The last decades undoubtedly proved that automation has come with impressive benefits in all industries. From saving costs and time to finding even better solutions for practical problems, automation shall be on top of the list when deciding to reach the “next level” in business strategy. In aviation, automation came with better usage of airspace, better communication between pilots and ATCOs, and many other benefits in terms of safety. Even with so many options to improve the working style, when looking at ATCO Rostering, we can still see that more than 75% of ANSPs are still using the old classical way – Microsoft Excel. If we were 15 years ago, this would be the best solution from moving to paperwork to digitalized work, but when trying to incorporate too many constraints in the roster design, the roster officer would have to deal with an impressive amount of information to be processed and took into consideration for the final product.
When doing manual rostering, the scheduling process it’s repeated monthly or another fixed period, depending on the working style of the organization, but many limitations as scheduling flexibility or compliance with laws and regulations are quite hard to achieve. Moving to a modern Automated Scheduling Process, you can become a successful roster officer by saving time and improve the quality of your work, and you can do this starting today by using a specially designed application as SkyRoster.
In one of our articles, we already explained why to say goodbye to Excel scheduling, but now we’ll tell you how to become better than 75% of other roster officers that are still doing their work manually.
1. Forget about manual repetitive scheduling
Using emerging technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence, manual scheduling should be history nowadays. SkyRoster advanced features offer the possibility to build the roster for more than one year (the rest of the current year plus the next one), everything by taking into consideration all constraints such as annual leaves, training, missions, or national holidays. The AI will calculate all possible combinations of shifts and will deliver the best scheduling while still being compliant with the minimum rest time regulations and any other fatigue management requirements.
In just a few minutes after inputting all data, you will have the interpretation displayed in a calendar for all employees. Instead of losing hours to replicate one month to another, you can use the rest of the time to work on other tasks.
2. Offer flexible scheduling and become ATCOs best friend
It is well known that flexibility it’s not on the list of strengths when talking about manual scheduling because even a request for a day off or a swap, could take hours of working to find the solution. With the power of automation, the rostering officer could become the ATCOs best friend by solving their requests within minutes. Any swap request comes with automated suggestions, to save the time spent looking for the best fit. SkyRoster is also able to take into consideration staff working preferences when designing the roster.
3. Keep ATCOs licenses up to date
When talking about all legal aspects from an ANSP, we know that the roster officer needs to keep the track of all licenses and ratings requested for each controlling position. Other than that, there are internal and external regulations to be followed in terms of fatigue and minimum rest time, so having one place to store them all is much better than having to shift between multiple applications.
SkyRoster is the best solution when it comes to dynamic parametrization of rules and regulations. We know that every ANSP is unique and has its internal regulations, so we can store them for you and the roster engine will take them into consideration altogether. You will also have all details regarding qualifications and requirements at one click distance by using the Competency Management module integrated with the application.
We also know that specific constraints as minimum hours worked for a certain position are used by all ANSPs to maintain the license valid, so you can also see how many hours each ATCO has worked for each qualification and the roster engine will automatically split the shifts to cover the minimum required hours.
4. Open a trial account on SkyRoster
You can become a successful roster officer faster than you know, and if you are working as an ATCO or any other position within your ANSP, send this to your roster officer and he will thank you later for that. As you may not be convinced already that moving to automated rostering platforms is the best solution, all you need to do is to open a trial account on SkyRoster and set up the organization details to start your journey on an automated rostering schedule. Once you activate your account, you will receive the credentials to connect to your dedicated server, and the entire world of automated rostering will become available to you.
Chose to be the best at work and sign up for our SkyRoster Free Plan, or let us know what the needs of your ANSP are, by Booking a Demo.
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