Shift offers and creating bulk shifts

Offering shifts is an alternative way to add shifts and build your roster; it can be very useful when you need to fill or replace shifts quickly.

The key difference when offering shifts is that employees must accept or decline offers. By default, your shift offers are set to expire within eight hours; however, this timespan can be increased or decreased per your business's preference. 

The image below demonstrates the shift offer process at a high level. 

  Check out our Work Settings guide to learn how to adjust the offer expiry time for your shifts.
 

Methods of offering shifts 

As there are multiple places to offer shifts to employees in your platform, it is best to determine why you need to offer a shift and how many shift offers you need to create in order to choose the most suitable method to use.

When using shift offers, consider three main use cases; these will depend on whether you are:

• Sending offers to multiple employees for the same shift(s).
  • This can be performed from Bulk actions > Shifts.
• Sending offers to specific employees for specific shifts.
  • This can be performed from the Roster.
• Sending offers to multiple employees to re-offer a declined shift.
  • This can be performed from Unfilled shifts. 

Please refer to the relevant sections below for detailed instructions on how to offer shifts for each of these circumstances. 
 

What happens once a shift has been offered?

For employees, the process is as follows:

1. After a shift has been offered, the respective employees will receive a notification through email or SMS, depending on your communication settings.
2. The employee must then accept or decline the shift offer using the Employee App before it expires.
3. Accepted employee shifts will display in the 'Upcoming Shifts' section of their Employee App.. These shifts will no longer be able to be accepted by other employees.

Any offers that expire, the shift(s) will automatically be declined.

  To understand how employees accept or decline offered shifts, please refer to our Employee article on Accept or decline a shift offer.
 

For Managers, once shifts have been offered, they will be displayed on the relevant roster.

To make it easier to differentiate between offered shifts, we use different colours to represent their unique statuses.

When an employee accepts an offered shift, it appears on the roster in an accepted state and is handled like any other published shift.

  For a complete guide on shift statuses, please refer to our article Rostered Shifts - Status, Warnings & Errors.

Creating Bulk Shifts is an excellent tool for rostering a large number of shifts, especially for shift work. This feature allows you to create identical shifts for multiple days on the same roster.

Additionally, you offer shifts using Bulk Shifts. Using Bulk Shifts for shift offers allows you to offer shifts to multiple employees simultaneously, filling up your roster quickly. 

The Bulk Shifts feature is the general go-to method when offering shifts and is particularly beneficial in the following situations:

• Filling shifts when employees call in sick
• Rostering for a large event or shift work
• Building out rosters months in advance
• The ability to create rosters with assigned shifts (for your A-grade team) while using Shift Offers to offer remaining shifts (for your casual pool) in one place

  Hot tip: If you want to create many shifts at once or offer a shift(s) to many employees at once to see who will accept quickly, then this is your best method.
 

To create shifts and offers in Bulk Shifts:

1. Navigate to Work > Rosters; in the top right-hand corner, select Bulk actions > Shifts. 
2. From the dropdown menus, complete the following options:
   • Operation
   • Roster
   • Shift Start Date and End Dates - You can create shifts up to three months in advance. 
   • Days of the week - Select the days for which shifts are required. All days for which you are creating shifts will appear on the right-hand calendar.
3. In Unpaid break, add the break duration and start time (Optional).
4. When offering shifts, consider selecting the 'Allow Employee to accept individual shifts' box.
   • If selected, employees can accept or decline individual shift offers.

   • When not selected, employees must accept all or decline all shifts offered. 

     

5. Select Position to open and edit the following fields:
   • Position
   • Number of positions - This will be the number of shifts required per day for this position. 
   • Tag requirements (Optional) - This can be used to filter employees with specific tags for these shifts.  
   • Qualification requirements (Optional) - This can filter for employees with specific compliances (RSA, RCG, etc) for these shifts. 
   • Comments (Optional) - This can be used to add a comment to the shifts. Use the toggle to make the comment visible to employees.
     
     
6. Select Find Employees to select employees, or toggle on the Find Employees Later to leave shifts unfilled on your roster. 
   • In the Find Employees modal, you can:
     • Assign specific employees to the shifts - This will roster one shift per day to the employee(s) for each day selected
     • Offer all shifts to specific employees - You can assign and offer shifts to employees at the same time. 
     • Offer all shifts to all employees by selecting Offer to All.
7. Select Save.
   • You can add additional positions by selecting Add Position (Optional).
     • Repeat Step 5 for all additional positions required. 
8. To publish/ offer shifts, select Create Shifts.

 Hot tip: Once an employee accepts an offer, all other employees will receive a follow-up communication (email or SMS)  informing them that the offered shift is no longer available.
 

Sending out offers by offering shifts from the roster is a flexible and effective method.

This method allows you to filter your rosters to target specific employees for specific shifts, including shifts at different times and on different rosters.

