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. 

Bulk Scheduling 

The user may apply a shift, leave or a day-off in bulk action. 

Bulk scheduling is designed to improve shifting efficiencies and enables the user to select multiple employees at once and allocate same shift, leave or off days based on a set date range and days chosen for the date range that the leave, shift or day-off must be applied. 

The bulk scheduling system would require the user to do all shifts at once, all leave of the same type and pay hours at once and all the same days off at once. 

For those users that require a “Roster” type scheduling system instead, our schedule planner will have a rostering facility.

*Note: Bulk scheduling does not mean “BLANKET” scheduling, the enablement of bulk scheduling is purely from a task speed perspective in the scheduler and is a very useful tool to speed up shifting whereas blanket scheduling implies that the user blanket shifts all days in any given period with a random shift without much thought about it. The ability to bulk schedule and choose which day to allocate the shift/leave or day-off to, already cuts down on the need to blanket shift the employee. It is very important that users know the difference and use the scheduling system to plan their employee shift schedules in advance more accurately as a means to cutting down costs of employees. 

The bulk scheduling system uses the same routines to allocate shifts, leave and day-offs in the scheduler as the single action, the only difference is the ability to choose multiple employees at once and over a longer date range. 

Applying a shift / leave or day-off in bulk action

Step 1: The user will need to sort the list of employees to enable maximum selection of the group of employees that will require the same shift for the same date range. *Please reference the “Search filters” section of this document for more details on filtering and sorting the list of employees. 

Once filtered, the user may select the check box on the far left next to the employee codes for each employee that is required to be bulk scheduled.

Upon selection of the employee, the white lines will turn to green to highlight every second employee in the list selected. 

Step 2: Once the employees are selected, the user will need to select the date range that the shifts will need to be allocated on. The user will need to click on the date in the calendar selector called “Date Range” ABOVE the “Date control for calendar”.

Step 3: This calendar will open up on the current date, displaying a 2-month calendar. The user must select the date by scrolling through the calendar months and clicking on the start date that the shift date range will begin on. 

Step 4: Once a start date has been selected, the user may select an end date, spanning all the way through the calendar months for as long as needed or just for a day, the week or a month. 

The days will highlight while the user scrolls through the calendar until an end date is selected. 

In the example below, the start date is 05 Jan 2021, and the end date is the 08 Jan 2021. The user must then click the “Apply” button at the bottom right-hand corner of the calendar, to apply those dates. 

If the user has made a mistake with the selection, he/she may click another start date before clicking “Apply” button and start the process over again until the dates are correct. 

If the user would like to stop choosing dates and exit the screen, they may choose the “cancel” button to return to the shift scheduler screen. 

Step 5: Once the user has selected the dates and clicked “Apply” button in the calendar, the user is required to select which days of the week within that date range, the employees selected must be scheduled for. The days chosen will highlight in green. 

Step 6: Once the user has selected the days, the user is required to select shift, leave or day-off. The relevant modal windows for leave, shift or day-off will open up for the user depending on which one is chosen and the process for adding a shift, leave or day-off is followed as the single action scheduling. 

Shift modal window: The user will notice that the modal window displays the bulk schedule date range, what days the shift is activated to post to, based on the selection and how many employees were selected to be shifted.