Description: Learn how to manage employee availability, including setting work hours, handling time-off requests, and approving or declining requests in Workforce via mobile.
Introduction
During the recruitment process with your employees, you will typically discuss and mutually agree on when they can work. This agreement can be reflected in Workforce by creating availability sets.
Managers and Administrators can view these availability sets within the app.
Administrators and managers with the "Manage availability" permission can also create availability sets on behalf of their employees or request changes to existing availability sets.
Types of Availability
There are two types of availability:
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Available: This type is when an employee can work for an employer. Setting availability means the employee is exclusively available for this employer during these times and cannot get scheduled anywhere else.
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Unavailable: This type is when an employee prefers not to work: for example, they may have study or family commitments.
Each availability set has a start and end date, and multiple sets can be created.
Recurring Availability
Both availability and unavailability sets are created as recurring availability, meaning availability or unavailability repeats.
Availability sets can repeat either every week or every 2 weeks.
Date-Specific Availability
One-off availability occurs when an employee is unavailable to work on a specific date or period within that day. For example, they may have a dentist appointment between 1 pm and 3 pm on Friday, May 12, a time on a Friday when they would typically be available, or they may wish to go on vacation from Monday, February 1, to Sunday, February 7.
One-off availability requests such as these should get submitted as time-off requests.
Viewing Availability
You can view employee availability from your Mobile Device via the SkyTab Workforce app.
Users with the “Manage company employees and employee profiles” permission can view availability for a specific employee from the app by navigating to More > Employees > Employee Name > Availability.
Users without the "Manage company employees and employee profiles" permission can view availability for a specific employee from the Mobile app by navigating to More > Employees > Employee Name > Availability but will not have the ability to create, delete, or edit availability sets for employees.
To view the details of an individual set, select it.
To Create Availability
Managers require the "Manage Availability" permission to create, edit, approve, decline, or delete availability sets or receive availability-related notifications.
To create availability on behalf of an employee from the Mobile app, select the “+” icon. Managers can only create available sets for employees; they cannot create unavailable sets.
Select whether the availability set will repeat every week or every 2 weeks.
Select when the availability set starts and ends. You can also select "Indefinitely" as the end date, meaning there is no end date for the availability set.
Select the days of availability you request by pressing on the days you want to add. Select the Start and End times of the availability by pressing + Add Times.
You can select multiple days and times within the one availability set if they repeat for the same period.
To create the availability, press the Set Availability button.
A confirmation screen will appear where you can enter a message to your employee. When you are ready to submit, select Confirm. The employee will receive a notification that the availability has been created.
Edit Availability
You can request changes to an employee's existing available set. You cannot request changes to unavailable sets.
To request changes to an existing available set, select the vertical ellipsis icon in the top right corner; this will bring up the Edit Set on the screen.
Select the attributes you want to update.
| Repeats | Can be changed |
| Starts | Cannot be changed if the set is active |
| Ends | Can be changed |
| Days/Times | Can be changed |
To submit the request, select the Send Request button.
A confirmation screen will appear, where you can choose to enter a message to your employee explaining why you are requesting the change. When you are ready to submit, select Confirm to forward the message to the employee for approval.
To Approve or Decline an Availability Request
When an employee edits an existing available set, you must approve it before it is considered active (changes to unavailable sets do not require manager approval). Any sets requiring your approval will have a status of "Pending approval from management."
To view the availability request, select the notification from the Notifications tab. This will display the details of the edited availability set.
Select Show Changes to see what changes have been made to the availability set and any notes left by the employee.
At the bottom of the screen are two options: Decline changes and Approve Changes. Simply select the appropriate button to action the request.
If you choose to decline the request, you can add a message to the employee explaining why you did so. If the request is declined, the availability set will revert to its previous state (before the edit was made).
Conflicts
When creating, editing, or approving an availability set for an employee, the app will check that the availability does not conflict with one of the employee's existing availability sets.
If it does, you will see an error message.
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