The whiteboard in the instructors' room
Tomorrow there are fourteen sessions: two school groups on climbing and archery, a birthday party on high ropes, a corporate team day on kayaking and a handful of public sessions. The centre manager stands at the whiteboard and allocates instructors from memory: who is working, who is qualified to lead kayaking, who can supervise ropes.
One instructor's paddling qualification expired last month. The manager did not know, because it is on a certificate in a folder. A school group grew by six children yesterday, which changes the ratio needed for their climbing session. Nobody updated the whiteboard.
Why allocation relies on memory
Activity centres have a tangle of constraints: qualifications by activity, sometimes with levels, expiry dates, ratios set by your procedures and governing bodies, instructors' availability and the equipment and areas each session uses.
Bookings are in one system, the staff rota in another and qualifications in a folder or spreadsheet. The whiteboard is where they meet, in the manager's head.
Changes in group size or instructor availability after the board is drawn are easy to miss.
Residential groups make it harder still. A school staying for three nights has a programme of sessions across several days, and a single instructor calling in sick on day two can ripple through a dozen sessions. Rebuilding that on a whiteboard at 7am, while also answering the phone, is where mistakes happen.
What a whiteboard costs
| Gap | Risk |
|---|---|
| Qualifications in a folder | Instructor allocated with a lapsed qualification |
| Ratios checked by hand | Sessions short of instructors when numbers change |
| Rota and bookings separate | Instructors allocated who are not working |
| Late changes | Whiteboard out of date by the morning |
| No record of allocations | Hard to show who led which session |
The qualifications and ratios you require are set by your own procedures, governing bodies and advisers. The problem is checking them reliably for every session, every day.
An allocation board that checks as you go
We build an allocation board that pulls together bookings, the rota and qualifications.
- Instructors' qualifications are recorded with activity, level and expiry date, with reminders before they lapse.
- Sessions are read from your booking system, with participant numbers and ages.
- Your ratio rules per activity are written into the board, so the number of instructors needed updates when group size changes.
- The manager allocates on a screen that shows only instructors who are working and qualified for each session, and warns of clashes.
- Changes to bookings or the rota after allocation raise an alert, so the board is never quietly out of date.
- Instructors see their day on their phone, and the allocation is stored as a record of who led each session.
Situations it handles
- Assistant instructors who can support but not lead: counted towards ratios as your rules allow.
- Weather changes that move sessions indoors or swap activities.
- Trainee instructors shadowing sessions for their log books.
- Multi-day residential groups with a programme across several days.
The evening before, with the board
The manager opens the board for tomorrow. Fourteen sessions are listed with instructors needed. The kayaking session shows two eligible instructors; the one with the lapsed qualification does not appear. The school group's climbing session shows a warning because their numbers grew. The manager adds an assistant, and instructors get their allocations by 6pm.
- Only qualified, available instructors offered
- Ratios recalculated when numbers change
- Alerts for late changes
- A record of who led each session
Does allocation look like this at your centre?
- Instructors are allocated on a whiteboard.
- Qualifications and expiry dates are in a folder.
- Ratios are checked by hand.
- Late changes in group size are missed.
- You would struggle to show who led a session months ago.