Patent Application
20130090968
This invention relates to computer systems for employee scheduling and more particularly to a computer system providing enhanced interfaces and information management.
As soon as an organization has people associated with it, be they owners, employees, volunteers, etc then there exists the issue of managing their schedules to ensure that, amongst other issues, adequate personnel are present when the organization requires them, that holidays can be accommodated, sick days managed, and costs tracked or minimized. Additionally organizations must ensure that they comply with local, state, and Federal laws that define many aspects of an organizations labour policies including for example maximum hours working continuously, break durations, and total hours per day.
These problems are exacerbated when the hours of operation for the organization are outside what are commonly referred to as “office hours” that are normally considered to be 9 am to 5 pm. Organizations such as banks, dentists, doctors etc are typically open earlier and later than this in order to provide flexibility for office workers, students, etc. Manufacturing organizations are typically open for extended periods to maximize utilization of expensive manufacturing equipment, facilities etc. Within manufacturing organizations “shift work” is the employment practice designed to extend manufacturing from 8 hours a day to 12, 16, and even 24 hours a day. Further many manufacturing organizations extend beyond the so-called “work week” of Monday-Friday and operate seven days a week leading to concepts such as 24/7 (24 hours a day/7 days a week) and 365/24/7 (365 days a year/24 hours a days/7 days a week).
Accordingly the term of “shift” has become a common term to reflect a period of time that an employee works where multiple “shifts” for multiple employees combine to provide the right personnel mix over the period of time the organization is open. Shifts can include short shifts of a few hours through to extended night shifts, 12 hours shifts and be based upon work schedules in which employees change or rotate shifts or are scheduled based upon multiple factors.
Over time many different shift patterns have been established to try and address the requirements of organizations to provide extended hours of operation whilst faced with limited hours per employee, for example with students and part-time employees whose time is balanced between work and other activities, or statutory limits for full-time employees. These include the three-shift system; four on, four off; Navy Three-shift underway system; four on, three off; four on, two off; four on, one off; two days, two nights, four off; 5/4/9's; 12/24/12/48; continental shift; split shift; earlies and lates; 7-day fortnight shift; DuPont 12-Hour rotating shift; five and two; seven-day eight-hour rotating shift; sixes; firefighting schedules; California roll shift schedule; and four-platoon 24-hour shift schedule.
There are many known employee and workforce management systems used for scheduling and managing personnel but typically these are designed to support large organizations such as automobile assembly plants and telephone call centers. Such systems typically include a basic planning capability to enable a manager to forecast future workloads and employee requirements to service such loads. Some of these systems provide a scheduling capability which allocates employee work hours according to forecasted staffing requirements and employees are assigned to fill these schedules and their assignments are posted. The forecasting techniques employed in these systems are computationally-efficient, accurate on a macro scale, e.g., month-to-month, and to a limited degree, able to accommodate real-time changes over a more dynamic period, e.g., every hour.
Accordingly large employers utilizing these computerized scheduling software systems assign workers to different work shifts during a future wage period. The resultant work schedule is printed and provided to each employee prior to the wage period, thus informing the employee when to report for work and the duration of each work period. In many businesses, an employee's 7 work schedule varies from day to day and week to week. In a hospital for example, an employee may work eight hours during each of five consecutive days during one week, and then may work three twelve hour days the following week. Certain employees may be part-time, in which case they work less than an eight hour day. In addition, some employees are not assigned to a specific department, but float wherever workers are needed on a given day and these floating employees often work varying amounts of time depending upon the quantity of work being done.
Labour wage and employment laws restrict the number of hours that certain classes of employees may work during given time periods or the work they may perform. In other cases, when a defined number of hours have been worked during a specified time period, the employee must receive a higher level of compensation for additional work hours in that period. Failure to abide by these laws can result in the government assessing stiff penalties against the employer.
When it is known ahead of time that an employee will be absent, due to vacation, a planned medical treatment or the like, that employee is removed from the pool of people who may be scheduled to work during that period of time. Therefore, an automated scheduling program fills the work shift positions with only the available employees from that pool. However, a replacement worker may not be readily available from the group of employees that normally work a given job or in a particular department. In that situation a replacement worker may be found from another source, such as another department, another location, or from a temporary employment agency. Accordingly, prior art automated scheduling software systems accommodate searching predetermined partners for an available employee or supervisor.
K. O'Brien in U.S. Pat. No. 6,587,831 entitled “System and Method for Online Scheduling and Shift Management” discloses a system for centrally creating a schedule for a group of company employees who are geographically dispersed. Operating over a distributed network the system provides communications among employees and other data sources, such as an external employee provider. The system assigns the employees to shifts while accommodating numerous factors including staffing requirements, employee preferences, and settings based on forecasting. O'Brien teaches to forecasts exploiting factors outside the company that relate to weather and traffic. However, O'Brien and others in the prior art do not consider the employees themselves as a variable factor wherein in many instances it is their availability that is the dominant scheduling dynamic. For example, students at University will have varying lesson schedules which may be coupled to varying loads from interests and/or sports. Accordingly, it would be beneficial for an employee scheduling software system to account for employees with varying schedules, particularly part-time employees.
