Staff scheduling

Principles⁠

Put the whole week on one board⁠

One weekly board for every event, every role and every person. When the schedule lives in one place, nobody has to ask who is working, and nothing depends on the last message in a group chat.

Let the board refuse the mistake⁠

Double-booking is a software problem, not a discipline problem. Assign someone who is already working and the board stops it and names the event and the hours that clash, before anyone travels to the wrong venue.

Let people claim the work⁠

Publishing an open shift to your pool beats calling nine people in a row. Your crew sees what is available and says yes from their phone. You keep the decision and lose the phone tree.

Offer a shift to the right people only⁠

A shift that needs a skill should only reach the people who hold it. Filling fast matters less than filling correctly, and the quickest way to fill correctly is to narrow who gets asked.

Hours belong to scheduling, not to admin⁠

The planned shift and the hours worked are the same thing seen twice. Clocking, approving and exporting in one place is what removes the end-of-month reconstruction from a pile of screenshots.

Treat requests as part of the plan⁠

Time off, swaps and changes in availability arrive as requests against a schedule that already exists. Approve one and the board updates itself. Nothing is retyped and nothing is lost in a thread.

Practices⁠

Publish open shifts in waves⁠

Offer a shift to one group first and widen it only if you need to. Your crew expresses interest from the worker app and you assign with one tap. Interest counts show you where you are short while there is still time to act.

Group your people into pools⁠

Bar, kitchen, core, freelance. Groups decide who sees which shifts, so publishing reaches the right twenty people instead of everyone on your books.

Attach the skills a role needs⁠

Keep one skills list, tag each person once, and require the skill on the shift. Eligible people see the offer and nobody else does.

Let the crew arrange their own swaps⁠

A worker requests a swap, an eligible colleague accepts it, and you approve it. The request only reaches people who could actually cover that shift, and the final call stays with you.

Roll recurring shifts forward⁠

Standing shifts fill themselves in ahead of time, fourteen days out by default and adjustable per account. Your regular rota is always populated without anyone rebuilding it every week.

Attach a checklist to a shift⁠

Allergies to read, a briefing to confirm, a key to collect. Checklist items sit on the shift itself and your crew ticks them off in the app, so the handover does not depend on someone remembering to mention it.

Approve a day or a whole event at once⁠

Approve hours entry by entry when it matters and in bulk when it does not. A whole day or a whole event clears in one action, and you can still correct an entry or withdraw an approval afterwards.

Send approved hours straight to payroll⁠

Approved hours become a payroll spreadsheet for the period you choose. Anything already exported is marked as exported, so the same shift cannot reach payroll twice.

Let the reminder chase the timesheet⁠

When a planned shift ends and no hours have been submitted, the worker gets one nudge. Chasing timesheets stops being somebody's job.