Overview

Shift bidding is a process whereby one or more employees can express interest in working an open shift. The employees will receive a notification when such shifts are available and will be invited to respond using Team Xpress. Multiple employees may bid on the same shifts, and any employee may bid on multiple shifts. The scheduler can choose which employees will be invited to bid and they can review the bid results (whether an employee submitted a bid, declined the bid or did not respond). Following this, the scheduler can assign the shift out to one of the employees who submitted the bid.

Shift Bidding is somewhat similar to Self-Scheduling, the primary difference being that with Self Scheduling the employee acquires the shift immediately, whereas with Shift Bidding the employee indicates that he would like to work the shift, but does not actually get the shift until it is assigned by the scheduler.

Requirements

The scheduler must be using Schedule Xpress. Shift bidding is not available in Visual Scheduler. The employee must use Team Xpress to bid on shifts.The Shift Bidding feature must be enabled by Celayix Support.

Examples

Note that the screenshots in this document may differ from your system. You may not have the same menu options, and the data element labels may be different.

Setup

Settings - Shift Bidding

Once the feature is enabled at a system level the feature can be turned on/off at branch level via Schedule Xpress and Settings (1)

Navigate to Settings - Shift bidding and the following page will display

(1) Allow shift bidding - this option will allow the feature to be enable at branch level so you could decide to have Branch 1 enabled and Branch 2 disabled

(2) Default shift bidding deadline - This is the period defined by the scheduler with regards to how long they want to have to confirm which employee will work that shift from the bids submitted. The default is 24 hours, however this can be changed on a daily bases for an individual shift or a batch of shifts

(3) Auto-assign - this feature has not been released yet. Once released this feature will auto assign shifts based on a set criteria set by the scheduler using an employee search rule

(4) Shift Grouping  - This is used to prevent employees bidding on shifts that are essentially identical for example if you have 4 shifts that are to be worked at the same location at the same time then if grouped correctly the employee will only see one shift to bid on. There is little point showing them all 4 shifts individually as they could bid on all 4 but in reality they can only work one of the 4 shifts

(5) Shift processing order - this will determine the order that the shifts will be assigned to employees. Typically this is set so shifts are assigned in chronological order with the earliest to the last by shift date although this order can be whatever the scheduler wants

(6) Display shift fields in Team Xpress - This panel allows the scheduler to choose which fields to display in Team Xpress, please note if the fields have not been selected in the Shift grouping (4) then they will not be available here

Settings - Notifications - Shift Bidding

The scheduler can configure the messaging parameters related to bidding.

Navigate to Settings - Notifications - Shift bidding

Settings - Visual Shift Status

If desired, icons can be shown on the shifts in the scheduler window, to show the status of the bids for the shifts.

Navigate to Settings - Visual Shift Status, and toggle the Shift bidding option

Operational Workflow

The bidding process follows this sequence.

1. The scheduler creates open shifts and sets them to be published for shift bidding.
2. The scheduler sends out the bidding invitations, selecting the shift groups and and eligible employees to notify
3. Employees bid on the shifts
4. The scheduler reviews the status of bids whose deadline has not passed
5. The scheduler assigns employees to the bids whose deadline has passed
6. Employees review the status of their bids

Create Open shifts for bidding

The scheduler creates Open shifts. In the Publish options for the shift the shift is enabled for Shift bidding, and the bidding deadline is established. The scheduler can choose the Default deadline, which is configured in the global Settings - Shift bidding (described above), or the scheduler can set a deadline different from the global default.

Post the shifts for bidding

The scheduler posts the shifts, which is to say that the scheduler sends invitations to the employees who can bid on the shifts. From the Schedule Tools options, select Shift bidding:

Select Send shift bids invitations:

Select the shifts, and the employees who will be invited. Click on the shift group, select the employee search rule (it's possible that not all your search rules will be available, depending on how they are configured), The rule will display the employees who are eligible to receive the invitations. Select the relevant employees, and then press Invite to bid at the bottom of the screen.

Employees bid on the shifts

Employees use Team Xpress to see the shifts that are available for them to bid on. They select the shifts that they are interested in. The shifts are available until the bidding deadline has passed.

Review shift bids in progress

The scheduler can see the progress of shift bidding for shift groups whose deadline has not yet passed.From the Schedule Tools options, select Shift bidding, and then Review shift bids in progress:

Assign employees to the shifts

After the bidding deadline has passed, the scheduler reviews who has bid on the shifts, and assigns the employees they would like to put on the shift. From the Schedule Tools options, select Shift bidding, and then Assign shift bids:

Select the shift bid group. This will show the employees who bid on the shifts. Select employees, and then press Assign shifts.

Note that the scheduler does not have to choose from the employees who bid. The scheduler always has the option of filling the shift with whomever they want.

After the shifts have been assigned to employees, all the bidders will be notified of whether they won or lost the bid. 

Employees review the status of their bids

Employees use Team Xpress to see the status of their bids. They can see the status of bids in progress, as well as the status of those bids that have passed their deadline.