People Manager Onboarding
As a people manager, you can use Workforce Management (WFM) to manage staff schedules, keep labor on target, and handle staff communications.
When you first log in, you’ll see a list of employees.
To help you create and manage employee schedules, see the following topics:
Reviewing Employee Jobs and Availability
The employee list shows everyone available to work at your locations.
Click an employee to see their profile.
In the employee profile, check out the Jobs and Availability tabs.
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Jobs– See which jobs the employee can work. If there aren’t any listed, you can add a new job. When you create shifts, you might want to add certain roles, like a Supervisor shift. Any jobs available at the employee’s locations will show up here.
For more information, see Jobs
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Availability – When you make new schedules, employees will show up as available or not. To learn more, see WFM Employee Availability.
If you let employees log in, they can set their availability and you’ll get notified about any requests. To receive availability requests or to make changes to employee availability, read Approvals.
If you’re missing employees from the list, you can add them. For more information, see Adding New WFM Employees.
Managing Shifts
In WFM, go to the Shifts menu to manage shifts.
See the following options:
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Daily – Lets you schedule and publish shifts. For more information, see Scheduling in Workforce Management - Daily.
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Weekly – Lets you review and approve shifts, including exceptions. For more information, see Weekly.
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Multi-Location – Like the weekly options but lets you view shifts across all the locations you manage. For more information, see Multi-location.
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Forecasting – Lets you add and adjust sales projections to help plan future schedules. For more information, see Forecasting.
Creating, Managing, and Publishing Schedules
Here is a short video that shows how to start scheduling:
Scheduling from the daily view - quick start tips
For more information, read the following help topics
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Creating a sales forecast - Forecasting.
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Creating shifts - Shift Creation - Daily.
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Extending start and end times on a location - Location Options in WFM.
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Publishing a schedule - Publishing schedules.
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Printing a schedule - Printing Schedules.
Duplicating and Optimizing Schedules
You can duplicate schedules daily or weekly. Usually, you’ll copy a previous schedule forward and tweak the shifts based on your sales forecast.
For more information, see Copy and paste shifts.
Here is a video showing how you might optimize your schedules:
Optimize your schedule using your sales forecast with labor deployment model
For more information, see Managing Workforce Management Shifts.
Reviewing Time and Attendance and Approving Exceptions
Every day, you’ll want to check Shifts > Weekly to review the day’s shifts.
If you’ve set up time and attendance, times will show up under each employee’s scheduled shifts. If not, you can still approve and make changes to shifts.
You can add extra shifts or approve time and attendance with notes.
For more information, see Weekly, Updating hours worked and Approving Shifts with Automatch.
Here is video showing how to approve time:
Short Videos: Phone App, Fill-ins, Swapping, Dropping and Approving Shifts
The following videos demonstrate some other tasks you can do in Workforce Management.
Phone App Navigation
Get to know the WFM Phone App, where you can view your shifts, trades, and notifications.
For more information, see SuitePeople Workforce Management Phone App.
Swapping Shifts
Employees can swap shifts if the manager approves.
If enabled in your account, learn how employees can swap shifts with one another. See the workflow from employee to manager, ending in the manager reviewing the potential cost differences and approving the swap.
A manager can deny the swap request. The employee gets notified and can try to pick up a different shift, which sends a new approval request to the manager.
Fill Shift
If an employee can’t make their shift or doesn’t show up, use WFM or the Phone App to quickly find a fill-in. The manager can start a fill shift and consider cost differences to make the best decision.
For more information, see Filling Shifts.
Drop Shift
An employee can start a drop request, and another employee can pick up the shift if the manager approves.
If it’s enabled, employees can start a drop request from the Phone App if they can’t make their shift.
This video shows Drop Pre-Approval turned on. If you turn it off, employees can drop shifts without manager approval, and the request goes to all available employees. When someone offers to pick up the shift, the manager gets notified to approve or deny. You can change this in Setup > WFM Phone App.
The manager can also deny the request.
Approved Shifts
If it’s enabled, employees can see their approved shifts in the Phone App.
You can also let employees confirm or dispute their time. To learn more, read Attestation.