A. R. Henry et al in U.S. Pat. No. 6,957,188 entitled “Computerized-Interactive Shift Trade Recording System” teach to a scheduling software system wherein an employee may trade a shift to another employee upon verification that the receiving employee has the appropriate credentials and that the shift being traded does not lay within a time limit. However, Henry does not address the expiration of credentials which may relate to credentials issued by local, state or Federal Government organizations. In other circumstances an employee's credentials may not initiate until a future point in time due to regulatory requirements, legal issues, etc. Similarly, reality in many environments is that employees may trade shifts with very short time spans between the trade and shift start. Accordingly, it would be beneficial for an employee scheduling software system to incorporate expiration/initiation of credentials associated with employees.
L. Garcia et al in U.S. Patent Applications 2006/0,224,477 and 2008/0,046,305 entitled “Automated Auction Method for Staffing Work Shifts” similarly teach an employee scheduling software system that offers shifts for auction to employees wherein an employee is allocated based upon their credentials being valid for the position being offered and either their having the lowest entered wage for the position or their having accumulated the most “reward” points for performing assignments. In the latter scenario those employees performing well in completing assignments are preferentially eligible for taking shifts that are offered whilst in the former scenario the organization seeks to minimize salary expenses. However, it would be beneficial in many circumstances that acceptance of a shift is determined in dependence upon parameters established by the current shift owner who may only be willing to trade when an offer meets their criteria.
T. LaJoie et al in U.S. Patent 2008/0,319,822 entitled “Method and System for Creating and Trading Schedules” teach to an employee scheduling software system wherein each employee is able to establish a set of rules based upon the relative importance and weighting of criteria established by the employee. The preferential bidding system therefore takes these criteria from all the employees in allocating the shifts available for allocation when it creates a new schedule. LaJoie teaches to a visual filtering system for an employee wishing to trade wherein multiple filters can be specified but assumes there are other shifts to trade but does not explain how their shift is accepted unless it is assumed placed into the same pool from which they select.
Disadvantageously this implies the organization can be left with shifts without employees to fulfill them. This issue can be considered as being an extension of an issue inherent within the other prior art systems wherein an employee trading a shift has no ongoing responsibility. It would be beneficial for shifts to be considered as “owned” until another employee “clocks in” and accordingly failure to have the shift “covered” leads to the employee offering the shift for trade or auction being penalized.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial for an employee scheduling software system to overcome the disadvantages of the prior art. Further, it would be beneficial if the employee scheduling software system was able to access multiple extrinsic databases that host schedules relating to an employee thereby allowing the scheduling to avoid external conflicts when generating schedules for the employer and allowing the employee to respond to trade/auction events from other employees with confidence.
Advantageously, the employee scheduling software system associates one or more portable electronic devices to the employee wherein communications relating to their schedule are transmitted to the portable electronic devices. Additionally these portable electronic devices by virtue of their association to the employee may provide the employer with a more accurate clocking in/out process to verify the employee's attendance and completion of their shift.
Other aspects and features of the present invention will become apparent to those ordinarily skilled in the art upon review of the following description of specific embodiments of the invention in conjunction with the accompanying figures.
It is an object of the present invention to address limitations in the prior art with respect to employee scheduling and more particularly to a computer system providing enhanced interfaces and information management.
In accordance with an embodiment of the invention there is provided a method comprising:
In accordance with an embodiment of the invention there is provided a method comprising:
In accordance with an embodiment of the invention there is provided a method comprising:
In accordance with an embodiment of the invention there is provided a method comprising:
Other aspects and features of the present invention will become apparent to those ordinarily skilled in the art upon review of the following description of specific embodiments of the invention in conjunction with the accompanying figures.
Embodiments of the present invention will now be described, by way of example only, with reference to the attached Figures, wherein:
The present invention is directed to computer systems for employee scheduling and more particularly to a computer system providing enhanced interfaces and information management.
Within the following description reference may be made below to specific elements, numbered in accordance with the attached figures. The discussion below should be taken to be exemplary in nature, and not as limiting the scope of the present invention. The scope of the present invention is defined in the claims, and should not be considered as limited by the implementation details described below, which as one skilled in the art will appreciate, can be modified by replacing elements with equivalent functional elements or combination of elements. Within these embodiments reference will be made to terms which are intended to simplify the descriptions and relate them to the prior art, however, the embodiments of the invention should not be read as only being associated with prior art embodiments.
Referring to
The manager can also see from day list 180 shifts assigned to the employees upon a specific day, for example Tuesday Aug. 30, 2011 or may through selection of shifts in shift selector window 170 restrict the shift or shifts displayed, for example being interested only in assignment of the opening shift. Likewise employee selector window 130 and location window 150 allow the manager to restrict the locations, the employees, and positions to be displayed. For example, a manager may wish to see only employees associated with “Location 1” who are supervisors in the instance the organization is a restaurant chain or baristas associated with all locations if the organization is a chain of coffee shops.
