🎯 For managers who wish to register employee preferences for work.
Are you contractually obliged with work timings? Use Contracted availability or Working time rules instead.
What is availability?
Availability allows you, the schedule manager, to record employees' wishes for work. Giving your employees shifts according to their wishes keeps them happy and can reduce the number of shift swaps and no-shows. Reduce managerial stress related to building a schedule and make a plan that will work for your business and your employees.
This is how Availability works:
Employees register their availability from the Planday app or web.
Employees' Availability is shown on the Schedule when looking to assign shifts: green for available, red for unavailable.
Managers use the information to build schedules that accommodate the employees in the best way possible.
As a manager, you can still schedule employees on unavailable marked days, but having availability data filled out provides practical knowledge by cutting down on back-and-forth communication.
Using availability preferences when scheduling
When you create a shift and employees have registered their Availability, you'll see their status when you're working on the schedule.
As a manager, you decide to adjust the Schedule to your employees' Availability, and sometimes you might find yourself in situations where it isn't possible to accommodate their wishes.
Available employees show with a green thumbs-up next to their names. Employees who have set themselves as Unavailable will be marked with a red thumbs down.
If the employees have added a comment or reason with their wish, that will also show up when scheduling.
Customising options and intervals for Availability
You can customise the availability function if it does not capture the necessary information for your needs.
Start by going to Settings > Schedule > Swap & Availability > Availability. Here you can set Availability by:
Can/cannot work (default)
Intervals - You can set up custom intervals employees can choose from, for example, Night shifts, Day shifts etc.
Select start and end time - This option will let your employees select a start and end time for when they're available or unavailable for each day.
Set custom Availability settings
In this example, the employer wants to capture further information from the employees, such as their availability to work night shifts. This can be configured by selecting Intervals under Available options from the Swap and Availability settings page.
Employees will then be prompted to select from these options when they mark their availability:
How can employees register their availability wishes
Employees can mark their availability via the Planday app or by logging in from the web.
To set Availability via the Planday app, employees can navigate to More > Availability > press Edit > select the days you wish to mark > Mark your availability by pressing Available or Unavailable > press Done.
To set your Availability via Planday for desktop, navigate to Home > Your Availability > press Edit all > select the days you wish to mark > Mark your availability by selecting Can work or Cannot work.
Read more about setting Availability from the Planday app or web.
See related articles:
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