In this article:
|
Introduction to Staff Schedule
Staff Schedule is a shift planning tool that will help you to:
Plan your shifts based on staff ratio requirements
Easily swap shifts between staff and address open shifts that need to be fulfilled
Assign view or edit staff schedule permissions to staff
Update and edit shifts easily and when ready, publish them to staff members
Track expected staff hours both in and outside of classroom time
Links to staff members' Contracted hours and availability as well as informing their Overtime hours balance (more on that here!)
If you'd like to take a look at this feature in action, Alex will guide you through it in the video below:
Staff Schedule is included as part of the Premium package and for any customers that have previously purchased Staff Rotas as an add-on to their package.
Features
The Staff Schedule is an insightful and easy-to-manage staff planning tool for creating shifts and schedules that meet ratio requirements while providing a single source of truth for what is planned for staff resourcing in the coming days, weeks and months.
Permissions
There are two view of the Staff Schedule, which can be configured for roles in the the Famly settings page by going to General → Staff → Manage roles/permissions.
View all staff schedules (shifts) - ability to view all published shifts across all staff members and rooms in the center but without insight into ratio information or the ability to make changes.
Edit all staff schedules (shifts) - ability to make changes to shifts, see ratio information to assign the right number of staff per day based on expected attendance and publish shifts for staff members.
Schedule calendar
The Staff Schedule default view is a weekly calendar-style grid (either five days or seven depending on your configuration) with the ability to view a single day by clicking on any date at the top row of the grid. You can go forward and backward in dates by clicking on the date picker at the top of the page.
There are two primary views available, which can be selected from above
Group by room - this breaks out each room and shows all that have it selected as a base room
Group by staff - this lists all staff at the center in alphabetical order
Add a shift
To add a shift, you can click on + New shift at the top of the page or click on any cell in the schedule. If the cell is empty (meaning no shifts have been added yet) a blue highlight and plus sign will appear. If there is a shift already assigned, click on the blue highlight around the shift card.
Creating a shift from clicking on a cell means that the new info will be added, including the date and assigned staff. To create more shifts with similar info (e.g. start and end time, break, room, staff member), you can select Create another shift and the same info will be duplicated, allowing you to make updates (e.g. change the date) before saving.
Copy/pasting shifts
If your shift patterns are recurring, week by week, you have the option to copy and paste shifts from one week to other weeks.
To do so, add a week of shifts, click on Copy shifts at the top of the page and choose which rooms and weeks you'd like to paste onto other weeks.
Recurring Shifts
With the shift recurrence feature, you can select for a shift to reoccur on specific days (whether that be every day, or just one day of the week for example), and you can select the number of weeks a shift pattern should repeat for (every week, every two weeks, it's totally up to you!). You can also set an end date for the recurrence series. Once you've created a recurring schedule, you can still edit a single shift in a series (for example, reassign or change the shift time, work tag or delete it) or edit the recurrence series (for example, reassign or change the time, work tag or delete them). And of course, you have the option to publish recurring shifts week by week or all future shifts in the schedule.
Recurring shifts will be marked by a turning arrow symbol in your schedule overview:
Open shifts
A key feature of the Staff schedule is the concept of Open shifts.
These are shifts that do not have a staff member assigned to them. This is helpful when considering the shifts needed for a room, before assigning to staff based on availability - as well as if there is a change and a staff can no longer fulfil the shift. For managers, the open shifts indicate areas to focus on to find staff, whether within the center or from external sources.
Work tags
Creating work tags allows you to categorise the different types of shift work. This information is included in export and API data. For example you may want to communicate to staff that specific time periods are for "Classroom time", "Prep time" and "Training" — and add that to attendance as needed.
To set up work tags, Staff schedule users with the manage feature permission can go to Settings → Staff → Staff hours and Add a work tag
You can choose the name, colour, unique code (for data synching with other systems) and identify if one of them is the default tag for new shifts
Tags can be added to shifts in the schedule where they'll be colour coded for clarification
Tags will be possible to add retroactively to attended hours
Tags show up on CSV exports and API for shifts and staff hours to inform payroll
Assigning shifts
Open shifts can be easily assigned to a staff member by clicking on the shift card and selecting the staff from the drop-down list (shown in alphabetical order). Similarly, any shifts that need to be re-assigned can be easily done by selecting a staff member from the Staff drop-down within shifts. Once saved, the shift will be assigned to the new staff member
Assigning rooms
All existing rooms configured in Famly are available to assign shifts too. Just like assigning and reassigning staff members, rooms can be changed by clicking on the shift card and selecting a new location then saving the change.
Shift times
For each shift, select and start and end times for the day. Multiple shifts can be created for a staff per day. This can be used to indicate room switches at specific times. Shift times can overlap, so please keep in mind when planning the schedule.
Staff breaks
Adding break time is optional and can be selected from the shift modal. Any number of minutes can be selected. This amount will be deducted from the total working time indicated and shown as minus hours in the CSV file available for download from the Staff Schedule page.
Staff ratio information
For centers using age groups, an indication of the staff ratio being off (red smiley face) is shown for the day. If you are out of ratio, you can always make adjustments based on ratio needs and staff availability to make the red smiley face disappear.
To get more details on when the room is out of ratio during the day, the top row of the table can be clicked to show the single-day views. The graph shows red for the times of the day when the staff ratio is off based on expected children's attendance and staff assigned to the room. New shifts can be created and assigned to ensure the ratio is met. By hovering on the graph more details about the ratio amount can be viewed.
Publish shifts
Once users with edit permission are happy with the shifts and schedule created for your center, the schedule can be published—meaning the shifts become visible to all staff. You can publish the shifts for the current week or all coming weeks.
In-app notifications are sent after shifts are published to staff assigned to the added, edited or deleted shifts. These notifications can be turned on or off from My Account → Notifications and Messaging → Staff schedule updates.
In-app notifications of shifts will look something like this:
Bulk delete shifts
Made a mistake? No problem. You can delete shifts in bulk by selecting the shifts you'd like to remove and deleting them all in one go. You can select shifts across the week, across rooms, for an entire day, or all for a single staff member.
Just click on the Delete shifts button, select the room and date range you'd like to remove shifts for and confirm.
Scheduled Hours
The shifts assigned are shown in the following locations in the app:
Staff attendance page: Attendance → Staffing →Staff attendance
You can read more about the Attendance page here
Attendance details pop-up box: Click on any cell on the staff attendance page. It shows the scheduled time and attended time.
Staff profile page: shows upcoming shifts for the staff member
The staff member's contracted hours can be found in the Contract section on their profile page as well