Schedule block 110 allows the manager to view the scheduling of employees based upon different selections such as “Daily”, “Shift”, “Calendar” and “Task.” Once the manager believes the schedule to reflect their requirements they can via email block 140 send the schedule to all their employees. Within the description of this
Referring to
Accordingly, analysis block 270 presents the totals to the manager in terms of number of employees available for that shift, how many have been assigned, and the variances from required and number remaining available to assign. As the manager selects a shift, such as “Day Shift 1” 220 the employee list 250 will adjust to reflect those able to work at that time.
Now referring to
Shifts may also be active or inactive allowing the manager to adjust shift patterns on specific days such as for example Remembrance Day, being November 11 wherein in the Province of Ontario retail outlets etc are required by law to be shut until noon whereas they would normally be open. As such a different shift pattern is required on that day only and hence may be inactive for the remainder of the year until re-activated by the manager so that his display screen 300 is not cluttered with shifts that are not required. Accordingly, the manager may establish different shift patterns to reflect seasonal or legal requirements as well as to reflect variations of location. For example, a coffee shop in the central business district may have different hours and busy periods to another owned by the same organization in an area more generally associated with nightlife through a mixture of bars, restaurants etc.
Referring to
Referring to
Also entered is the employee's social identity number (SIN, Canada) or social security number (SSN, US) that uniquely identifies the individual and allows the organization to provide financial data to Government agencies including for example Internal Revenue Service (IRS, US), Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA, Canada), US Department of Health or financial institutions such as banks, insurers for example.
However, second display screen 520 also contains calendar cross-reference block 525 which contains references to sources of calendar information relating to the employee provided by the employee such that when the manager is preparing the schedule and selects the employee prior commitments are retrieved from these sources. For each reference a web address 522 is provided from which an icon 524 is retrieved. These icons being used to identify the source of the conflict when the manager is scheduling allowing the scheduling system to provide additional information to the manager in scheduling so that they can ascertain the “hardness” of the conflict. As shown these web addressed 522 and icons 524 relate to the University of Ottawa Physics Department, Facebook™, and University of Ottawa GeeGees football team of which the employee Robert Louis Stevenson is a member whilst attending the University of Ottawa and studying Physics. Accordingly, a conflict triggered by University of Ottawa Physics Department and University of Ottawa GeeGees football team may be viewed by the manager as a “hard” commitment for the employee whereas one arising from Facebook™ may be a soft one wherein the manager may schedule despite the highlighted conflict and wait to see if the employee seeks to trade or auction the shift.
Third display screen 530 provides information relating to which locations the employee to which it relates is authorized to work by the organization. In this instance the employee is authorized to all three locations but it would be evident that some employees may be authorized only to some locations or even a single location. The third display screen 530 also denotes that “Location 1” is considered the home location for the employee and hence they will be preferentially scheduled to this location unless an issue requires the manager to schedule them to another location. As evident in respect of descriptions below the employee is able to trade shifts with other employees and accordingly the employee may only accept in a trade a shift for a location for which they are authorized. Fourth display screen 540 presents the job descriptions for which the employee is authorized to work for the organization.
Accordingly, this employee may work as a bar tender, from the bar service code, as a restaurant server, from restaurant server code, and line cook, from line cook code. Other employees may be authorized for only one or two of these positions or for other positions this employee is not authorized for. However, in this instance due to local, state or Federal law the jobs of bar tender and link cook require certification of workers to comply with regulations such as periodic testing, training etc. Accordingly, the system denotes this employee is authorized to be a bar tender until Jul. 1, 2012 and as line cook until Dec. 31, 2011. Accordingly, the scheduling system will not allow an employee to be scheduled past their authorization date for these job functions unless they present the manager with proof of an extension in their authorization in which event the authorization expiration date would be updated.
Now referring to
The scheduling software system 690, as described above may send schedule information to employees via email or alternatively push the schedule information to a software application operating upon a portable electronic device associated with the employee, such as their cellular telephone, smart phone, portable multimedia player, etc. Accordingly employees receiving these schedules as well as other information, as described above in respect of
The scheduling software system 690 by accessing regulatory authority databases, such as Ontario Government 680A, can ensure that its policies comply with local regulatory requirements which can be important for organizations that have locations crossing jurisdictional boundaries such as provincial or state lines for example. Further, as these regulations evolve the organization is always compliant plus can adapt to changes, including but not limited to statutory holidays, maximum hours for employees with age, statutory rest schedules, etc. As will be evident from descriptions in respect of
Also accessible by the scheduling software system 690 via network 610 is employee provider 670, in this example “The People Bank.” Employee provider 670 allows the manager when scheduling with the scheduling software system 690 to request temporary staff or seek permanent staff based upon the scheduling requirements for the organization and the currently accessible employee pool. Also accessible is a social network group 6100A relating to the industry within which the organization executing the scheduling software system 690 operates, i.e. in this instance “Foods” which is a restaurant and hence the group relates to employees of restaurants which may be geographically specific, e.g. Seattle, Ottawa, and San Jose. As will be evident from descriptions below in respect of activities of the scheduling software application and employees seeking to trade/auction shifts or employers executing the scheduling software system 690, or scheduling and seeking shifts covered or recruiting part-time/full-time employees posts may be made to the social network group 6100A and thereby accessible to all members of the group. Examples of social network group 6100B being LinkedIn™ and Yahoo™. Alternatively, a distributive network application 6100B may have employees and/or the organization as members as well as other organizations and employees allowing information to be actively distributed rather than passively posted. Examples of such distributive network application 6100B being Twitter™ and FaceBook™. For example a Twitter™ group for restaurants in Ottawa may be followed by part-time/full-time staff of restaurants in Ottawa and thereby receive “Tweets” posted such as “Shift Available—Tonight Tues 30—Red Lobster Merivale 5:00 pm to 11:00 pm Double Time.” Accordingly, social network group 6100A and distributive network application 6100B allow employees and organizations to communicate either within the single organization, across organizations or within employee groups and exchange information.
