How Do I Prevent Overstaffing?
Scheduling staff is a complicated process, and cross-training staff members while scheduling multiple departments, can make scheduling a nightmare. When working with multiple departments, it is sometimes possible to short staff a single department by over staffing another department. Over staffing one department will create a cascade of problems, from upset staff members to increased overtime.
TimeForge’s short staffing rules allow administrators and management to create daily templates and Normal Week templates, which will be used as a base-level schedule for other schedules and departments. TimeForge will warn management if they exceed the departments, or schedule staff who are listed to work on another schedule or template in an overlapping time period.
Create or Edit a Staffing Template
Start setting up short staffing alerts by creating a new template, or editing an existing staffing template.
Edit the Template Properties
Edit the Properties for the staff template.
Set the Day of Week for the Template
Specify the day of the week for the schedule template, so TimeForge knows which day of the week you normally use the template.
Create a Weekly Staffing Template
Specify the Normal Weekly Template
After setting up 1 or more templates, create a Weekly Template which includes all of your necessary templates.
In the graphic above, the Weekly Template uses a template on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Other days of the week did not have a template.
To ensure that TimeForge uses the Weekly Template for short staffing alerts, choose the Normal Week check box.
If you are not using departments, you are done at this point.
Build Another Template, for a Different Department
Short staffing alerts are triggered when Normal Week templates indicate that there may be a shortage in staff members for a particular department or location, by comparing the departments to the schedules and Normal Week templates of the other departments.
To see the template warnings for short staffing, build templates for the other departments, and make sure to set the day of week.
Create Another Weekly Template for the Second Department
Make sure to set up another weekly template for this department, and set it to be a Normal Week.
Set Up the Shifts in each Template
Add shifts to your templates. If the shifts that are added will cause your business to be short staffed, TimeForge will warn you. Additionally, if staff members are placed in conflicting templates or departments, TimeForge will warn you.
Detected Shortages will Trigger Warnings
A shortage warning will appear if short staffing is likely to occur based on what is normally worked in a work week.
Schedule Staff Shortages Show Alerts Too…
In addition to Template warnings, TimeForge’s short staffing alerts will notify management when the schedule exceeds or overlaps with Normal Week templates for other departments.
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