Managing Shifts & Weekly Offs

Creating auto shift assignment

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Who is this for?

Global admin, HR team and reporting manager (in case the privilege is given by the global admin)

Why should I care about it?

Suppose you have a company where the employees can operate in one of the three possible shifts (say morning shift, afternoon shift and evening shift). You would expect the following:

  1. If an employee comes anywhere between 7:30 am and 10:30 am, they should be assigned the morning shift.
    If they turn up between 10:30 am and 4:30 pm, they should be assigned the afternoon shift
    If they turn up between 4:30 pm to 7:30 pm, they should be assigned the evening shift.
  2. If an employee works the morning shift, where the shift starts from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm, then the max that they can work up to including overtime should be till 7:30 pm.
  3. In case, any employee is punching in at any hours that are not defined, they should not be able to clock in any one of the shifts defined above.

This is how it would look like in a tabular format:

First possible clock-in range Corresponding shift Max employees can work the shift
7:30 am - 10:30 am 9:30 am - 5:30 pm (Morning shift) 7:30 am - 7:30 pm (12 hrs)
10:30 am and 4:30 pm 12:30 pm - 8:30 pm (Afternoon shift) 10:30 am - 10:30 pm (12 hrs)
4:30 pm to 7:30 pm 7:30 pm - 1:30 am (Evening shift) 4:30 pm - 4:30 pm (12 hrs)

With auto-shift assignments, we will be able to solve all the above problems.

What is an auto-shift assignment?

Auto-shift assignment is a feature that assigns a pre-defined shift to the employees on the basis of their first punch for the day. 

How do I set it up

  • To set up the auto-assignment feature, navigate to the Time Attend tab (1), select Shifts Weekly Off & Holidays (2) from the top menu, go to the Shifts & Weekly Offs sub-tab, and then choose the Shifts section.
  •  Once here, click on the + Add shifts button on the right-hand side of the screen. and choose "configure shift auto-assignment" from the drop down.

 

Before you enable the first punch auto-assigner, please read the important warnings:
  • The system assumes that the first punch is the employee's clock-in time, and the second punch is the clock-out time.
  • If an employee is working in multiple shifts for the day, the system will not allow them to clock in for the next shift if they have clocked out early from the previous one.
  • If an employee misses their clock-in, there can be no regularisation done as they would create issues during recalculations.
  • The auto-shift assignment feature does not work with the "On Duty" and "Work From Home" capture schemes.

If you are good with all these options, check the box against 'I understand and wish to proceed' and then click Proceed.


Now you have to give the Shift Name,  Shift Code, and Description (Optional). 


Under Auto-Shift Assignment Rules, select the time range for the first clock-in. This will be the basis for the shift assignment. Once you have selected the time range, enter the corresponding shift timing and break duration that you want to assign to your employees during that period.

 

To ensure that employees don't work beyond a certain duration, you can set a Maximum Slot Duration after which the system will automatically clock them out.

If you have employees with different clock-in times, you can add another shift by clicking + Add Row and entering the relevant details for the new time range.


You can continue adding rows until the total of all the 'first clock-in' time ranges adds up to 24 hours.

  • Lastly, you can configure a default shift which will be assigned to employees for the days when there's no clock-in to ensure they don't receive LOPs on their weekly offs and holidays. It will also be used to mark any missed punch-ins if an employee fails to clock in for the day.

    Click on Save once everything is configured

    If the cumulative of all the 'first clock-in time ranges are not adding up to 24 hours, you'll get a warning message stating If the clock-in duration is less than 24 hours, it creates a gap in the shift cycle. As a result, any employee who clocks in during the gap will be assigned to the last shift. To avoid this, we recommend creating shifts for the remaining duration to ensure the accountability of employees across all shifts.

    If you don't require to do so, click on Proceed to save on auto-assignment.


    This shift will have an 'Auto Assigner' label to differentiate it from the other type of shifts

    There can only be one 'Auto Assigner' shift type.

    We hope you find this article helpful. Please let us know your feedback.