It would also be evident that according to another embodiment of the invention that an employer or organization may post employment opportunities, both permanent and temporary, to the scheduling software system and/or scheduling software application for distribution to employees as well as other users of the scheduling software system and/or scheduling software application generally or those related to organizations having employee skill pools and/or other characteristics aligned to the organization seeking to add staff. It would be evident that an employer seeking a chef for example with particular accreditation may therefore have their staff opportunity only distributed to those with that accreditation in their profile thereby reducing the number of resumes received from under-qualified individuals and wasted time of the employer. According to other embodiments users may view job postings within a list and/or map either generally within the area they live or specifically in terms of a particular region around their current employment if travel to/from their home is particularly convenient for example via public transport at the times their typical shift schedules would end which may be late night, early morning for example.
Scheduling software system 690 may also trigger a request to an employee provider 670 where no employee is available for a shift(s) or where the absence of employees when scheduling reaches a threshold. As such the scheduling software system 690 provides to employee provider 670, under manager direction or automatically, information regarding shifts to be fulfilled from contract staff registered with employee provider 670. It would be apparent to one skilled in the art that employee provider 670 may themselves exploit one or more social network groups 6100A and/or distributive network applications 6100B in communicating with their contract staff or seeking to fulfill the requirements of the organization.
It would be apparent to one skilled in the art that the computer server 620 may be a stand-alone computer system, a localized cluster of computer systems, or a distributed cluster of computer systems interconnected through a network such as the Internet for example, commonly referred to as a cloud computing environment.
It would be evident that many of the functions identified for the scheduling software system 690 as being performed by the manager may also be performed automatically by the scheduling software system 690 according to rules established relating to employees including, but not limited to, seniority, labour cost, teams etc. Alternatively, many or all of these functions may also be performed directly within a software application loaded on to the portable electronic devices associated with the employee(s) and/or manager(s). Optionally, one of the external databases accessed may be specific to the employee, such as for example a Yahoo™ or Google™ calendar wherein forward looking calendar information can be retrieved in a consolidated manner to aid the manager in scheduling. Alternatively, the scheduling software system 690 may also access a remote server or servers where organizations joining a service provided by the supplier of the scheduling software system 690 store schedules for their organizations which are then cross-referenced by SIN (or SSN) for example. In this manner the scheduled information for an employee who works for multiple organizations, i.e. University student working in coffee shop and bar, is then available to each organization of the multiple organizations the employee works for part-time on a shift basis. Optionally, other unique or non-unique identifiers may be employed including for example telephone number and email address.
Referring to
It would be evident that in some instances the employee may work for two or more organizations in which case the scheduling software application may present the employee with an initial screen, not shown, that lists these employers allowing them to select one to establish these preferences with or it may allow the employee to apply one set of preferences to all or a subset of the employers.
Referring to
In this instance the scheduling software application running in background identifies the “Tweet” as being from the Twitter™ group for restaurants in Ottawa captures the “Tweet” and compares the information within it to the availability of the employee. In this instance the shift is a Tuesday from 5:00 pm to 11:00 pm which is an availability period of the employee and indicates that the rate is double due to a shortage for the “Red Lobster” restaurant on Merivale Road, Ottawa. The scheduling software application also knows that the employee is currently not working at “Foods” and hence provides a prompt to the employee on their portable electronic device so that they are aware it is available and can respond. In the event “Red Lobster” is also using the scheduling software application and scheduling software system the two systems can exchange information through a master server, not shown in
Referring to
Now referring to
Referring to
Upon such selection the scheduling software application sends a trade request to the employee associated with the identity “Employee 1” indicating that the employee wishes to trade their Monday “Day Shift 1” 1110 for Sunday “Day Shift 1” 1120. If the other employee accepts the trade request then the scheduling software system will swap the assignment of these shifts and update its database. Depending upon the circumstances relating to the employees desire to trade shifts the employee may offer an incentive to the other employee such as a further shift, further shifts, or other incentives.
