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Shift schedule for my employees and I.
Normally, my manager at work made the shift schedule, but she did a really bad job and kept scheduling people even when they said that they wouldn't be available at those times. I asked her if I can work on the schedule from now on and she said that I could.
I think scheduling people will be easy, but my question is, what should I do when somebody says they can't work a shift for a particular day? How much notice should I ask for? Should I have them take care of it by trading shifts with someone or should I find coverage myself? How often should I allow them to make modifications?
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There are a couple of different ways to attack this question.
First: Decide on how often you want to post a schedule Weekly, monthly or bi-monthly. Once you have that then set a deadline for each employee to notify you what days and hours for the next shift they are available to work. Then make up the schedule.
Now as we all know peoples lives change and those changes will affect your work schedule. There are times when people will need time off for things like a death in the family or possibly an emergency such as a loved one being sick or hospitalized. When this occurs you take the responsibility to cover their shift.
Their will be times when a person will want a shift off for non emergency purposes. For those times you can if you want to allow it they can swap shifts or have someone cover their shift. For this purpose I suggest you have some sort of form for them to fill out with both parties acknowledging the swap or the coverage and you signing off on it as approving.
The original employee is still responsible for the coverage. If for some reason the covering employee changes their mind or does not show up for work it is the original shift employees responsibility to cover their shift.
Second: Same as the first. Only change is you either do not do not allow shift swapping or restrict it to a limited amount of people per shift.
Shift swapping can be a hassle for you trying to maintain coverage and who should be working. I suggest either severely restricting how many people can swap shifts on a given shift or not allowing it at all.
Employees, especially part-time teenage employees, forget that they are there to satisfy the needs of the business. Instead they think the job is there to satisfy their needs. Should you allow to much flexibility in changing the schedule once it is posted; you could end up with insufficient coverage or to much coverage. By allowing unlimited swapping e schedule could and will get away from you.
Whatever you decide make sure to have a form to fill out for requesting time off or shift swapping. Make sure everyone knows that without you signature and possibly that of the managers as well it is not a approved until signed by you and the manger if needed and returned to them.
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Really, it all depends on how often the schedule is put out.
Ours is put out monthly. We need to give our availability by the 15th of the previous month. If we miss that deadline, it's our responsibility to find coverage. We don't really have restrictions on how often we can modify so long as nobody goes over their maximum weekly hours. If my manager notices someone constantly trading a certain shift, she'll move that person to a different day/time (after talking to them, of course!)
Depending upon how many people there are, how many hours you're given to work with and what the employee availability looks like, you might find that scheduling is more of a nightmare than it looks! Good on you for taking over, though, because there's nothing worse than a manager who refuses to accept availability requests.
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