Schedule hourly employees

Schedule agents with hourly contracts to add more resources, for example during peak hours or in the evenings. When scheduling hourly employees, the automatic scheduling procedure adds shifts on the days that are the most understaffed. More shifts are scheduled as long as the added shifts reduce the understaffing for a majority of the shift intervals. Ensure the shifts for the hourly staff support the staffing demand. For example, that there are both short and normal shift lengths.

You can guarantee the scheduling of an agent by setting a minimum required time in the contract settings in WFM. The minimum required time overrides any overstaffing.

The automatic scheduling of hourly employees can keep adding shifts even when the resource need is fulfilled if the agents’ contracts state that they must at least work a defined number of hours per scheduled period.

The agents can give their input on when they are available to work. Consider their entered hourly availability when scheduling to only schedule those agents who have said that they are available. This is good to avoid schedule conflicts for agents who for example both work and study.

To see if any agents have entered availability for the time period where you need people, use the hourly availability filter. See Filter agents on hourly availability for more information.

Prerequisites

This feature is available to Calabrio GovSuite users.

You have the Schedules > Automatic scheduling permission.
You have the Global functions > View schedules permission.
You have the Global functions > Modify schedules permission and the underlying Modify assignment permission.
You have the Global functions > View unpublished schedules permission.

Page location

Client > Schedules > Open schedule

Procedures

Select agents and period and schedule hourly employees

Select the agents and the dates to schedule.
- Click in the schedule view and select Ctrl+A keys to select all agents and all dates in this view.
- Click and drag to select consecutive dates or agents.
- Click the week header to select all agents for that week.
- Click the agent name to select the full period for that agent.
Click the arrow next to Schedule and select Schedule hourly employees.
If needed, select a schedule tag in the Tag changes with menu.
The selected schedule tag is used for all days scheduled in this automatic scheduling.
Continue to go through the scheduling options described in the procedures below.
When you have selected everything that you want to consider when scheduling hourly employees, described in the procedures below, click OK to run the automatic scheduling.

The selected settings are stored for your user. When you open the scheduling options, the options are always set as the previous time you ran the automatic scheduling.

Select which restrictions to consider when scheduling

Schedule according to the selected restrictions. The scheduling always fulfills the restrictions completely. For hourly employees, it’s common to only use the Hourly availability restriction.

In the scheduling options, select the General tab.
Select the Preferences check box to schedule all days in the selected period according to the agents' entered preferences on how to work and when to have their days off. If a day does not have any preferences, a shift is selected based on the business need.

If the Schedule only preference days check box is selected, only days where agents have entered preferences are scheduled.

If the Use preference must have only check box is selected, only preference days that the agents have marked with Must have are scheduled. This can be used for example to set a specific schedule tag on the must have days.
Select the Rotations check box to schedule all days in the selected period according to the defined rotations.

If the Schedule only rotation days check box is selected, the scheduling process only schedules days where the rotation defines what to schedule. This can be used for example to set a specific schedule tag on the rotation days.
Select the Availability check box to consider the defined availability pattern when scheduling.

If the Schedule only availability days check box is selected, the scheduling process only schedules days where the availability pattern defines what to schedule.
Select the Hourly availability check box to only schedule the agents at times when they have entered that they are available.
Select the Shift category limitation check box to consider any set limitations on the number of shifts of a specific shift category per week or per schedule period.

Use minimum or maximum staffing limits

If there are limits for the minimum or maximum number of agents to schedule on the skills, ensure to consider those limits when scheduling.

NOTE Scheduling with the min and max staffing options cannot ensure that these rules are fulfilled. The scheduling process prioritizes shifts that help fulfill these rules, but there might be situations where it is not possible.

In the scheduling options, select the Advanced tab.
Select Use min staffing to consider any limitations on minimum agents on the skills.
Select Use max staffing to consider any limitations on maximum agents on the skills.