Employee Scheduling

Overview: What are we talking about?

In this article, we will cover how to create and manage employee schedules using Gingr's in-app employee scheduler.

To subscribe to the employee scheduler for $15/month navigate to Admin » Manage Gingr Subscriptions. This subscription is shared across locations, so you will only need to subscribe once in an app. 

**Clients who purchased their Gingr subscription prior to 12/1/2018 receive employee scheduling at no additional charge**

This article includes:

• Setting Up Teams & Specialties
• Creating Schedules
• Split Shifts
• Recurring Shifts
• Viewing a Published Schedule
• Sending a Published Schedule via Email/SMS
• FAQs

Set it Up: Let's get started.

Getting started with scheduling Gingr simply requires three things to be set up first: teams, services, and group permissions.

Teams:

Teams will be your “types” of operational work that you have in your business. For example, a team might range from something more general like a role/position or it may be something more specific like a specific task. How you configure your teams is up to you! Some examples might include:  “Front of House”, “Play Group Supervisor”, or “Kennel Cleaning”.

Important! You may want to create teams based on roles/positions if your team understands that specific tasks are handled by specific roles. On the other hand, if your team is smaller and specific tasks are handled more fluidly, then creating teams of specific types of work might be a better solution.

Step 1: Set Up Teams

Navigate to Left-Hand Navigation: Reports & More » Manage Schedules. Towards the top right of the scheduling page, you can click the option to Manage Teams.



From the Manage Teams pop-up window, you can enter the different types of roles you want to schedule. Each team needs a Team Name and a Color.

Step 2: Set Up Group Permissions

Navigate to Left-Hand Navigation: Reports & More » Groups. Configure the following group permissions for your team:

How to: Create a schedule.

Once you have set up services and teams, you can begin creating a schedule for your team. You can create, edit, and manage schedules by going to Left-Hand Navigation: Reports & More » Manage Schedules.  

1. Add a staff member to the schedule by clicking the + button in the farthest left Employee column.
   
   
   
2. Add a shift for that user for every day of the week that they should work. When adding a shift, you will be given two options: employee shift, and specialist shift.
   
   
   
   Specialist Shift:
   
   Create a specialist shift for any of your additional services that are appointment-based. For example, you would create a specialist service for any of your grooming, training, or other appointments.
   
   Important! Specialist shifts do not necessarily correlate to the time that a specialist should clock in or out. Specialist shifts control when appointment time spots or slots are able to be booked. For example, a Groomer may come in earlier than their scheduled specialist shift to prepare for the day. To schedule the times that a specialist should clock in or out, you should use an employee shift.
   
   Here is an example of how you might schedule a groomer’s working shift with their specialist shift:
   
   
   
   
   Employee Shift:
   
   Create an employee shift for any of your teams. Employee shifts are not related to services. For example, you should not create a team or an employee shift for a service that customers book. For that, you will use a specialist shift.
   
   
3. Repeat for anyone else that should be scheduled that week
   
   
4. Publish your schedule. Publishing a schedule will push a notification to any employees who have the schedule published notification enabled for their user group. You can publish your schedule once you are done creating and editing shifts for that week. You can publish one week at a time.
   
   Important! If you need to make any changes to a schedule that has already been published, you can unpublish it, make your necessary changes, and then re-publish the schedule once you are done.

Split Shifts

You can create multiple types of shifts within a day by adding multiple teams to an employee’s day. When creating a shift, you can select any team that might apply.

You can also add blocks of time within a type of team for a given day. To do this, you will click the add shift button towards the bottom right of the team’s section and Gingr will add another block of time for you to customize.

Recurring Shifts

Recurring shifts can be created for both employee shifts and specialist shifts.

For employee shifts, you can make a shift repeat for the day of week that you are currently working on and have it update/override any existing shifts if needed.

Important! Specialist shifts can be recurring for a day of the week, or they can apply to a specific date. For example, if you wanted a specific schedule to repeat until a certain date, then you will navigate to the date where the schedule changes and edit the schedule.

View a Published Schedule

Once a schedule has been published, an employee can view their schedule from within Gingr by going to the Left-Hand Navigation: Calendar » My Schedule. This page will display published schedules per week.

Important! The schedule that will display will be for the user that is currently logged in.

Sending a Published Schedule via Email / SMS 

Gingr can automatically send an email / SMS to all staff members with a shift when the schedule is published.

This is controlled from Left-Hand Navigation: Admin » System SMS and/or  Left-Hand Navigation: Admin » System Email. Locate the Send employee schedule publish sms and Send employee schedule to publish email fields and set them to either Yes or No to send an SMS and/or email to your staff members when you publish the schedule. When set to Yes, an email/SMS will be sent to your staff listing their schedule.  

An example SMS that is sent looks like this:

Hello Aaron Nichols,

A new schedule has been published for the week of Sun Dec 2, 2018. Your schedule is:

Sun Dec 2, 2018
9:00 AM - 12:00 PM - Play Yard
4:00 PM - 7:00 PM - Play Yard

Tue Dec 4, 2018
9:00 AM - 7:00 PM - Play Yard

An example email that is sent looks like this:

FAQ: Check this out! 

How do I enter in time-off requests or availability?

To enter in time-off requests and availability, you will go to the Left-Hand Navigation: Calendar » My Schedule. From the My Schedule page, you will see the Availability and Request Time Off buttons. Click each button to enter the corresponding information.

The Availability and Request Time Off features are full-text fields where you can enter in your availability or time-off requests with descriptions and commentary.

Once you submit an entry for time off or enter in a new availability, a notification will be sent to any user with permission to manage other employee’s schedules. Managers can edit an employee’s time off and availability fields to allow for commentary and discussion.

When a schedule manager makes a change to an employee’s time off requests of availability, that employee will receive a notification to let them know.

How do I view an employee’s availability or time off requests?

To view an employee’s time-off requests and availability, navigate to the scheduler by going to the Left-Hand Navigation: Reports & More » Manage Schedules. From any week that an employee is scheduled for, you can click on the “i” icon next to the employee’s name:

When creating and editing shifts for an employee, you will always see their time off and availability listed at the bottom of the create/edit shift window:

How can I tell how many labor hours I am spending?

From the Left-Hand Navigation: Reports & More » Manage Schedules, you can view a breakdown of hours that you have spent by date, team, and employee.

By Date

Under each date, you will see an indication of how many hours you are spending on that date across all teams.

By Team

When in the team view, you can view the number of hours spent for the week per team in the far left column under the team’s name.

By Employee

When in the employee view, you can view the number of hours spent for the week per employee in the far left column under the employee’s name.

How can Gingr help me intelligently schedule my staff?

Scheduling in Gingr means that all of your reservation and service information can be integrated into Gingr to help you make informed decisions on how you should schedule your team. From the Schedule Manager, you can click the blue “i” icon next to a date to bring up reservation and service information for that date.

The information here will show you how many services and reservations you have booked, but also how many of those same reservations and services were booked on the same date last year to help provide historical statistics to help inform your scheduling decisions.

Can I quickly schedule multiple people for the same type of work?

From the “team” view, you can build your schedule with a focus on the type of work in your facility instead of around each employee. When building a schedule in the team view, you add teams to your weekly schedule and can then schedule multiple employees within that team for that date — all from within the same window.