Where to Get the Best Free Weekly Schedule Templates Online

What is Employee Scheduling?

Employee scheduling is the process of organizing and managing employee shift patterns for your business to help your operations run effectively and efficiently. With a systematic employee scheduling process, you can create conflict-free weekly schedules or daily schedules to assign tasks to each team member, grant leaves, and also keep track of the work.

To create effective employee schedules, business or restaurant managers need to consider a number of factors such as staffing levels, skillsets, specializations, workloads, and employee availability. And to keep track of each of these factors for every employee can become a mammoth task. But an employee scheduling system such as schedule templates can help you get the job done in minutes. Once you have considered all of these factors, you can easily start creating shift schedules using schedule templates that meet the needs of your business. This will ensure that employees are able to work their shifts without hindrance and that your business runs smoothly.

What is a Weekly Employee Scheduling Template?

A weekly employee schedule template is a tool that can be used to create a work schedule for employees on a weekly basis. The schedule template can be used to keep track of the hours worked by each employee, as well as the tasks that need to be completed during those hours as part of project management. The weekly schedule template can also be used to communicate the work schedule to employees so that they know when they are expected to work and on how many days of the week. Most schedule templates set aside time for work hours, breaks, lunch, and personal time.

Weekly employee schedules can be created on Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Word, which can be edited and reused every week to create similar work schedules in a systematic manner. This schedule template can be used for various purposes, such as project management, preparing weekly calendars and managing deadlines, and scheduling weekly team meetings. The weekly schedule template typically contains blank spaces for each day of the week, which you can fill in with specific activities or tasks.

A weekly employee scheduling template can be an equally useful tool for businesses with many employees and for those with a limited number of workers but a lot of daily tasks. Pre-made work schedules can help you keep track of your employees' hours, and also help you make sure everyone is getting the shifts they want.

While there are multiple free spreadsheet schedule templates available for businesses to download and use, it is still a lot of manual work -- not to mention spreadsheets have limited features. On the other hand, there are employee scheduling apps that offer automated planning and scheduling with features such as Shift Swapping and project management, time tracking, and so on. If you are a small business and are looking for a free employee scheduling option, here are some schedule templates you can choose from-

Free Weekly Schedule Template No. 1- 7Shifts

This is a Microsoft Excel schedule template. You can create quick weekly schedules with the 7Shifts schedule template, specially designed for restaurant businesses. It is customizable and allows you to assign roles and shift times to individual employees as per task management needs. You can simply select the week that you wish to create the weekly calendar for and keep adding the names of your employees and assign them shifts in the rows and columns of the Excel template. You can then share this Excel sheet online or distribute printouts among your team to get your work schedules sorted.

Free Weekly Schedule Template No. 2- Toast POS

Toast POS offers a detailed schedule template designed for Restaurant Employees and managers to streamline their work schedules. You can use the platform's weekly schedule template to schedule the work of your entire staff -- from servers to dishwashers, chefs, and cleaners, for seven days. You can keep editing and updating the weekly schedule as per your changing needs and share it digitally or in print form. The Toast schedule template is available in an easy, downloadable size on Google Sheets, with options for customization.

Free Weekly Schedule Template No. 3- Fit Small Business

Fit Small Business has a range of different schedule templates for your weekly schedules, daily schedules, and monthly work schedules. They cater to the needs of small businesses across sectors, and if you are a restaurant unit just starting out, you'll find multiple options to choose from. With their daily schedules, you can assign work to each employee according to their skills and specializations for each day of the week, while accommodating breaks and down-time. With their weekly planners, you can do the same for the entire week with the same level of detailing.

Free Weekly Schedule Template No. 4- Planday

Planday also offers free Excel schedule templates you can customize according to your restaurant needs. From adding your company name and details of your employees to the schedule, to adjusting time formats and location specifications, this schedule template can be adjusted to the minutest detail. You can simply enter the dates, names, and tasks to create conflict-free weekly schedules for the entire workforce. You need simply update the dates every week in order to replicate your weekly planner.

Free Weekly Schedule Template No. 5- Clockify

Clockify has created different sets of schedule templates for daily planners, weekly planners, monthly planners, and even yearly planners for tasks, projects, and assignments. There are also work schedule templates and non-work schedule templates that can be used to track employee break hours and other activities to ensure labor law compliance. These efficient schedule templates can be used in printable weekly formats or shared digitally using Google Sheets among your colleagues.