How a shift trade app can help your business
- Shift trading is a popular practice among hourly workers, but can get messy if you don’t have the right shift planning software in place.
- Homebase makes shift trading simple and quick with real-time notifications and easy manager approval.
- Employees can even communicate with the rest of the team in the Homebase app to better plan a shift trade and make the process as smooth as possible.
What are shift trades?
A shift trade, also known as a shift swap, occurs when a team member requests one or more of your business’s employees to trade one of their scheduled shifts for a shift that the team member who submitted the shift trade request cannot work for whatever reason. In exchange, the other employee would work one of their teammate’s shifts in the future.
It is up to whoever manages schedules at your business to approve or decline the employee shift trade once another employee has accepted the trade. If you use a shift trader app like Homebase, managing shift trades is simple for everyone involved thanks to real-time push notifications and easy-to-use employee shift trade forms.
How do I manage shift trades?
The difficulty level of managing shift trades depends on what type of employee scheduling template you use, and whether or not you are utilizing a smart work schedule app. With the Homebase employee schedule maker, employees can send shift trade requests to either a teammate, several teammates, or all of their colleagues.
To do so, employees need to open their Homebase app and click on the Schedule button in the lower navigation bar. Then they will select My Shifts before clicking on Find Cover next to the future shift they would like to trade. Next, they will tap on the Trade Shift button and select which team member (or team members) they would like to send it to.
Once they submit that request and an employee picks up the shift, you will receive a notification online and on your Homebase app. Then, all you need to do to complete the shift swapping process is select approve or deny.
What is a good shift trade app?
Based on how easy we make it to manage shift trades, it’s easy to see that Homebase is a great app for shift swapping. It also comes packed with even more scheduling features that make building and editing schedules streamlined, smarter, and beneficial for everyone involved.
Another feature Homebase offers that makes it easy to complete a shift trading process is our team communication tool. Your team members can send a message to either one of their colleagues, a group, or the entire team to get a better understanding of who is available to swap shifts. It reduces the need for your team to exchange phone numbers or send an email that might go unseen.
Homebase scheduling makes shift trading speedy and efficient for both you and your team members, no matter what type of schedule you build on the app. Your team will thank you for making it easy to plan and edit their schedules based on any issues that may arise.
What should your employee shift trade policy look like?
It’s important to have an employee shift trade policy included in your employee handbook so that your team knows what the rules are in order to gain manager approval when they send requests for shift trading.
Take a look at your current shift planning process and come up with guidelines based on how you normally schedule shifts. If you have a predictive scheduling plan in place, a rotating schedule policy, or even if you use Homebase’s auto-scheduling tool, your employees might be able to better plan for their schedule and submit shift trading requests sooner rather than later.
Once you’ve reviewed your current shift schedule template, you can set clear guidelines on when an employee can request a full shift trade, what the process looks like to submit the request, and what the rules are on when you will accept or decline the request.
You should have the rules in a clear, visible place in your workplace and communicate them to your team so the process is streamlined and straightforward. Luckily when you use a staff scheduling app like Homebase, it’s not difficult to create a straightforward shift swapping plan for your weekly scheduling template.
The process is as simple as sending the request, getting it approved by the second employee, and having the manager approve or deny the request after receiving a notification on the app in real time.
