With the appropriate settings enabled, TimeForge allows your employees to swap or trade shifts.
Shift swaps are simple: If Joe Smith doesn’t want to work the shift that he is currently scheduled for, he can “give up” his shift, and another employee can “pick up” that shift. Then, a manager can approve or deny the swap. Of course, Joe is notified that he is still responsible for the shift until the swap has been approved by a manager.
You can view pending shift swaps either through the Schedules tab or through your Today page. After viewing shift swaps, you can accept or deny them, and you can also leave a message for the employee regarding the approval or denial of the swap. TimeForge also has alerts which will email managers (or staff members) when shift swaps are available or need to be reviewed.
Enable shift swapping among employees
To enable shift swaps, you'll need to visit your location settings page. Open the Set Up tab, then select Settings.
Look for the setting titled Do you want to enable employees to use shift swapping? Make sure it is set to Yes.
If you want management to approve shift swaps, you should also make sure the following setting is set to Yes.
View pending and open Shift Swaps
On the Today page, you can view the number of pending and open Shift Swaps. Pending swaps are those that have been picked up but are awaiting manager approval. Open swaps are those that have been "given up" but not yet "picked up" by another staff member. To view the swaps, you can click the link on this page.
When you click the Open Shift Swap link, for example, you'll see a list of shifts that have been given up but not yet picked up.
The SL: 1 next to position in this example is the employee's skill level at that position.
Another way to view pending Shift Swaps (as well as those you have approved or denied) is to open the Schedules tab and click Shift Swaps:
Approve or deny a pending Shift Swap
Managers can determine potential cost difference in approving the swap, as well as whether the swap will violate the number of maximum hours assigned to the employee who is picking up the shift.
Click Approve to approve the shift swap or Deny to deny it.
The final step in approving a shift swap is confirming that you wish to approve the swap. When the final approval window pops up, you can even enter a message explaining why you approved or denied the shift swap. Click Continue to finalize the swap.
The approved swaps should then show up under Approved Shift Swaps. Denied swaps will show up under Denied Shift Swaps:
They are informed that while they may give up the shift, they are responsible for it until someone picks up the shift and their manager approves the swap.
They are informed that while they may pick up the shift, they are NOT responsible for it until their manager approves the swap.
See this guide for more information on Shift Swaps from the employee perspective.