The benefit of sending offers from the roster is that it is highly versatile, enabling you to tailor your offers to meet more intricate needs; some situations include:

• Offer a single shift to an employee to save time when calling the employee
• Ability to use a combination of assigning shifts to your permanent staff, and then offering shifts to your casual employees
   

To offer shifts while you're in your Roster:

1. Navigate to Work > Rosters > select the appropriate roster.
2. Add the shifts to be offered to the roster.
3. Apply a Filter and select all the relevant filter options. Your roster should be filtered so that only the shifts to be offered are in your filter. Relevant filter options include
   • Rosters
   • Employees
   • Shift Status
4. Navigate to the dropdown arrow beside Publish & notify and select Send Offers.
5. If you are sending offers for past shifts, you will be prompted with a warning informing you that only upcoming shifts will be sent as offers. Any past shift will be published instead. To continue, select Confirm. 

  Please note: When sending offers from the roster, all draft shifts within your filter will be offered. 

If you'd like to make the most of offer shifts on your platform, consider a few important platform-wide settings that can affect how you offer shifts. Understanding these settings can help you make the best decision for your business needs.

There are a few key settings to consider when offering shifts:  

• Offer Expire (hours).
  • This setting sets the number of hours before a shift offer expires. 
• Create declined and expired individual shift offers as new unassigned shifts.
  • This setting will automatically duplicate new unassigned shifts on your roster for any offers that have expired or declined.
  • This makes filling shifts from Unfilled shifts a breeze.
     

To enable the creation of new shifts for declined offers:

1. Navigate to the main menu > Platform Settings > System Settings.
2. Locate the setting, Create declined and expired individual shift offers as new unassigned shifts.
3. To update the required setting -  Turn the toggle to On.
   
   
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and Save.

In this example, Clair has declined the Mon-Wed shifts; the platform has created three new unassigned shifts. As a result, her manager can easily identify which shifts need to be filled.

This is due to the "Create declined and expired individual shift offers as new unassigned shifts" setting.

Hot tip: This setting applies to any offers that are created from the roster, not offers sent from Bulk Shifts.
 

To update when a shift offer expires:

1. Navigate to the main menu > Platform Settings > Work Settings.
2. Locate the setting Shift offer expire.

3. To update the setting - Specify the number of hours (up to 2000 hours).

   

4. Select Save from the taskbar at the bottom of the screen. 

Offering shifts from Unfilled shifts, is a quick and easy way of managing and following up on any unassigned shifts in your platform. 

Unassigned shifts can appear in unfilled shifts when:

• Offered shifts have been declined, and a new shift has been auto-generated
• Find Employees Later was selected when creating Bulk Shifts
• For any other unassigned shifts on your roster
   

To fill a shift from Unfilled shifts:

1. Navigate to Work > Rosters; in the top right-hand corner, select Unfilled shifts.
2. Locate your  Unfilled Bulk Shifts / Unfilled Shifts summary.
3. Select Find employees for the shift required, then Add. 
   • For Unfilled Bulk Shifts, select Find Employees to offer all shifts.
   • Or select Individual Unfilled Shifts to offer a singular shift. 
4. Select Offer/ Assign for all required employees or Offer All.
5. Select Send. 

When a shift has been offered, your platform automatically sends email notifications to your employees to alert them of the offered shifts. 

Additionally, you can specify which managers are alerted when offers are either accepted or declined. Managers can be notified for offers sent:

• From specific rosters
• Using Bulk actions > Shifts
   

Setting a manager for a roster

To specify who receives the notifications via offering shifts from a roster:

1. Navigate to Work > Rosters.

2. Select the blue badge next to each Operation, and then select the settings icon next to the roster you want to edit.

   

3. On the second stage of the workflow, enable any of the following options to suit your needs
   • Enable comms when shift is approved - A notification will be sent when an employee accepts a shift offer.
   • Enable comms when shift is declined - A notification will be sent when an employee declines a shift offer.
     
     Within each of the above toggles, select from the following people to notify:
     • Operation Manager - The manager of the operation - This can be seen from the Operation overview
     • Employee Manager - The manager on the employee profile - This can be seen from the Employee profile overview
     • Specific People - Select people individually from all available admin & operation users.
4. Select Next, then Save.

Setting a manager from Bulk actions > Shifts

To specify who receives the notifications via offering shifts from Bulk actions > Shifts:

1. Please refer to the section Creating shifts and offers using Bulk Shifts for the full guide for Bulk Shifts. 
2. Once you have the relevant Operation and Roster, select the pencil icons to 
   • Enable comms when shift is approved - A notification will be sent when an employee accepts a shift offer.
   • Enable comms when shift is declined - A notification will be sent when an employee declines a shift offer.
     
     Within each of the above toggles, select from the following people to notify:
     • Operation Manager - The manager of the operation - This can be seen from the Operation overview.
     • Employee Manager - The manager on the employee profile - This can be seen from the Employee profile overview.
     • Specific People - Select people individually from all available admin & operation users.
3. Enter the rest of the shift details and offer them to the relevant employees.

Your platform provides platform-wide communication specific to offered shifts, which you can send to your employees or managers.

These communications are sent using email by default. However, if your platform has SMS enabled, you may choose to receive them via SMS instead. 

