Relieve administrative headaches with open shift approval

Hi there,

A much-requested feature is finally here! We’re excited to share our brand new addition to your account - open shift approval. On our quest to provide a system that’s as flexible as our customers’ needs, our latest release allows multiple employees to request to claim an open shift, giving you the power to approve or deny and ensuring peace of mind that you always have the perfect fit.

What’s new

Available to all admin users and managers who can edit the rota, you can now:

• Set specific open shifts to require approval before that are claimed and assigned to team members giving clear and controlled oversight of your rotas.
• Browse from a list of potential employees who wish to work your open shift making sure you have the best person for the job.
• Approve or deny open shift requests with the confidence that employees will be notified of any responses.

Why we built it

Customer feedback revealed that many common customer issues could be tackled with an open shift approval step. Concerns included team members working excessive hours, unfair spread of open shifts if all claimed by a select few and staff claiming shifts that they weren’t sufficiently trained or experienced for. The impact of this meant the time consuming reassigning of shifts, administrative chores and disappointed employees.

Open shift approval has been designed to conquer all these challenges and allow our employees to recapture control.

How it works

Open shift approval is super simple to incorporate into your regular routine. Ensure you have open shifts enabled in your account settings and, when you next add an open shift, you’ll see a, ‘Approval required’ toggle below your publish button.

To view and/or action any requests, just head back to the open shift you created and click the ‘Request’ section on the shift box. Here, you’ll see a list of employees who’d like to work your shift and can approve or deny each request.

To learn more about how this feature works including what happens for employees once the request is actioned, click here.

A few quick notes

• Any amendments made to an open shift that requires approval will remove all requests as the shift is not the same as it was when the employee expressed interest in working it.
• This feature is available to customers on all packages of RotaCloud but is currently being beta tested. If you don’t yet have access to this feature, this will be rolled out to you in the coming weeks.