One of the unique aspects of Shiftboard is our ability to work and excel with clients from very different industries. From small businesses of ten workers to hospitals scheduling thousands of individuals, people come to Shiftboard looking for an efficient way to manage their scheduling. We see this diverse client pool as a strength – a symbiotic relationship dynamically beneficial for all parties involved.

Shiftboard does not operate on a one way street. Our clients provide us a wealth of intellectual power and perspective to improve our product. We provide schedulers with a service, they use it and respond, and we incorporate their feedback.  Recently we received enough input regarding a certain feature that we escalated it on the development list. When assigning a shift, you can now assign it to multiple individuals in the same step. Clicking ‘Pick Multiple’ will give you a list of workers who can take the shift. Simply toggle multiple members and click “assign”. Don’t worry, the options to individually assign, bulk assign, auto assign, check availability and enforce seniority still exist.

Our developers are sharp, but our clients’ insight is invaluable. Please keep us in the loop. Share your ideas and suggestions, we are all ears and your thoughts are heard.

- Alison

Many of our clients have employees who are working multiple jobs. Juggling two different schedules, with your worker as the liaison, can be frustrating for all parties involved. Volunteer and non-profit groups often face a similar dilemma. While two weeks down the road a volunteer’s schedule is a white canvas waiting for shifts to be etched in, prior obligations and unaccounted for circumstances inevitably leave schedulers scrambling to fill shifts.

Scheduling shouldn't be a stunt...

Plan ahead by utilizing Shiftboard’s Availability tool. Users (or their managers) can choose certain days of the week, at certain hours, and then specify busy or available. For random, spur of the moment events, you can select Specific Availability, and choose which days you will be available or unavailable. If you want to be really stringent, you can default your site so that members’ unaccounted availability times will be considered busy, thereby excluding them from being scheduled except for those times they have actually entered as available.

Constantly updating a calendar to accommodate ever changing priorities and schedules can be a real headache. So take a scheduler’s aspirin, use Availability, and give your workers an incentive to think more than a few days down the proverbial calendar road. Rest easy schedulers – those you see, are those available.

- Alison

The rule “no texting at work” doesn’t apply to Shiftboard users.  Managers can easily message their employees via text through Shiftboard’s system.

Imagine you are an event management scheduler and just had to reschedule the start time of 15 shifts from 5:00 pm to 4:30 pm.  The text feature allows you to instantly reach and message all affected workers.  Most people don’t have continuous access to the Internet, but most everybody does keep their cell phone with them 24/7.

Texts are received quicker and are much more likely to be read then emails.  A nurse-scheduling manager can text all qualified RN’s who aren’t currently working to try and fill a last minute shift.  After a manager posts a new schedule they can text their employees to let them know it is ready.

Your employees will love you for letting them have immediate access to their schedules and you will feel confident knowing your workers can be messaged in a method that is rapidly becoming the most preferred method of communication.

Jim Ware at the Future of Work blog frequently talks about flexible work, distributed work, and how the 21st century workplace is changing. In 2007, I downloaded a report from them entitled: How Come Distributed Work is Still the Next Big Thing?  It is a great report that makes the case for distributed remote work (the whole resource section is filled with good reports), looks at the common factors of corporate resistance, and then, in the Part Three of the report they offer suggestions and guidelines for increasing the adoption of distributed work patterns. There are a lot more remote and distributed workers today than there were even a few years ago. I’m listening to a recent webinar by Jim Ware about how to keep a team connected in a distributed workplace.

How does this impact the Shiftboard customer who manages scheduling?

Online scheduling is one way to manage each of the six benefits that Ware points out below.  If I look for themes in our customer case studies, with the exception of number five, these are the reasons scheduling managers share for why they use Shiftboard.

The Future of Work report highlighted six benefits of distributed work:
1. Reducing basic workforce support costs;
2. Increasing workforce productivity;
3. Attracting and retaining talent;
4. Increasing organizational agility;
5. Reducing the business risk of disruption from terrorism or a natural disaster; and
6. Reducing traffic congestion, air pollution, and environmental impact more generally

“When you think about it, there’s your basic business case – just take those six factors and apply them to your own organization,” states Ware.

Managing remote employee teams

Lots of cities and states in the United States have looked at #6 from their report and created “Telecommuting Day.”  Virginia recently created the Telework Day initiative and did a terrific job of showing the results at their website. Virginia teleworkers saved approximately $113,000 and avoided driving 140,000 miles.

If you deal with remote workers or are trying to determine how to incorporate scheduling distributed workers, you’ll want to read the report: “What We Saved; What We Learned” compiled for the State of Virginia by the public-private partnership Telework Exchange. It also reveals an increase in productivity by participants and reports satisfaction with their teleworking experience. The future of work is indeed changing.