  Permission Reminder: Your ability to edit communication settings and content may be restricted based on your permissions.

Below is a list of some of the key communications. You can customise the content of these notifications to better suit your specific needs:

• Employee has offered shifts from the Unfilled shifts or Bulk Shifts

• Employee's offers shifts have been filled

• Employee has expired offered shifts

• Employee's shift has been accepted, declined or cancelled

• Employee has offered shifts from the Roster

• Employee has outstanding offers

  Hot tip: You can specify a regular time to send this reminder, e.g. Mondays at 6 pm. 

To learn how to edit your platform communication templates, please refer to our article on Personalising your email and SMS message templates. 

The Shift Offers Report is an incredibly valuable tool, as you can easily keep track of the status of all shift offers, ensuring that you are always up-to-date on which offers have been accepted, declined, expired, or are still pending.

The report allows you to quickly identify any issues or trends that may require your attention such as the ability to:

• See the status of shift offers for a specific Operation, Roster, Office Code or for specific employees.
• See how quickly employees are responding to shift offers.
• Identify any employee trends, such as which employees always accept a shift, which employees are more selective, and which employees respond quickly.

  Permission Reminder: This report respects your user permissions, this means that the employees that you see displayed on the report will be the ones that you can see as per your user search restrictions/ office codes.

For example, a manager may only see the employees they manage in this report.

To run a Shift Offers Report:

1. Navigate to Reports > Workforce reports and select the Shift Offers Report.
2. Select the duration (i.e. the period for which you'd like to see the shift offer).
   • You can also further filter the information by:
     • Employees
     • Operation
     • Office Code
     • Roster
     • Shift Offer Status (e.g. Pending, Accepted, Declined and Expired).
3. Submit the report.
   • The report will then show columns for:
     • Employee 
     • Office Code
     • Operation
     • Roster
     • Offer Status
     • Shift Date- When the shift is for.
     • Shift time- The time of the shift offered.
     • Offer time- When the shift was offered.
     • Response time- How quickly the employee responded to the shift offer.
4. Click on the column names to see your data listed in ascending or descending order based on that column. 
   
   
5. You can also Print or Export as a CSV or PDF.

What happens once an offered shift has been accepted? Do my other employees know?

Once an employee has accepted any shift offers, the shifts are published to the roster and will appear the same as other published shifts. 

For all other employees who were sent an offer, as this shift has been filled, they will recieve a notification stating "Your recent shift offer is no longer available as all positions have been filled. Regards, Your Company". 

If I send a bulk offer of multiple shifts, does an employee need to accept all the shifts I have offered? What if they can only do a few of the offered shifts?

When shifts are offered via Bulk Shifts, the manager can choose if shifts need to be accepted individually or if employees need to accept all offers. This is done by selecting the "Allow Employee to accept individual shifts" tickbox. 

When shifts are offered from the Roster, employees can accept shifts individually.

If an employee accidentally declines an offer, can it then be accepted?

After employee declines a shift offer, no further action is required from the employee.

For platforms with the setting "Create declined and expired individual shift offers as new unassigned shifts" turned on, the declined shift will automatically be duplicated on the roster.

This means the duplicate shift can then be published, or offered to the employee as a new offer to be accepted. 

If an employee accidentally accepts an offer, can it then be declined?

Once an employee has accepts any shift offers, the shifts are published to the roster and are treated the same as any other published shifts.

If your platform uses the Shift Cancellation feature, employees cancel their shift provided it is within the set notice period. 

However, if you do not use this feature or the employee hasn't given enough notice they can contact their manager. The manager can then cancel the shift (or reassign it to another employee) from the roster and republish to send the cancellation.

What are some of the reasons my staff can no longer accept shift offers?

Shift offers will no longer be available to your employees when:

•  The shift offer is in the past
• The shift offer has been filled by another employee
• The offer has expired

By default, employees have 8 hours to accept or decline shift offers, after which the offer will automatically decline. This setting can be adjusted to your hourly preference using the instructions in the content above.

I have sent a shift offer that I need to recall, is this possible? 

Yes, shift offers can be cancelled. Once a shift has been offered, it creates a pending shift offer on the relevant roster.

To recall an offer, simply delete the corresponding pending offers from the roster. You'll then need to republish these changes on the roster to send the cancellation.

What is the easiest way for my employees to be informed of offered shifts?

After a shift has been offered, the respective employees will receive a notification through email or SMS, depending on the communication settings for your platform.

However, for the most effective method to communicate shift-based changes is to use Push Notitificaitons. 

Can we add multiple breaks, ie paid and unpaid breaks, to shift offers?      

If you are looking at add multiple breaks to an offer it will depend on the method used to send an offer. 

• If you are sending offers from the roster
  • When sending offers from the roster you are creating each shift individually, as if you were publishing a roster.
  • Using this method, you will be able to add multiple breaks, including both paid and unpaid breaks. 
• If you are sending offers from bulk shifts
  • Sending offers using bulk shifts is a seperate process. As such, you will only be able to add 1 unpaid break using this method.