I have received a few emails at support@mrschedule.com from users inquiring how they can schedule split shifts.
For those who are unsure, a Split Shifts is when an employee is available to work during two periods of the day, but not available for a period between the original two periods.
Example #1:
An employee is available during lunch period because they have a child in school, but they must be home when the child gets off the bus. Later in the day they become available again when their spouse arrives home from work. In this case the employee is available Monday thru Friday from 10:00 - 3:00p and from 6:00p - 10:00p. They know that if they only work one of the time periods, they will not be able to get the 40 hours per week that they need so they ask to work splits.
Example #2:
An employee knows that you have to cut down labor hours in the middle part of the day. The employee likes to work the more busy periods of the day, because the time seems to go by more quickly. The employee decides that it is beneficial to work Lunch period and Dinner period to get the 8 hours a day of work. The employee can see that it is beneficial for the restaurant to have good employees work during the two highest peaks of the day and have some of them go home during non-peaks. The other benefit for the employee is that there are other things that can get done between 2:00 - 5:00 that may not be able to get accomplished if the employee was working (like going to the bank, shopping, etc).
Whatever the reason, the management team have opted for certain employees to work split shifts and have asked how this can be accomplished with MrSchedule.com.
The answer is simple: Create two employees.
Each employee will have a unique username:
| Jason1 | Jason2 |
Note: The email address can not be duplicated for both “Jasons”. Be sure to leave one of them blank.
| jason@email.com | blank |
Availabilities would be different:
| Monday 10-3p | Monday 6p-10p |
| Tuesday 10-3p | Tuesday 6p-10p |
| Wednesday 10-3p | Wednesday 6p-10p |
| Thursday 10-3p | Thursday 6p-10p |
| Friday 10-3p | Friday 6p-10p |
Daily and Weekly hour caps would need to be set:
| Monday: 4 hrs | Monday: 4 hrs |
| Tuesday: 4 hrs | Tuesday: 4 hrs |
| Wednesday: 4 hrs | Wednesday: 4 hrs |
| Thursday: 4 hrs | Thursday: 4 hrs |
| Friday: 4 hrs | Friday: 4 hrs |
| Weekly cap: 20 hrs | Weekly cap: 20 hrs |
You now have one person, who is regarded by MrSchedule as two independant employees.
There are a couple of things that you must keep in mind when you are using split shifts.
1. Make sure that when you update skill levels, that you update them for both “Jasons”
2. When Jason requests a day off, you need to request the day off for both Jason1 and Jason2.
When typed out, split shifts seem like a lot of material to understand. In practice split shifts are like hiring two employees instead of one. It shouldn’t take much more than five minutes to set up both employees. Once set up MrSchedule will do most of the work for you.
Continue to keep up on availabilities as they change, just like you would for any other employee.
Continue to adjust skills as the employee learns new skills and masters current skills.
Enter requests for time off as they come in.
The rest is simple.
To comment on this post or send suggestions for future articles, please send me an email at ask@MrSchedule.com.
I look forward to hearing from all of you.
Until next time, keep your employees happy and your labor low!
Rick