Introduction
In some business operations it is not uncommon to find situations over the course of a day or a shift where you may have excess staff for the needs at hand. On these occasions you may elect to offer scheduled or currently working staff the option to leave early or volunteer off which is where the Volunteer Time Off (VTO) tool can assist.
The purpose of this tool is to allow organizations to offer those staff already on the Shiftboard schedule the ability to volunteer to take a shift (or remainder of the shift) off. The article below will detail how to set up a VTO option for staff as well as how staff can interact with it.
VTO Setup & Creation
When Volunteer Time Off (henceforth referred to as VTO) is activated for your site, you will see a new row added to the header of your weekly calendar in the Admin console. This row will be distinguished by purple coloring in both the Weekly Staff and Time views and when actively in use will include a numerical entry on days with pending VTOs. Note that the VTO is only visible via the weekly views on the Admin console.
In order to set up a new VTO entry you will need to click on the ‘Select’ option appearing next to the ‘Add’ button on your Calendar which will bring up the multi-select functionality and related options.
From here select the number of staff you wish to offer the VTO to by checking the boxes for their shifts just as you would for other multi-select tasks. Remember to select ALL the staff you wish to offer VTO to NOT the reduced number you want to bring the headcount to. The headcount adjustment happens at a later step in the process.
Once you’ve selected the desired staff, the VTO button will become active allowing you to select it. On selection, the system will take you to a new screen where you can set the parameters for your VTO:
When on the VTO creation screen take note of the Total Positions count and the Desired Count as this is where you dictate how many VTO positions you want to offer. The Total Positions are the total number of staff shifts you select on the previous screen. If this is incorrect, go back to the previous step and reselect the desired number of shifts. The Desired Count field is the number you want the Total Positions reduced to and so it will always be smaller than the number indicated above.
Once you select the Desired Count, you can then include a custom message to be sent to the staff being offered VTO or you can leave that blank and only the standard message of a VTO offer will be sent. Finally, select the “Create VTO” option to complete the creation process.
After a VTO entry has been created, you can interact with by select the number appearing on the VTO row for the day in question. Once selected, a list will appear on the right of the screen displaying current and pending VTO entries. From there, simply select the line item for the VTO you wish to view.
The VTO maintenance screen allows you to message the staff you’ve offered VTO to as well as manually approving or declining the VTO on the staff’s behalf.
VTO End User Experience
When VTO has been offered to staff, they will receive a notification from the system informing them of the opportunity just as they would for new shift postings or assignments. On login, assignments where VTO are on offer are distinguished for staff via a purple icon as seen in the below screenshot.
Staff interact with the shift as with any normal shift by simply selecting it on their Calendar or Dashboard. This will bring up the standard shift interaction dialogue which will include an additional option for VTO alongside other functions such as Trade or Callout if you’re using those tools.
Upon selectin the VTO option, the staff will be prompted to confirm their selection and once confirmed they will be removed from the calendar accordingly.
VTO Review & Reporting
As VTO’s are processed you’ll begin to see them reflected in headcount reductions on the calendar. With the earlier example, the staff member in question has accepted the VTO request and we see that reflected both on the VTO screen itself as well as directly on the Calendar with their removal from the schedule.
This is also reflected in the reduced number of outstanding VTO’s indicated on the VTO line of the Calendar.
Lastly, from a reporting perspective; offered, accepted, and declined VTTO entries are recording in the Shift reports.
This report will provide you the details of who took which actions on offered VTO and when they took place. As with all standard reports a number of commonly used filters are included to allow you to narrow or broaden your search as desired based on Team/Workgroup, date range or other factors. Just as with all other reports, this report is also downloadable as well if desired.
Should you have any additional question on how to use VTO or you’d like to get VTO set up for your account, please reach out to your Account Manager or the Shiftboard Support helpdesk for mor assistance.