Setting up shift bidding with Snap Schedule

This article will explain how to use Snap Schedule for shift bidding, i.e. to make open shifts available for any employee to request the extra shift.   Basically, you determine which shifts are available for bidding and how many person you will need for each shift.  You inform your employees about the shifts available for bidding. Emailing is the method used in this example, but you can use paper posting, extra shift request form, or any other method that is convenience.  Employees select and sign up for open shifts and you use Snap Schedule’s information to determine eligibility and choose the person to fill a particular shift.  Once completed, you publish the resulting shift assignments to affected employees.

The first step in this set up is to create a “place holder” employee called “Open Shift”, “Available Shift”, or whichever name that makes sense for you. In this article we will use “Open Shift”. The only fields that you will fill in for the employee data will be the Employee Code and Employee Name fields. Leave all other fields completely blank.  Open shifts will be assigned to this place holder employee so you can quickly see if all positions have been filled.

It’s typically best to have this employee located as the very first or very last employee in your schedule view to make it easy to find. This might be something you’ll want to take into account when coming up with the employee name or employee code. In my example below, I’ve given this employee code EMP-90 so that I can sort my view by employee code and this employee will be the last one in my list.

Now that your Open Shift employee is set up, you’ll be able to move shifts to this employee any time that someone is unable to come in for their shift. Also, when creating your future schedules, if you have a shift that is left unfilled, you can simply assign the shift to the Open Shift employee.

To move a shift from the employee who called out to the Open Shift employee, first go to the Daily View by Employee. Click on the shift that needs to be moved, and then place your mouse cursor on one of the edges of the shift cell. When you see the cross-hair icon appear, click and hold to drag the shift to the Open Shift employee. Make sure to keep the shift on the same exact day that it was scheduled, your simply moving the shift to another employee. After moving the shift, you may assign you time off reason for the employee who called out as you see below.

After you’ve assigned the applicable shifts to the Open Shift employee, you now need to notify your employees that these shifts are available for bidding. Under the Schedule tab click on the Email Schedules button. In the first screen where you select the employee shifts and dates to send in the email, only select the Open Shift employee. Make sure to select the proper dates for the shifts that are available. Click the Next button to move to the next screen.

In the Recipients pane, you will now choose to email a group schedule to the employees that you select. Click on the Select All button to choose all employees. Make sure to then uncheck the Open Shift employee, since we left the email address blank. Click the next button.

When you reach the final preview pane, you can see the shifts that are currently available that will be emailed to employees.

After sending out the email, employees can then reply to the sender to request to pick up one of the available shifts. You’ll want to make sure that the Sender email address in your Email Settings is for the person who will be making these scheduling adjustments. You then can simply move the shift from the Open Shift employee to the employee who will fill that shift. Then resend the Open Shift employee shifts to give everyone the most up to date information regarding available shifts. It’s also a good idea to send the updated schedule to the employee who filled the shift so they can see the changes to their schedule.

The method of communication for this setup could vary based on your needs. One could print a Calendar report for the Open Shift employee and post that in the office if you prefer to have employees check this report for open shifts. The key to making this process work is with moving all available shifts to the Open Shift employee, sending out the communication, and then moving the shifts back to an employee who will be the replacement.