How Does Shift Scheduling Work?

Managed or self-service scheduling?

Shift management offers two types of scheduling. You choose the type of scheduling when you create a facility plan.

• Self-service scheduling—Facility managers create shifts and let people know that booking is open. Employees find and book their preferred shifts in the mobile app. There's no need for shift planners to manage the schedule. When you set up the mobile app, you can choose whether to use the Shift Booking or Back to Work tab. The Shift Booking tab lets employees reserve shifts at any location with a facility plan. In contrast, the Back to Work tab shows available shifts at the employee’s assigned workplace only.
• Managed scheduling—Shift planners assign and send out shifts to employees. Employees confirm availability and accept shifts in the mobile app. But planners are responsible for finalizing the schedule. Employees use the Back to Work tab in the mobile app and can be scheduled for shifts at their assigned workplace only.

Self-service scheduling

With self-service scheduling, employees choose from available shifts and confirm what they want. Facility managers create the plan, then generate the set of open shifts.

When you generate shifts, you get a set of service appointments based on the planned occupancy. If you set staggered arrivals, the staggering process runs immediately and adds arrival start and end times to the shift appointments. If there are more service appointments than fit within the staggering window, the arrival windows are blank on the extra records. Employees can book these additional shifts by choosing a start time outside the staggering window.

You can send a mobile notification to let employees know that booking is open. Only employees assigned to the facility, and with the wellness status of Available to Work, receive a notification. Employees can choose from any shift within the facility plan's service territory.

In the mobile app, employees search for shifts by arrival times. For example, searching with a start time of 9:00 AM finds shifts where the arrival window contains 9:00 AM. Depending on the arrival windows, that can include shifts that start from 8:45—9:00 AM and 9:00—9:15 AM, or a single window like 8:50—9:10 AM. If the arrival window is 7:00—10:00 AM and an employee searches for 11:00 AM, they find only shifts without arrival start and end times.

When an employee books a shift, the following process takes place behind the scenes:

• If the location doesn't match the employee's primary service territory, a one-day service territory membership of type Relocation is created for the shift's service territory.
• A Shift record is created for the service resource and the service territory location. The shift uses the scheduled start time from the linked Service Appointment. The duration is set from the Availability Duration in the app settings.
• The Service Appointment is scheduled. If there’s no arrival window, the start time is the beginning of the Arrival Window or the employee's Preferred Start Time. The Status changes to Accepted.

Managed scheduling

When you use managed scheduling, shift planners assign service appointments and confirm the schedule with employees. Here's how it works.

Workplace managers review the facility plan and generate shifts. When you generate shifts, the system creates a set of service appointments. The service appointments represent open shifts based on the planned occupancy. For example, if the planned occupancy in a workspace on the 10th floor of the Denver office is 15, then 15 service appointments are created for each day in the facility plan. Like employee shifts, service appointments are created only at the lowest-level service territories in your location hierarchy.

Then, invite employees to confirm their availability in the mobile app. When the availability request is sent, the system creates shifts with the status Tentative for all the employees assigned to service territories within the facility. Only employees with the status of Available to Work receive a notification.

Employees can respond until the availability due date in the facility plan. When an employee saves or updates their availability, it's reflected in the Shift Schedules tab. Confirming availability changes the shift's status from Tentative to Confirmed. After the due date, employees who didn't respond or weren't available are ineligible for shifts.

Shift planners review the schedule. The optimization engine creates a tentative schedule based on workplace occupancy and employee availability. Shift planners must set the status of the service appointments to Dispatched. Only dispatched appointments are visible in the mobile app for employees to accept or decline.

When an employee accepts a shift, the service appointment changes to Confirmed. The status is reflected in the Shift Schedules tab. An arrival pass is available in the mobile app. Employees can use the pass to confirm that it's time for their shift when they arrive at the workplace.

Employee availability for shifts

Employees can use the mobile app and book shifts when these conditions are met:

• The employee is active
• The Worker Type is Employee
• The Wellness Status is Available to Work
• A service territory membership links the employee's Service Resource record to the service territory. To receive shifts, the territory membership must last for the full duration of a facility plan.

An employee’s wellness status determines whether they can use the shift management app and accept shifts. When the status is Available to Work, employees can use the app and accept shifts. When an unavailable employee logs into the app, they see an error message.

If the employee's status changes to unavailable, previously accepted shifts are canceled. The system creates resource absences for one month to mark the schedule.