Another group of clients call and sign up within minutes. A scheduling manager from Minted called this week: “I need to schedule 60 new employees today, they won’t stop calling and they are driving me nuts!” After I drooled over their “freshest designs on paper” we quickly verified that Shiftboard was an excellent solution. Within the hour Minted had a branded site with employees loaded and a schedule set through the next two months.  It really is that simple!

We know choosing a scheduling system is a big deal. In fact, finding the right solution is absolutely imperative.  Just keep in mind the process might not need to be as difficult as you originally thought.  We all love finding the right fit. The latest discovery I’ve made certainly fell right into my lap. Thanks to Minted, the 2010 Shiftboard Holiday card is already on its way. With that daunting decision out of my way I can spend more time scouring the holiday candy bowl!

Alison (Jones) Rogstad

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

So now what?  You start picking up whichever jobs you can.  That may mean working one, two, or three part time jobs, juggling a part time gig with a full time job, internships, volunteering, a combination of any one of these…it’s exhausting to think about, but with the right combination of organization, skill, and drive I truly believe that it’s still possible to move forward and get ahead, even if it seems like you are fighting against the gods to do so.   This is where the beauty of a program like Shiftboard comes in.  I know that I must have been a pill for previous employers, working 2 different jobs with varying schedules while also volunteering once a week.  Sounds like a scheduling nightmare.  But I was always willing to pick up shifts if I could, switch with another employee if I could, and about every month I would need to change my availability all together.   But the trick is that although people are busier than ever, they are also more willing than ever to pick up extra shifts.  Because of their complex availabilities it makes sense to let them look at what’s available and decide for themselves which shifts will work.  It saves managers time (“oh…so you aren’t available this Tuesday?”) and avoid the possibility of having to get that shift covered last minute or being faced with a no show.    “Why do I even bother writing a schedule? People end up switching and trading shifts until they get the schedule they want anyways.”  It’s true. They will.   So while Shiftboard can still be used in the traditional manager-tells-me-when-to-work-end-of-story way, it’s also nice to have the option of allowing for a bit more flexibility and input on the employee’s end without having to circle around phone calls, availability forms, etc.  If you’re working with a lot of young, mobile workers, why not try a combination of both? Strict yet flexible?

The class of 2010 has a lot to be proud of, they have worked just as hard, probably harder, than any other class.   So hats off to you class of 2010!  You did it!  And now let the job spree begin…

-Nahid

One of the pioneers leading this charge is Cali Yost, of Work + Life Fit Inc.  She is an author and a consultant to companies large and small about how to create a process to help you rethink how work gets done.

One of her key points is:

“How do you move the cultural conversation and mindset about work, life and business growth to match the realities of today’s ‘always on,’ ‘do more with less’ global, competitive reality that affects all of us.”

That’s a mouthful, but one that is similar to what we hear often from scheduling managers and workers.  Do more with less.  From the senior team at 10,000 employee companies to the owner of an 80+ person staffing firm, companies continue trying to grow in a tough economy.

Self scheduling

Our company founder often talks about bottoms-up scheduling as one way to do more with less.  If you give workers some autonomy, they will help you get more done because worrying about their schedule will be off your plate – they can do it themselves, quite well.  His idea and question is that as a culture we have gotten used to managing and running our personal lives online, why not our work lives?

People seek to have some control of their work day and in many cases the recession has forced it on them.  They might now choose to keep 2 or 3 jobs, if they can juggle the scheduling of them, instead of having one major job that forces them into a 9-5 pattern.  And one that leaves them vulnerable when that one job goes away in a layoff or company shutdown.

Research to guide workplace decision making

Yost’s site has a research section which I found useful, especially a 2009 Study entitled: 

Flexibility in the Recession

Yost is finding that flexibility is slowly growing as a business strategy and not just some sort of informal perk.  Flexibility is not simply allowing flexible hours or a shorter work week; it is much more than that.  Work Life Fit worked with BDO Seidman on a study of Chief Financial Officers and perceptions about what is often called work-life balance, but perhaps erroneously so because many studies have argued that balance isn’t possible.  More than 50 percent of CFOs surveyed believed that work life flexibility improved employee productivity, among several other benefits, too.

Indeed, Cali Williams Yost named her firm in a way that implies finding a blend of work and life which recognizes that one might win out over the other at different times of the year or over a lifetime.  We are glad we found her work and site.

As we explore and expand new definitions of work and life, we are finding Shiftboard customers recognize that they need online and offline tools to help them in this new frontier, this new workplace.   Tools and applications that are a flexible as they need to be in helping their workers, their volunteers be productive and effective.  Scheduling software is one of those tools.

-TJ M

Leanne explains that “With 76% of baby boomers wanting to work flexible jobs as they enter retirement and 79% of mothers wanting to work fewer than 40 hours/week it is no wonder that flexibility has become a hot topic in the workplace. Companies that have heeded their workers requests are winning… ”

What this translates into is that workers are more loyal to companies that offer some form of flexibility.  Option like reduced work weeks, telecommuting, job share programs, sabbaticals and generous maternity and paternity leaves.

