Staff rosters – we need your help!
One of the things we're looking to improve in Timely is the rostering of staff.
In a nutshell we want to make it really easy to:
- Block out days where staff are on vacation, annual leave, sick, etc
- Extend or reduce staff working hours on specified days (e.g. if a staff member is working late)
- If you have multiple locations make it easy to temporarily roster in staff from different locations
- Ultimately, let you generate staff time sheets automatically based on their roster and appointments
With this in mind we’ve put together a mock-up showing how staff rosters might look in Timely (click the image below to see the full-size mock-up).
So what do you think? Will this work for you?
If you’ve got any thoughts or suggestions we’d love to hear them! Just add a comment below.
UPDATE (20 NOV): we’ve broken the back of the major development work for this functionality. We hope to have a first version of this up and running within a week.
Just so I understand… you tick if they are working that day and can adjust hours in that box?…. If so, the only other addition would be the ability to specify why they are not working and have that reflected in the calendar page i.e. if it is a sick day/annual leave/unpaid leave/alternative location . This is really easy for me for a) payroll and records and b) visibility across the branches. Would that be an option that if they were able to be inserted and then maybe the relative column in the calendar was blocked out with that descriptor (hope that makes sense!), just so on the day at a glance it can be seen?
The tick boxes will default to the standard working hours that you set on the staff (i.e. Mon-Fri 9am-5pm). Then you can come and turn individual dates on and off as required. And yes you’ll be able to set a different start and end date using the pop-out box. It would also be easy enough to wire-up a comment box and have this display on the calendar headings. Great suggestion there!
Just wondered if a comment box for the day would be possible so if there is something special on or you have reps planned to visit so everyone knows whats going on
Yes, we've had a few suggestions for this so we'll definitely look at adding a comment box to the pop-out so you can state why the staff person is not working. Thanks!
So, what about rostering staff onto days they don't normally work? ie for switching shifts with other staff?
In that case you would untick the staff member who is normally working, then click the link to show all staff and tick another staff member instead. I hope that makes sense!
Why can't we add the physical times for each person and can it be in 24hr times.
Eg: write in your rostering times 0800 - 2400 or what about split shifts.
1000 - 1200 then 1800 - 2200 on the same day?
Thanks Andrea. I'll have a play with having the time fields directly inside the date cells to see if that works - as you say, you could then just type the times in. This first version of the rostering system won't support split shifts sorry but we'll probably look at this in the next version.
How about being able to 'Set normal hours' on a fornightly or monthly basis also. A lot of our staff work on a fortnightly rotating roster.
The easiest way to work this at the moment is to set staff to working every day and set a recurring 'busy time' for their days off.
If we could set their normal hours based on a fortnightly roster it would make things so much easier!
Good suggestion. I see you've created a feature request already: http://feedback.gettimely.com/forums/161498-feedback-for-timely/suggestions/5296353-fortnightly-or-monthy-roster-set-normal-hours
Hopefully other users will add their vote and ideas to this too.
Just wondering how development is going with the roster. I would also hope that in the reports that I would be able to bring up a report that would show how many hours each staff member has worked, taken holidays, sick leave etc. Do you envisage this being an option?
Hi Ann Marie, thanks for your question. No significant work on the roster is planned just yet. However, there will be better staff related reporting coming soon. Make sure to vote on this related feature request to give it a boost!