Shiftboard Features to Help You Manage Change
Constantly shifting production requirements, varying labor demand, and inconsistent worker availability are wreaking havoc to established operations processes. Shiftboard’s technology automates many of these processes, enabling better scheduling, faster shift coverage, and real-time reporting.
- Teams: Teams are groups of workers who are qualified to work certain types of shifts. The teams structure allows you to quickly stand up new workgroups and leverage Flex Pools to meet new work activities.
- Absenteeism tool: This new functionality enables workforce leaders to mark employees as absent, and then automates the process of creating replacement shifts, and assigning qualified, available workers to those shifts. The tool can also be configured to allow employees to call out of a shift or mark themselves absent.
- Pick up shifts: Quickly publish shifts for pick up by qualified workers so they can choose the shifts they’re available to cover. If your organization has Premium SMS enabled, employees can receive text notifications (in addition to email notifications) and pick up these shifts directly from their phones.
- Standby lists: Automatically assign workers from a standby list if workers call out. This can be configured according to a specific “team” as well. Workers can also pick up released shifts without any manager intervention required. This functionality enables quick coverage of shifts by employees who are interested, qualified, and willing to work.
- Worker availability tool: Workers can indicate what days and times they are not available to work. When the availability feature is enabled, managers can be assured that employees won’t automatically get scheduled when they are out ill or taking care of a family member.
- Admin hold: If a worker is going to be unavailable for an extended period, managers can put them on admin hold to ensure they won’t be scheduled. When placing someone on admin hold, if they are already assigned shifts, there’s the option of making their shifts available for reassignment.
- Worker profiles: Profile fields can be used to maintain, track and report COVID-19 related worker information. Shiftboard allows you to set additional data fields as determined for your specific need.
Real-Time Communication to Keep Workers Informed
Keeping workers informed is especially difficult when the workplace is changing as quickly as it is today. Shiftboard provides three essential communication tools you can leverage to ensure your workers get the information they need to perform their jobs well.
- News page: Shiftboard provides a site-wide bulletin board to post information and links for your entire workforce. You can also configure Shiftboard so your workforce lands on a News Page when they log-in, which is especially critical if you need to ensure employees see important “day-of” news and information.
- Broadcast messages: Send email and text messages to your entire organization, or to specific teams, or to a small subset of people such as employees working a specific day. For example: suppose you need to send a message to employees working on Friday to let them know of a new location for their temperature reading. The broadcast message feature is a powerful communication tool to enable real-time communication, and it is easy to utilize.
- Automatic notifications: The notifications tool can be configured similarly to the broadcast message tool, but it is automated according to the specific rules you set. If you need to make last-minute changes to the work schedule, employees will be automatically notified of new or canceled shifts.
If you are a current Shiftboard customer, contact your account manager or support@shiftboard.com for help enabling these features. If you would like to learn more about how you can leverage Shiftboard, contact shiftboardinsights@shiftboard.com.