Scheduling Front Line Staff

Hello!

Our front line staff is made up of University of Michigan work-study students and their schedules are crazy. We have been using Humanity since 2012. It is very customizable and lets you create rules for the different positions you create.  It also has a lot of useful reports and a time clock feature. They also have rates for non-profits.

Good luck with your search!

Hi Megan:

We actually spend a little money (not too much – based on the size of your team) and use When To Work online https://whentowork.com/

It also allows us to post announcements and for staff to post (i.e. trade) shifts.

-Julie Knight

SFMOMA

We are looking at using https://wheniwork.com/. 

We use https://wheniwork.com/hi   I used to use an excel spreadsheet, and it got way too cumbersome.  You can customize shift types, add notes to shifts, and offer open shifts.  Associates are also able to trade shifts within when I work--I approve all trades but then once they happen they are live on the schedule.  It also texts associates 2 hours before their shift, and allows them to have their schedule in an app.  I really can't say enough about how much time it has saved me!  I have prebuilt shift templates that I load onto each week, and then can easily add shifts for extra programming that I have preset.  Unfortunately I'm not sure how it would interact with union rules--but because you can approve all shift swaps and drops and the employees who are allowed to take the shifts within that, you could work with it in that way.  We do pay a yearly fee--they charge based on the number of employees.  The money is well worth it though!

Good luck!  When I Work is great, but I think any scheduling software will save you time!

Brandea Turner (Past Member) Thomas Williams  Stephanie Trembley Jan Sillery FYI - Aileen

We use Google sheets for event sign-up and Google calendar for the schedule. 

Adding on to this that we also use Humanity at Thinkery. It's very customizable, and has a great app which makes it convenient for employees. As a manager, it's great to use when I need to approve quick changes away from my work computer.

My assistant manger uses when I work - it is not perfect but head and solders above doing schedule on excel documents. 

We also use When I Work for scheduling. It isn't free, but is relatively inexpensive and is tiered towards your organizations needs & staff size. 

It allows me to keep a better handle on what role (and associated budget line) our staff are in that day. It also makes it easier to see at a glance how much we are putting towards staffing the box office vs staffing concerts and other areas. Our staff appreciate that it allows them to view their schedule, set up notifications, and clock in/out for their shift on a cell phone or via the website once they are at their work station. I also have mine set up with quite a few notifications that allows me to keep better tabs on staff arriving on attendance and allows for easy shift swaps between staff. 

I hope this helps!

We also used When I Work when I was in the education department at the Intrepid Museum!  I liked it because it was flexible without having to start from scratch building out schedules each week; I couldn't have one weekly template (or even a few) for the educator schedule because the each program time slot could be filled with any of a dozen or so programs and staff might not be qualified for all of the program themes. When I Work let me build shift templates in addition to full weekly templates so when I was scheduling out a particular week, I could just plop a pre-built 10:00am water workshop shift (for example) on there as needed.

Hi there!

I am jumping into this question a bit late, I use Shiftboard for my team. It does cost annually based on number of staff, but they do offer non profit discounts. It has been a huge time saver for me over the past few years! You are able to customize it to your specific needs and you can make it as hands on or hands off as you'd like. 

Hope you find something that works for you! 

I inherited our system, and I love it! It's literally a GoogleSheet that stays the same from season to season.

The first page has all of the contact information of all staff, so if anyone needs them they can contact them quickly and easily. There are also columns next to names to indicate what someone has been trained on. The second page is the schedule itself. I make a new tab for each show, and circulate the document to remind people to put in their availability and give them a deadline.

Ours is a "claim your shift" model, where the staff member puts their name down in the far corner if they can work a particular shift. I then schedule people rather equally based on this availability. Unfortunately this sometimes leads to holes when no one can make it, but I can usually get creative and pester someone into taking the shift! Then I lock the sheet so no one can edit except for me, and tell everyone that the schedule is set, and from then on they need to find coverage if they can't make a shift.

A small index of terms:

-BOS = Box Office Supervisor. BOA = Box Office Associate. CON = Concessionaire (bar and snacks). HM = House Manager. ASA = Audience Services Associate (usually denotes daytime shift).

It's a bit hard to read at first, but I find this sooooo useful. Especially for people with wildly different schedules. I also like that it is one document, that never changes, so everyone can bookmark it and always find it! Feel free to use the template attached to copy into a GoogleSheet. And I'm happy to answer questions/screenshare/call to discuss!

 FOH Schedule Copy.xlsx

Brandea Turner (Past Member)  Thomas Williams Stephanie Trembley