The part that really struck me was Leanne’s counter point aimed at the employee, which is something not often talked about:  “Flexibility cannot be a one way street…  Employees need to understand that with flexible work conditions come expectations… that work will be completed well and on time, that a reduced salary may be needed in return for reduced hours, and that employees need to be available when they say they will be,” she said.

At Shiftboard, we see that requirement on employees translated by companies of all types who use our scheduling software.  They want their employees to have flexibility, but they want them to be responsible for their commitments and their schedules.  Self scheduling. From security guard services to event management companies,  volunteer coordinators to large HR departments scheduling interviews,  the need to offer employees access to their schedules from any place at any time is what the new workplace is asking for.

-TJ M

According to MSNBC,   “The pilots of Northwest flight 188 told the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) that they were so engrossed in a complicated new crew-scheduling program on their laptops — that they lost track of time and place for more than an hour until they were brought back to alertness by a flight attendant on an intercom.”

Delta’s scheduling software for pilots, required to be adopted as part of the merger with Northwest, was so complex as to have caused those pilots to lose track of an hour in the air?  Are you kidding me? Here’s a little snippet from the New York Times on this same story:

“Though similar to Northwest’s scheduling system, the Delta procedure uses different acronyms and a different computer program, said a pilot who has used both systems but who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly.  He said the Northwest system was ‘more intuitive.’”

Northwest’s scheduling software was more intuitive?  Ya think??  Circumstantial evidence seems to indicate that reprogramming O’Hare’s air traffic control system (probably written in Fortran) would be more intuitive.

We’re in the business of scheduling software here at Shiftboard.  But I can say with 100% certainty that we’re not in the same business as Delta’s scheduling software vendor.

Why does ease-of-use matter?

I wrote a post back on July 22 entitled  “Remember When . . . Confusing Products Were A Good Thing?”  I guess someone at Delta missed the sarcasm.   My next post on July 27,  “The Most Demanding User Base is the Fleetest Afoot,”  was about the emphasis we place on making very intuitive software because our customers can’t afford to train their distributed workforces.  People around here were rolling their eyes and telling me move on in the blog, they got the point already.  Evidently my (WIDELY read) blog doesn’t have a big following in Delta’s IT department, however.

We don’t take ease-of-use for granted because our business depends on it.  And our business depends on it because our customers expect and demand their online scheduling vendor to provide a system that is easily adopted by both their schedulers and workers.  Last time I checked, two well-educated and veteran pilots staring at a screen scratching their heads for hours won’t pass muster.  Our standard here is that anyone who can use email can figure out the system the first time they log in . . . with no training.

Don’t worry.  If the NTSB comes calling, we’ll pick up the phone.  There’s a new sign hastily scrawled in felt tip marker hanging above the entrance to the development office wing here:

It’s only half in jest.

More importantly, that sign will still be hanging at Shiftboard long after this Northwest/Delta Airlines flap has blown over.

-Rob E.

Attaching Google Maps to shifts within our online scheduling system is not anything new.  However, the feature has recently been enhanced.   In addition to a location name and address linking to a Google Map, managers can now associate a contact name, phone number, notes and special instructions for each separate location.

This means all employees and/or volunteers have a Google Map to their destination as well as easy access to all important contact information they may not necessarily keep on file or have memorized.  Excuses for being late go right out the window with this tool.

Small enhancements like these make scheduling and communication with Shiftboard much easier for scheduling managers in many different markets. These markets range from small to large businesses, healthcare, education, municipalities and the non profit sector.

-Alison J

Links in this Post:

http://www.shiftboard.com

Part of how I started this search is from reading a post on the “Nurse Scheduling Problem” at Wikipedia. I was surprised to find a specific entry (and we didn’t start it) on this focused topic. Since I don’t head to the gym very often these days like Rob does (see Rob’s post on why SaaS is better than a hat backwards), I had time on my hands one night after work.

But I often wonder, particularly with nurses, how they manage it all. My mom was a nurse and a manager and I often listened to the tales of how they managed to staff all the shifts, scrambling to fill a shift just in time nearly every day. Now when I go to the doctor’s office, and I have to wait, I think who is scheduling the doctors and nurses? I decided to do some research and see if anyone had written a book (or two) on how to be a good nurse manager or nurse supervisor.  What sorts of resources would I find?

Nurse Scheduling for Managers

That was the title I hoped to find so we could buy ten copies and share them with customers. I didn’t find that title, nor do I think we’re going to write it any time soon, but I did find a few five-star rated books (and a few that just had good titles) that I thought I’d share.

1. Nurse Manager’s Survival Guide: Practical Answers to Everyday Problems

by Tina Marrelli. This one was out of stock, but it seemed to be one that was high on the buy list.

2. A Charge Nurse’s Guide: Navigating the Path of Leadership (Paperback)

This one had two five-star reviews. Book by Scott Allen.

3. Effective Leadership and Management in Nursing (6th Edition)

This textbook had nine reviews and if you had to keep one on your bookshelf, this was it.  By Eleanor Sullivan.

Nurse Manager Books on Amazon

If you search Nurse Manager, you won’t find loads of titles, but you will find 15 or so useful nurse staffing, nurse manager, nurse leadership books.  If you have some favorites, or know of some good resources that we should review and list, please share them with us by email.  We are also combing the web to find good nurse discussion groups and social networks specifically for the professional nurse.

-TJ M