Hello,
I wondering about how you schedule your part-time staff. How far in advance are you scheduling your staff (a week, a month, 6 months)? How frequently do you publish your schedule? Do you require a general availability for a period of time (i.e. 6 months) or do you allow your staff to change availability between schedule periods? How do you handle shift changes and do you limit how many changes a staff member can make? Do you have any recommendations for scheduling/budgeting software?
As always, this information is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Elizabeth Carlock
I'm a little late to the party on this one, sorry. We use a web based system called Shiftboard and we LOVE IT. It even has an app that allows people to view their schedule from their smart phone. Employees put their availability directly into the system and it feeds it to you when you're scheduling. Also allows employees to trade shifts on their own, if you give them that security. It's relatively cheap too--I think we pay like $70 a month for it. Cost is based on how many users you have and I have around 30 so a smaller staff would equal smaller price.
We try to schedule at least two weeks. The goal is a month out but we never seem to reach it and we often don't know that far out what's coming down the pipe at us. So, my peeps are OK with two weeks or a little less.
Jen