Open Shift for decentralised shift planning - let your employees easily choose shifts they want

The Open Shifts functionality is designed to streamline assigning and filling open shifts within your organization. It empowers both shift managers and employees by offering a flexible and efficient approach to shift scheduling.

Mobile app view

This feature allows you to decentralise the job of creating the shift plan, save time and also offer your employees the option to choose their shifts according to the times that work the best for them. 

Key Features for Shift Planners

Easy publishing : 
Shift planners can now post open shifts which employees can apply to and "pick up"

• 2 New Shift Assignment Modes: 
  Admins can offer two possible shift assignment options for shift planners:
  • Auto Assigned to First Applicant: The system automatically assigns the shift to the first applicant.
  • Approval Needed and Applicant Visibility: Managers review applicants and manually select the best fit.
• Instant communication:  
  Employees directly receive notifications for newly published open shifts as soon as they are published
• Targeted Notifications: 
  Managers can notify specific employees who would be interested in the open shifts. 
• Best match visibility : 
  When employees match the role and location of the published open shift, they are shown as best matches/fit for those open shifts 
• Assignment Flexibility:
  Managers can assign shifts to all employees even the ones who have not applied 

Key Features for employees:

• Flexibility: Employees enjoy the freedom to select shifts that align with their availability.
• Transparency: can see the details of how many applicants, or the shift details before applying
  
• Immediate communication: Employees are communicated instantly as soon as open shifts are made available.
• Modern User Experience: employees can clearly see the open shifts in their mobile or desktop app. They can sort shifts by best matches (role and location match), start time, shift length, number of applicants

Before we go ahead and share how you can use open shifts let us shortly understand how the open shift functionality works: 

Now let's set this functionality up and start publishing open shifts

STEP 1: For admins, HR admins: How to set open shifts for your company

1. Open shifts functionality will be available to companies as per Kenjo's subscription plans
2. If you have access to the open shift functionality then you simply need to go to open shift settings and toggle on the options you want to offer/apply to your company
   1. Allow approval needed: if this is ON then shift planners can create shifts where the employees will be able to apply to and the shift planner who published the shifts can select and assign the shift to an interested employee or any other employee
   2. Allow auto-assign to first applicant: if this is ON then shift planners can create shifts where the shift is automatically assigned and published to the first employee who applies to the open shift
      
      

STEP 2: For admins, HR admins, or any shift planner: How to create open shifts, publish them 

1. Log in and access the Shiftplan schedule screen
2. Create a new open shift via the add shift button or the + button or via templates 
3. Choose the employee > open shifts
4. Choose the filed open shift assignment > as Requires approval or Auto assigned to first applicant
   
5. Finish creating the open shift
   
6. Click on publish, and toggle on the open shift publishing and click on publish 

Note: Open shift settings can only be edited by admins or custom profiles with permissions to settings. Employees can see open shifts both on desktop and mobile app. Employees can apply to open shifts only via the mobile app. 

Tip: To get shift applications within a good time, add an application deadline in comments of the shift 

STEP 3: For admins, HR admins, or any shiftplanner : 
How to assign an open shift to employees who have applied to them 

1. If an open shift is setup as "autoassign to first applicant" then its automatically assigned to the first employee who applies to it 
2. You can always see the number of applications to open shifts in the shift card : 
   
   
3. If an open shift is setup as "approval needed" then you can select from employees who applied to the shift and simply click on assign and choose either an interested employee or any other employee from the list 
   
   
   

Additional features : 

1. Best match:  easily finding the best person for the job 

When the role and location of the open shift match the role and location of an employee's shiftplan profile then you are shown this green tick that indicates that this person is quite well suited for the shift.

2.  Selectively informing a set of employees for shiftplan
 

In case you want to inform a specific set of people or selectively only few people about the open shifts then simply use the filters and only selected employees will be notified about the open shifts and shown those open shifts on mobile /desktop

Note: If a manager creates a shift and their admin / HR-admin /another employee publishes those shifts, the "ownership" of those shifts will change to the person who publishes those shifts. This means that this user is now the one who needs to approve the shifts. 
In this moment, the manager who originally created the shifts loses the approval option.

Employee experience: 
How do your employees see the open shifts and apply to them via Kenjo mobile app? 

1. Visibility : 
   1. Your employees see all open shifts under a new tab on their mobile app
   2. The days where open shifts are available are indicated by a yellow dot and open shifts are tagged also with a yellow label
2. When you publish new open shifts employees get a notification and can navigate to that open shift and can see the details
3. They are given a confirmation : if there are any overlapping shifts in the same time. If there is a scheduled shift in the exact same time frame as the open shift they are applying to, then that is shown to the employee "you have an overlapping shift". This is to ensure employees do not pickup shifts during times where they already have shifts
4. Once employees apply to the open shift :
   1. If its an autoassign to first applicant : then the shift is immediately assigned to them and they are notified
   2. If its an approval required shift : then the shift application is sent to you and you can see it in the shiftplan
      
      
5. Sorting and finding the best shift :
   On a single day, employees can find their best preferred shift by using multiple options
   
6. Cancelling appplication :
   if employees want to withdraw an open shift application then they can easily cancel their application with one button
   
   
   

FAQs : 

1. As an employee can i reject a shift?
No, Once a shift has been assigned to an employee, that user can't cancel the assigned shift anymore. In this moment, that can only be executed by the admin.