Scheduling workers: A multi-criteria model considering their satisfaction

The inclusion of worker satisfaction in scheduling problems is of significant importance to many organizations and constitutes a current relevant research stream. This article contributes to the body of knowledge by studying the well-known identical parallel machine scheduling problem while considering workers’ satisfaction. Metrics of job preference and desirable job variety are used to model workers’ satisfaction in the scheduling problem. The tradeoffs between maximum completion time and worker satisfaction are analyzed. The results demonstrate the usefulness of the model, finding efficient schedules, in terms of completion time and worker satisfaction, in a reasonable computational time. Major findings suggest that a higher number of jobs per worker and a wider variety of job types have a positive relationship with workers’ satisfaction when determining work schedules. This research is relevant in practice as it supports the goal of organizations being efficient and of considering the welfare of their employees.