-TJ M

Links in this Post:

http://www.thefutureofwork.net/resources_whitepapers.html

http://www.thefutureofwork.net/assets/WP-20061-Distributed_Work_Next_Big_Thing.pdf

http://www.shiftboard.com/web-based-scheduling-case-studies.html

http://www.teleworkexchange.com/teleworkday/

It is September and I don’t need my calendar to tell me that. I know it is September because of all the frantic calls I’ve been receiving from schools, PTA (parent teacher association) members and booster clubs.  School is in full swing and for involved parents this means schedules are completely packed. Parents who volunteer at school functions don’t generally have time to worry about details. They want to help and be involved, but the process must be very easy and stress free.  Shiftboard also understands volunteer scheduling needs to be affordable.

Different volunteer programs call for robust scheduling tools

Shiftboard allows you to create teams of different volunteers specific for your school. Tracking hours volunteered for the football or soccer seasons at both the ticket booth & concession stands is simple. Teachers can post a need for items like baked cookies for parties or parent drivers for a field trip. Teachers can easily track when parents are helping in the classroom or lunchroom. Email notifications and text messages serve as great reminders for parents with complicated schedules.

Parents login from any computer with their email address and password. Open shifts are Red and their assigned shifts are Green. Parents can schedule themselves based on friends’ schedules or system managers can keep all this information confidential. Everything is real time and always up to date. The parents I’ve spoken with are all very fun people. They want to help and know the best way to encourage and grow their volunteers is to communicate with an online schedule.

My favorite PTA mom asked if she could please buy stock in our company. She is absolutely thrilled with our messaging tools and confident she will be getting her 8 hours of sleep instead of 8 hours of cell time trying to communicate with parents.

-Alison J.

:::
Here is one Volunteer Scheduling case study involving youth. The main case study page showcases many web-based scheduling examples.

http://www.shiftboard.com

I like BNET.com for their business articles and the range of deeper issues they cover surrounding biz and tech.

Stefan Deering writes at the BNET Intercom blog about a comment made by Seth Godin, famous marketing guru (who I also follow and enjoy).  But Godin made some comment about how nonprofits are blowing it and don’t get social media. Godin couldn’t be more wrong.

We have a fair number of nonprofits, event management types, who are all over the Twitter-sphere and Blogosphere and Facebook-sphere (okay, that last one is a goofy stretch word-wise).  Point is, they do get it. They are leveraging the tools as well or better than some of the, scratch that, than many of the corporate and media types I know.

I’m voting with Stefan. Seth Godin Is Wrong about Nonprofits and the Web

-TJ M

Read on for the full case study.  Nurse Staffing firm, Ford Healthcare Systems (FHS), began using Shiftboard in western Nebraska but has grown to support clients in four states. They  90-110 shifts per week with roughly 100 RNs, LPNs, and CNAs who provide services to hospitals and other facilities.

The Challenge: Let Employees see the Schedule Online

Employees can’t see the whiteboard that Jeanette Ford, owner and a CNA herself, was using to schedule different clients and facilities.  They realized that they needed something that everyone could see their schedule on the web and be able to print it out.

You can download the full Online Nurse Scheduling case study.

Customers definitely don’t have time to enter the same repeating shift over and over again on the calendar.  With Shiftboard, managers can post a repeating shift by date, time, day, week, etc.  This means you can post the same shift through the end of the week, month, or year.

A delivery customer can post a shift for the 1^st and 3^rd Wednesday of each month and only needs to enter the information once. The same goes for a theater needing ushers each Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at 7:00 PM through the end of 2009.  Once the scheduler clicks “Set Coverage” all the shifts go straight to the calendar for viewing. The scheduler also has the option to keep these shifts hidden until it is the correct time for them to go live.

I love showing this part of our software because it is always an immediate jaw dropper.  Potential customers instantly recognize the value. “WOW, that’s cool” and “I can actually do that?” are common responses.

-Alison J

Being a Seattle company and a long-time (and raving) fan of the Seattle International Film Festival, we can’t help but love what SIFF does in the community and online. We appreciate Zee Grega writing about us on her MetBlog post about volunteering at SIFF. Thank you Zee.

We follow SIFF at Twitter, of course.

Plus we also are members of their active Facebook Group with almost 1,200 members. It is always fun to connect up with friends you didn’t know were also involved or interested in the Seattle International Film Festival.

SIFF is savvy about their online time. They have a great website, naturally. They have Twitter going for them. Their Facebook setup has me intrigued though as they have both a Group and a Fan page. I think that’s smart. Some people will just want to identify with the brand and stand up as a fan. Others will want to engage in discussions at a different level, much like the volunteers at SIFF who use Shiftboard to manage their schedules online. Groups allow that interactivity.

Oh, and just to prove they are a fun-loving bunch, SIFF has a great Flickr page, too.

-TJ M