Now referring to
The employee can also add an incentive in note block 1240, in this instance the employee is offering three opening/closing shifts that have 50% shift premiums associated with them. Accordingly the employee can set an incentive commensurate with their desire to have the shift covered by another employee. Optionally, the scheduling software application and scheduling software system allow the employee to escalate the incentive if an initial auction fails to result in the employee having the shift covered. Alternatively, an employee may post a shift and have it picked up by any other qualified employee wherein the scheduling software application and scheduling software system may optionally filter the posted shift based upon the required skills of the posting employee prior to displaying its availability to other employees such that only qualified employees see the posted shift as available for them to take additional to their current shift schedule. Optionally, a manager may be required to approve any proposed shift trade prior to its being confirmed to the two employees involved.
Now referring to
Optionally the scheduling software application allows the employee responding to the auction communication to adjust the incentive wherein they may for example reduce the incentive against other employees wishing to take the auctioned shift in order to actually win the auction. Accordingly, in the event that multiple bids are received back the scheduling software system may evaluate the bids and determine the winning bid wherein the result of the evaluation is communicated to the employee offering the shift and the employee winning the bid. Optionally, the employee may make a counter incentive offer to the employee auctioning the shift which may be accepted thereby terminating the auction. Auctions may be of varying durations such as open in terms of period to respond up to the start of the shift being auctioned, open with an end a predetermined period of time prior to the shift (i.e. one day), or established with a predetermined period within which bids must be made (i.e. 3 days) for example.
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A first employee 1450 who has no shift and is remote from the restaurant 1410 communicates to the scheduling software system via the scheduling software application on their portable electronic device. When first employee 1450 has a shift at the restaurant 1410 they enter through the entrance 1470 wherein the portable electronic device due to the scheduling software application establishes a Wi-Fi connection to the first Wi-Fi node 1470 thereby indicating their arrival at the restaurant 1410 such that the scheduling software system denotes their presence when the current time reaches the start of their allotted shift. During their shift they carry their portable electronic devices, such as second and third employees 1440 and 1460 respectively wherein their portable electronic devices maintain connected with one or other of the first and second Wi-Fi nodes 1420 and 1430 respectively such that scheduling software system verifies their presence during their shifts.
As a typical Wi-Fi node has a range of approximately 20 meters (65 feet) indoors and potentially less in buildings with thick walls, multiple internal walls etc then the association of the Wi-Fi node(s) within a location of the organization present an effective means of “clocking-in” and “clocking-out” employees automatically and avoiding prior art approaches that are open to relatively easy fraud such as stamping time cards or initially time sheets. The scheduling software system interfacing to the first and second Wi-Fi nodes 1420 and 1430 may optionally provide a maximum time that an employee's portable electronic device is out of communication with a Wi-Fi node, for example 10 minutes, to provide allowance for them to be temporarily out of the location on a break having a cigarette or walk etc. However, outside that allotted “break” time the scheduling software system may then be set to determine that they have now left their shift and accordingly provide either an alert to a manager/supervisor at that time or in a subsequently issued report. Clearly in some circumstances the employee may have valid reasons to leave during a shift such as sickness, incident involving another family member etc wherein disciplinary measures are inappropriate.
It would be evident to one skilled in the art that the network to which the employees connect when on a shift in their assigned location may be other than Wi-Fi. Other short-range/personal area network (PAN) wireless standards may be employed such as Bluetooth, Wireless USB, Z-Wave and Zigbee for example. Other standards such as WiMAX for example may be employed but their increased range makes verifying the employee is actually in the organization's location as opposed to a few city blocks or a few mile radius difficult. Optionally, the scheduling software system may employ GPS location information derived from the employee's portable electronic device which would be transmitted periodically to the scheduling software system from the scheduling software application on their portable electronic device. In order to avoid privacy issues over tracking an employee the scheduling software application would, for example, only access GPS information on the portable wireless device and communicate this to the scheduling software system during the period of time that the scheduling software application has the employee performing a shift. Alternatively the location of the employee may be established in dependence upon characteristics of the communications from the portable electronic device supporting wireless communications with a wireless network operating according to a standard such as GSM, Wi-Fi, and WiMAX for example. Alternatively a combination of these may employed as well as establishing alternate means including but not limited to establishing near-field communications between the portable electronic device and a point-of-sale terminal at the organization's location.
It would be evident that within the scheduling software system the ability for supervisors/managers to dynamically update an employee's location for a shift would be provided either through a terminal for example in the location, such as laptop 630 in
Now referring to
Also shown on the right hand side are databases relating to commitments for the employee where the employee has entered these into the scheduling software application as external databases containing scheduling information that relates to them. As shown these are University of Ottawa Physics 1525, University of Ottawa GeeGees football 1520, and Facebook™. Accordingly icons relating to these appear as first to third icons 1550, 1555, and 1560 respectively across the bottom of display screen 1500 allowing the employee to see what external commitment conflicts with their work schedule conflicts as depicted by conflict block 1510. In some instances such as Wednesday 14th AM a first icon 1525 is depicted relating to an activity on the employees calendar with the University of Ottawa Physics department and a scheduled block 1505 but no conflict arises as the University of Ottawa Physics commitment occurs later in the morning to their scheduled shift which is “Opening 6 am-9 am.”
