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Writer's pictureBianca Alionescu

How to create a fair duty roster with the Strategic Roster module?

Updated: May 30


The Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP) plays a pivotal role in ensuring the smooth operation of the aviation sector. Imagine the complexity of guiding countless aircraft safely through the skies every day. It’s a task that requires precision, skill, and seamless coordination. At the heart of this intricate dance are the Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs), the unsung heroes who manage the skies and ensure every flight reaches its destination safely.


As planning managers and decision-makers, you understand the critical importance of having the right ATCOs on duty at the right times. But how does the ANSP ensure this? The answer lies in the creation of reliable duty rosters. Assigning the right ATCOs to the right shifts is not just important; it’s absolutely essential for the ANSP to function effectively. Effective rostering ensures that every shift is staffed with skilled controllers who are ready to handle the demands of their role, maintaining the highest standards of safety and efficiency.


Creating these duty rosters is more than just filling in names on a schedule. It’s about balancing various factors, such as the controllers’ skills, experience levels, and even their well-being.


Have you ever faced challenges in ensuring fair and efficient rostering in your organization? How do you balance operational demands with the well-being of your ATCOs? These are critical questions that every planning manager must consider to optimize their workforce.


In the next section, we will delve into the concept of a duty roster. What exactly is a duty roster, and why is it vital to automate it? Let’s explore these questions and more in the following part of the article.



What is a duty roster?

The duty roster is the starting point for an Air Traffic Controller's work. It provides a clear and structured overview of how shifts, rotations, and breaks are allocated to each controller. This carefully planned schedule ensures that every ATCO knows exactly when and where they are needed, allowing them to prepare both mentally and physically for their demanding responsibilities. By clearly defining work periods and rest breaks, the duty roster plays a crucial role in preventing fatigue, which is essential for maintaining high levels of concentration and performance.


A well-designed duty roster is more than just a timetable; it is a fundamental tool for organizing an ATCO's work. It ensures that all tasks are performed safely and efficiently by balancing various factors such as the controllers’ qualifications, experience levels, and overall well-being.


Why is it important to automate the duty roster?

In the last few years, ANSPs have been focused on technological advancements and flexibility to adapt to market disruptions. Consequently, for the rostering part, it became crucial to also adapt and adopt innovations that can help with duty rosters. It is the responsibility of the roster manager or planning manager to consider all regulations, ANSP-specific constraints, and employees' preferences to build a balanced duty roster. Creating the roster by hand is time-consuming and prone to unforeseen errors. To make the process easier, you can use a rostering automation platform. This platform can streamline the process, reduce errors, and ensure that all factors are adequately considered. A platform like SkyRoster will consider all the necessary factors and help you build a compliant, flexible, and fair roster.


Automating the process will reduce the time to create a roster, and the errors will be eliminated or minimized. Besides, there are other benefits such as:

- automatically calculating the hours worked and the remaining days off;

- more room for ATCOs' flexibility;

- staff demand forecasting allows you to make smart decisions by reducing unnecessary manpower when traffic is down or optimizing their work;

- automatically adjusts when interruptions occur;

- easy way to keep ATCOs satisfied by considering their work preferences;

- fair workload distribution.


Stopping at the last benefit, as you may already know, distributing shifts fairly can be quite a tricky endeavor - especially if you're trying to do it manually. This is where rostering automation comes in handy. Platforms such as SkyRoster offer a variety of modules that can help with rostering. Let's take a closer look at how it can help you distribute shifts fairly with the Strategic Roster Module.


How can you use the Strategic Roster module and respect fair workload distribution with SkyRoster?

First of all, you need to set up the organization settings. You may alter the preferences to suit the needs of your organization better. This is an essential stage in recreating the behavior of your ANSP. You can find more about this step and other crucial ones in this article.


After those steps, you can create a new roster from scratch or continue with a previous one using the Strategic Roster module in SkyRoster. If you want to continue with an existing roster, the platform will build a new roster based on the information included in the existing one. This will save you a great deal of time, and you can stick with what has worked in the past or test to see if that roster is the winning lottery ticket for your ANSP's productivity.



To build a roster from scratch, you may pick the opposite option and complete the following three stages. This procedure may be accomplished quickly and allow you to work with a new, complete roster.

The three stages are:

Roster settings

This step entails settling on a unit, roster type, and rotation strategy. Here, you will select the shift pattern that generates a roster that can be adjusted to meet fatigue management rules. During this stage, you establish the structure of your roster and the method you use to manage employees' hours.

Staff selection

Click the "Staff selection" option to select the sub-units you want to add to the roster. Here, you can choose from a list of all available sub-units with a single click.

Constraints settings

In theory, fair workload distribution while rostering should be a breeze, but it can be a real headache in practice. To resolve this issue, proceed to the third step - constraints settings. To optimise the roster for specific KPIs, you can enable or disable options like respecting minimum rest time, shift distribution, qualification prioritization, night and weekend shift distribution, and many more. Check out this article for more information on distributing work among employees fairly. The advice it contains is useful for any organization, not just for an ANSP.




On a final note

Reduced productivity, bodily complaints (such as back pain or gastrointestinal issues), weariness, and sadness are all possible results of a hectic lifestyle and an unbalanced roster. Assist ATCOs with a better work-life balance by assigning shifts fairly and considering their preferences.


If you want to see how you can fairly distribute the workload, send us a sample roster, and we will optimise it with SkyRoster.


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