do is to download the free template and open it in PowerPoint. Then begin to customize the data, fonts, colors or style using any of the PowerPoint controls. Alternatively, you can use the free version of Office Timeline to automatically manage all of your schedule updates.

Office Timeline is a schedule maker that plugs into PowerPoint to automatically update and change the template, or to create new, similar templates. If plans change, the tool helps you to update the weekly work schedule template automatically, in just a few clicks straight from inside PowerPoint. It can also be used to add other work scheduling details such as today’s date, progression or color code employees to track shifts and overlapping schedules more easily.