A method is provided for assigning a group of agents to a plurality of available schedules, including determining preferences for a plurality of factors for each agent. Each agent provides an order of importance for the plurality of factors. For each factor, a difference value for that factor between a preliminarily assigned schedule (or pool of unassigned schedules) and each agent's preference for that factor is determined. The difference value for each factor is assigned to a vector for each agent. Then, for each agent, a vector for each schedule not assigned to that agent is determined. Vectors for every other agent are also calculated for every schedule swap involving the current agent. The schedule having the lowest vector is then assigned for each agent.