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  3. SuitePeople Workforce Management
  4. Workforce Management Setup Guide
  5. Getting Started with Workforce Management
  6. Training #2: Five-Step Scheduling Utilizing Copy/Paste

Training #2: Five-Step Scheduling Utilizing Copy/Paste

Now that you have your first week's schedule set in WFM, there are five steps to build your schedule each week that only take 5-10 minutes to complete.

Step 1: Copy and paste last week's schedule

  1. Go to Shifts > Daily

  2. While looking at the current week in the daily schedule view, hove the point to the 'Copy' button. Select 'Copy to next week'

  3. After making your selection you will be taken to the next week where all shifts and staff have been pasted.

    Adi Insights copying the week's schedule

Step 2: Check sales forecast

  1. If historical sales data exists for the date range of your default settings, all you need to do is check that it makes sense; check the weekly sales total first. You will see this in the KPI panel on the right of the daily page.

  2. Next, check the sales forecast for each day. The easiest way to do this is tab through the days on the daily view. The arrow in the bottom right will move you ahead one day at a time.

  3. If you need to adjust the sales forecast (or if no forecast appears), select 'Edit forecast' or 'Create forecast'

    Adi Insights adjusting sales forecasts

  4. To generate your sales forecast, use one of the following options (see screenshot above):

    • Option 1 — POS defaults: Uses past imported POS data to automatically build your forecast.

    • Option 2 — Custom POS settings: Select the date you would like your sales forecast to be based from (dates on the calender in red indicate missing sales data, choose a week that has all black dates).

    • Option 3 — Enter a manual projection: Manually enter the sales/units you expect to sell each day for the week you're scheduling.

Step 3: Reassign staff to shifts they can work

  1. Go to the Options button and change the "Color by" to "Availability". This will color all of the shifts in the scheduling view to Green/ Red/ Yellow/ Blue depending on Availability. [See this user manual page on Shifts Colors] to understand what all the colors mean.

  2. The fastest way to reassign Staff is to start on the first day and look for any red Shifts. Select the red Shift then select the blue "reassign" arrow; a staff selection dialog will appear. Available Staff are displayed at the top of the list; select a staff member.

  3. Continue to reassign those red Shifts to available Staff until all the Shifts are green.

    Note:

    It is essential to add a job to the shifts. Before you can assign a Staff to the Shift, you must choose the job. the job is chosen, a list sorted by Staff who can do that job will appear.

Step 4: Optimize your schedule

  1. The best method to optimize your schedule depends on whether you have a labor deployment model setup in WFM or not. Follow Option 2 if you have a labor deployment model in WFM.

    Adi Insights team schedule tab Adi Insights deployement model configuration

  2. Option 1. Optimize your schedule using your sales forecast (no labor deployment model)

    • Start by looking at your labor KPIs for next week - are they on target? ([See this page for how to update your KPI Targets]). If not, look at the busy and slow times using the sales row to identify them

    • By looking at the hourly KPIs on the daily page, we can identify areas of the schedule that we can optimize. If our labor cost percentage target is set to 19-21% , we will be able to see in red any areas of the day that are outside of that target. We can see that our labor percent is highest from 7-10AM in the below example. As the Manager, I might expect this if I have a few people on to do prep work or opening duties. The times to focus on first in this example are our peak hours (where sales are the highest): 12PM-2PM and 4PM-8PM. We can see in this example we can see that during our peak times, our labor percent is far below target. As a Manager, I might want to consider using a combination of adding on a few more Staff dragging out existing Shifts to cover those periods and bring our labor cost percent to that target range. As you add or adjust Shifts, the metrics will update in real time- when the numbers turn black, this means you are within your target for that hour. You'll follow this process for each day of the week, keeping an eye on your weekly labor cost percent target (the big number at the top right of the screen).

    • There are many ways to tweak your schedule to improve labor metrics and customer service time. You can also set targets for productivity and labor efficiency and follow this same above process to make sure you are balancing your metrics.

  3. Option 2. Optimize your schedule using your sales forecast WITH labor deployment model

    • The fastest way to build your schedule week to week and optimize your schedule is to follow the steps in this training session, you have finished step 3 turn on your labor deployment model. To do this, select the ‘Options’ button, Under Shift display options select Labor deployment: ‘on’

    • To optimize your schedule using the model follow the steps outlined in the video:

      Optimize your schedule using your sales forecast WITH labor deployment model

Step 5: Communicate shifts to staff and print reports

  1. To communicate shifts to your staff, select 'Actions' then 'Publish Schedules'.

    Adi Insight publishing schedules to staff

  2. Staff can receive their Schedules three ways:

    • SMS

    • Email

    • Push notifications to the phone app

      If you would like to send the schedule by SMS Email, tick the boxes next to these options in the Publish Schedules dialogue box. You can send a message to Staff if you would like to communicate something to them with their schedules (ex: Staff meeting Wednesday 10AM).

  3. you selected the ways you would like to notify and have entered any relevant messages, scroll down and click "Choose all" under the Staff box to move everyone to the right. Only staff that have Shifts on the Schedule for this selected week will receive notifications

  4. Click "Publish and Send". [More information about publishing shifts available here.]

  5. This emails texts the Schedule to Staff for the week at the Location you're looking at. They'll also get a notification on their smartphone if WFM phone app is installed. Staff may also log in to the browser and see published Schedules. To print, select 'Print' and choose report type:

    • Staff report is a table view of the full week's schedule without wages

    • Daily report has the bar graph view without wages

    • Reports with '' in the name contain wage costs

    • [More information about printing schedules available here]

General Notices