Also depicted are first and second organization icons 1570A and 1570B respectively that relate to “Flame” and “Foods” which are two organizations the employee works for. Optionally, scheduled blocks 1505, conflict blocks 1510, and auction blocks 1515 may be modified in some or all instances, as would be evident to one skilled in the art, to denote the organization to which they relate.
Referring to
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To add a shift to the “TradeZone” the user can drag it from the schedule portion of the display to the “TradeZone.” Optionally, the user may initially tap a shift in the schedule portion to trigger a pop-up display, not shown for clarity, that may include options such as move to “TradeZone” or highlight the shift such that any subsequent dragging action relates solely to that shift even if the motion moves across another shift, such as may occur moving an evening or afternoon shift over an earlier afternoon or morning shift respectively on the same day or another day. Optionally the drag action would be verified by a subsequent sequence of presenting a pop-up window to the user with “Confirm” and “Cancel” options or “Yes”/“No” options. Optionally, the shift that has been offered for trade is highlighted to the user through an action such as a color change or pattern change for example.
Referring to
If the shift was one assigned by the employee into the “TradeZone” and it has not been claimed by another employee at this point in time then the employee would be presented with second screen 2030 wherein a different display format may also be presented to the user along with the “Reclaim Shift” option. Hence, if the employee clicks on the “Reclaim Shift” button then the shift currently in the “TradeZone” is removed from it and transferred back to their schedule. In each shift detail screen presented to the employee an alarm option is available which can be slid from “ON” to “OFF” and vice-versa. If the employee taps the screen at this point rather than sliding the icon then time screen 2040 is displayed comprising two scroll wheels for hours and minutes respectively allowing the user to select a time at which they wish to be reminded that the shift is coming up. It would be evident that more sophisticated alarm options may be provided such as initial alarm, escalating reminder, etc.
Now referring to
Accordingly, the user is presented with a set of directions to an employer's location. As such an employee accepting shifts from other employers or working for an employment provider can establish the location of the employer for any particular shift if they are unfamiliar with them. Additionally, wherein an employer operates multiple locations an employee may have accepted a shift from the “TradeZone” at a location they have not previously worked at and seek directions. In addition to the directions two icons are presented to the user allowing them to select either an “Illustrated Map” or “Google Map” to be subsequently displayed to them. An “Illustrated Map” may for example be one extracted from the employer's website for guiding customers to their location or one provided by the employer solely for employees such as identifying employee parking/entrance which are different from the main customer areas. “Google Map” transfers the employer to an interactive Google map accessed by entering the employer location in a query to the Google map website, such as presented in
As displayed in
Alternatively, through a default setting of the employee, rather than accessing public transport route information a direction display 2200B is displayed to the employee based upon information extracted from a map engine, such as Goggle, allowing the employee to obtain driving directions 2230 to the employer's location from their default starting address, e.g. home. Also presented are a series of buttons “Save to My Maps” 2220A, “Get Directions” 2220B, and “My Places” 2220C which allow the user to either save the map for subsequent retrieval, enter different information for the directions such as dropping off a friend on the way, and retrieving another default location for the directions, such as girlfriend's address. Optionally, the user's personal electronic device may communicate the employer's location to an in-vehicle navigation system when the user either triggers a feature within the scheduling software application or when the current time is within a predetermined range of the start time of a scheduled shift for the user.
Referring to
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Also connected to network 2510 are first and second user PEDs 2570 and 2580 respectively associated with employees of the employer to whom the employer rule set 2540A relates and may be a sole organization executing the scheduling software system on second server 2530, a branch, office or subsidiary of an organization executing the scheduling software system or a subscriber to a service offering the scheduling software system for example. Accordingly the scheduling software system transmits rule set communications 2500C to the network 2510 such that first user PED 2570 receives first rule set 2550 comprising first employer rule set 2550A and first employee rule set 2550B as communication 2500D. Second user PED 2580 receives second rule set 2560 comprising second employer rule set 2550A and second employee rule set 2550B as communication 2500E.
Hence, if first user determines to make an adjustment to their schedule, such as described above in respect of embodiments of the invention, then as the employee makes the select shift adjustments the first employer rule set 2550A and first employee rule set 2550B upon their first user PED 2570 are exploited to determine whether one or both of the first employer rule set 2550A and first employee rule set 2550B are violated by the desired adjustment. If, so then the first user receives a message indicating the type of rule violation and presenting options to the first user. For example, as shown the first user is informed that the change conflicts with company policy and is given options, in this instance modify or cancel. Once a valid change has been made this is transmitted to the network 2510 as communication 2500F to the scheduling software system in execution upon the second server 2530 wherein it is then sent to the second user and the second user PED 2580 either upon a selection of the second user by the first user, their selection by the scheduling software system, or their own determination to accept a shift exchange. Such variants being described supra in respect of embodiments of the invention wherein the employer and employee rules allow for management of the employer's budget and manpower as well as ensuring trade union agreements, employee agreements, staff seniority, employee skill levels, and employee certifications for example are integrated into the employee scheduling process as well as the trading of shifts etc.
