Understanding the Importance of Shifts and Shift Scheduling

Every company has a set of shift rules that are documented and managed according to industry legislation. 

Even though it may not seem so, someone in the organization is planning when the staff should be at work, it may be a set roster that the staff have to stick to or a general day off that the staff members understand to always take off but either way this information has been planned, scheduled and followed. 

Therefore, planning your staff on their shifts on EDMA will be no different from the spreadsheet or manual document currently in use, the only difference is, that EDMA will take those shifts and pay staff automatically based on the payroll rules created in the shift. 

There are two ways to schedule staff for their shifts in advance. One is to use the Standard Shift scheduler module that simply allows you to single or bulk shift staff all at once on various shifts, the other way is to use the advanced scheduler Schedule Planner. 

Schedule Planner is a new module that assists users in planning a pay period or each pay period in advance whilst also giving the user the scheduled hours and worked hours of that staff member, whilst they are scheduling, in order to evenly distribute the pay period target hours, ensuring all employees are provided a fair number of work hours to make up their salary or wages, days off and rotations over weekends and continuously manage overtime costs during the scheduling process.

It is important to understand that shifting in advance as a planning tool, whilst it may not be a current requirement in the user’s manual system or current TNA system, it is a very important way for the EDMA system to know who the user requires to be at work on specific days and times and whom the user does not require to be at work, this influences the EDMA dashboard analytics and assists other users to manage employees more effectively throughout the whole business. 

Single Action Scheduling

The user may apply a shift, leave or a day-off in a single action on the shift scheduler. 

Applying a shift in single action

Step 1: The user must click on specific days on the employee’s calendar. Selected dates are highlighted in Pink as shown below. 

*Note: In this example the employees were chosen across various day/dates to apply the shift to. The same shift leave or day off must be applied to all these employees. Therefore, it’s important that the user choses those employees and days that require the same shift/leave or day off. 

*Note: The user will notice the Bulk scheduler Date range and days are greyed out whilst using the single action. Please see green square below, highlighting this.

Step 2: The user can now apply the shift required by clicking on the “Shift” button.

Step 3: When choosing a shift, a shift modal window will pop-up and the user will need to select the shift from the dropdown menu and click “Confirm shifts” button at the bottom of the modal window.

Step 4: The scheduled shift displays on the scheduler where the pink highlighted squares used to be, the shift name and start and end time will be displayed.

In the example below, the EDMA ADMIN 07h00 – 16H00 shift has been applied, the start time of the shift is 07:00, and the end time of the shift is 16:00. 

Deleting a shift

The user may delete a shift applied in the shift scheduler by clicking on the x shown on each shift. Shifts can be deleted, and a new shift applied, if required. 

The X will only display for shifts / leave or days off that are allowed to be deleted. Once leave has been approved in the leave module and timesheets have been fully processed for shifts and days off, the ability to delete a shift, leave or day off will be become disabled as the timesheets and scheduler are locked for further processing.

Applying a day-off in single action

Step 1: The user must click on specific days on the employee’s calendar. Selected dates are highlighted in Pink as shown below. 

Step 2: The user can now apply the day-off required by clicking on the “Off” button.

Step 3: A day-off modal window will pop up to confirm the user is shifting a day off.

Step 4: Once confirmed, the pink highlighted days on the scheduler will be replaced with a day-off label.

Deleting a day-off

The user may delete a day-off applied in the shift scheduler by clicking on the x shown on each day-off. Day-off’s can be deleted, and a new shift or day off applied, if required. 

The x will only display for shifts / leave or days off that are allowed to be deleted. Once leave has been approved in the leave module and timesheets have been fully processed for shifts and days off, the ability to delete a shift, leave or day off will be become disabled as the timesheets and scheduler are locked for further processing.

For Applying Leave in Single Action - please see Leave Approval guides.