When received upon second user PED 2500G the scheduling software application will also apply second employer rule set 2560A and second employee rule set 2560B to activities and similarly if a rule violation is determined to exist from a desired adjustment to also provide a message indicating the type of rule violation and presenting options to the first user. Accordingly, activities relating to the shifts of employees of an employer may be bounded by rules established both by the employer and by the employees. These rules may include information relating to other aspects of the scheduling software system and/or application. The pushing of such rule processes to the user, as exemplified by first and second user PEDs 2570 and 2580 respectively allows for employees to be aware of rule based limits during their interaction with the scheduling software application and/or scheduling software system. Further in the event that communications with the central server are unavailable the employee(s) can still perform a variety of functions. It would be evident that the rules distributed/pushed to the employee from the centralized server may be a subset of the overall rules for the employer and/or employee.
Within the embodiments of the invention presented above employees employed by an organization may trade and/or auction shifts. Optionally the organization may establish rules or guidelines in respect of employees who perform such trades or auctions such that responsibility for the shift transfers with the shift to the new employee. In other instances the organization may maintain responsibility with the employee originally scheduled to execute the shift.
It would be evident to one skilled in the art that the scheduling software system according to embodiments of the invention may track the trade/auction activities of the employee or employees as well as having access to additional scheduling information derived from the external databases linked to the employee, including but not limited to, University or school, sports, and other employment. Accordingly, the scheduling software system may track the number of shifts the employee auctions or trades as well as what shifts they trade or auction. This information may be utilized by the scheduling software system including, for example, preventing the employee making further trades/auctions if a predetermined number of trades/auctions are made by the employee in a predetermined period, by adjusting scheduling to avoid shifts the employee has high frequency of trading/auctioning, by adjusting scheduling to favour shifts the employee has high frequency of accepting in trading/auctioning, and as part of an employee assessment.
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Accordingly, the scheduling software system 2630 may automatically optimize employee headcount, shift start times, shift end times, etc based upon historical and current data in order to provide the required employees at one or more locations in dependence upon this data but with a focus to minimizing labour cost for example. Other optimization criteria may be selected by the employer such as minimizing number of breaks, minimizing number of employees, and minimizing overtime for example.
It would be evident that the scheduling software system and/or application discussed supra in respect of embodiments of the invention provides a system that sends (from a central server) specific, personally tailored shift-trading information and limitations to the remote users of the applications, and uses those limits to broker shift trading with other application users. In embodiments of the invention these trade limitations can be automatically exchanged between multiple users, and used to govern which shifts can be selected and offered for trade from within the application, based on the multiple user schedules and imposed trading rules. In embodiments of the invention, all trading rules are respected, while not consuming data requests or connections with the central server. Effectively in some embodiments of the invention an entire shift trading transaction and associated rule checking is pushed to the network edge, and maintains the transactions in the cellular network for example, which will typically eliminate cellular-internet network latency issues, while respecting the central server rules base. After the completed transaction, the master schedule can be updated, requiring only one communication to the central server hosting the scheduling software system instead of multiple calls.
It would also be evident that such trading rules may initially limit the shifts available for trading to an employee based upon a first subset of the trading rules, e.g. required qualification(s), and then verify the trading shift request upon a second subset of the trading rules, e.g. total hours worked or overtime hours already scheduled.
It would also be apparent to one skilled in the art that the scheduling software system and scheduling software application in accessing remote databases may require usernames, passwords, and other information to retrieve the scheduling information. Optionally, this information may be stored in an encrypted format within the scheduling software system based upon information provided from the scheduling software application as authorized by the user. Alternatively, the data may be stored within the scheduling software application and retrieved by the scheduling software system as required or stored in secure encrypted format on a server remote to the scheduling software system and scheduling software application. It would be evident that the scheduling software system within the descriptions of embodiments of the invention has been described as being in execution upon a server, which may comprise one or more microprocessor based systems. However, it would be evident that said server may be a FED(s) and/or PED(s) according to the characteristics of the said device(s) and the scheduling software system.
According to another embodiment of the invention an employee utilizing the scheduling software application would have a personal information screen containing all the required information for an employer. If the employee transfers to another employer, or works for another employer for some shifts, then they can transfer all this personal information to the new employer automatically by selecting the appropriate icon within the scheduling software application. If the user's portable electronic device is within communication range of the scheduling software system of the new employer their information is automatically transferred to the new employer's scheduling software system. Optionally, the employee when out of range of an employer's scheduling software system they enter the employer's name into the scheduling software application prior to transferring and the information is routed to the employers scheduling software system via the software provider. The above-described embodiments of the present invention are intended to be examples only. Alterations, modifications and variations may be effected to the particular embodiments by those of skill in the art without departing from the scope of the invention, which is defined solely by the claims appended hereto.
Specific details are given in the above description to provide a thorough understanding of the embodiments. However, it is understood that the embodiments may be practiced without these specific details. For example, circuits may be shown in block diagrams in order not to obscure the embodiments in unnecessary detail. In other instances, well-known circuits, processes, algorithms, structures, and techniques may be shown without unnecessary detail in order to avoid obscuring the embodiments.
Implementation of the techniques, blocks, steps and means described above may be done in various ways. For example, these techniques, blocks, steps and means may be implemented in hardware, software, or a combination thereof. For a hardware implementation, the processing units may be implemented within one or more application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), digital signal processors (DSPs), digital signal processing devices (DSPDs), programmable logic devices (PLDs), field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), processors, controllers, micro-controllers, microprocessors, other electronic units designed to perform the functions described above and/or a combination thereof.
Also, it is noted that the embodiments may be described as a process which is depicted as a flowchart, a flow diagram, a data flow diagram, a structure diagram, or a block diagram. Although a flowchart may describe the operations as a sequential process, many of the operations can be performed in parallel or concurrently. In addition, the order of the operations may be rearranged. A process is terminated when its operations are completed, but could have additional steps not included in the figure. A process may correspond to a method, a function, a procedure, a subroutine, a subprogram, etc. When a process corresponds to a function, its termination corresponds to a return of the function to the calling function or the main function.
Furthermore, embodiments may be implemented by hardware, software, scripting languages, firmware, middleware, microcode, hardware description languages and/or any combination thereof. When implemented in software, firmware, middleware, scripting language and/or microcode, the program code or code segments to perform the necessary tasks may be stored in a machine readable medium, such as a storage medium. A code segment or machine-executable instruction may represent a procedure, a function, a subprogram, a program, a routine, a subroutine, a module, a software package, a script, a class, or any combination of instructions, data structures and/or program statements. A code segment may be coupled to another code segment or a hardware circuit by passing and/or receiving information, data, arguments, parameters and/or memory contents. Information, arguments, parameters, data, etc. may be passed, forwarded, or transmitted via any suitable means including memory sharing, message passing, token passing, network transmission, etc.
For a firmware and/or software implementation, the methodologies may be implemented with modules (e.g., procedures, functions, and so on) that perform the functions described herein. Any machine-readable medium tangibly embodying instructions may be used in implementing the methodologies described herein. For example, software codes may be stored in a memory. Memory may be implemented within the processor or external to the processor and may vary in implementation where the memory is employed in storing software codes for subsequent execution to that when the memory is employed in executing the software codes. As used herein the term “memory” refers to any type of long term, short term, volatile, nonvolatile, or other storage medium and is not to be limited to any particular type of memory or number of memories, or type of media upon which memory is stored.
Moreover, as disclosed herein, the term “storage medium” may represent one or more devices for storing data, including read only memory (ROM), random access memory (RAM), magnetic RAM, core memory, magnetic disk storage mediums, optical storage mediums, flash memory devices and/or other machine readable mediums for storing information. The term “machine-readable medium” includes, but is not limited to portable or fixed storage devices, optical storage devices, wireless channels and/or various other mediums capable of storing, containing or carrying instruction(s) and/or data.
The methodologies described herein are, in one or more embodiments, performable by a machine which includes one or more processors that accept code segments containing instructions. For any of the methods described herein, when the instructions are executed by the machine, the machine performs the method. Any machine capable of executing a set of instructions (sequential or otherwise) that specify actions to be taken by that machine are included. Thus, a typical machine may be exemplified by a typical processing system that includes one or more processors. Each processor may include one or more of a CPU, a graphics-processing unit, and a programmable DSP unit. The processing system further may include a memory subsystem including main RAM and/or a static RAM, and/or ROM. A bus subsystem may be included for communicating between the components. If the processing system requires a display, such a display may be included, e.g., a liquid crystal display (LCD). If manual data entry is required, the processing system also includes an input device such as one or more of an alphanumeric input unit such as a keyboard, a pointing control device such as a mouse, and so forth.
The memory includes machine-readable code segments (e.g. software or software code) including instructions for performing, when executed by the processing system, one of more of the methods described herein. The software may reside entirely in the memory, or may also reside, completely or at least partially, within the RAM and/or within the processor during execution thereof by the computer system. Thus, the memory and the processor also constitute a system comprising machine-readable code.
In alternative embodiments, the machine operates as a standalone device or may be connected, e.g., networked to other machines, in a networked deployment, the machine may operate in the capacity of a server or a client machine in server-client network environment, or as a peer machine in a peer-to-peer or distributed network environment. The machine may be, for example, a computer, a server, a cluster of servers, a cluster of computers, a web appliance, a distributed computing environment, a cloud computing environment, or any machine capable of executing a set of instructions (sequential or otherwise) that specify actions to be taken by that machine. The term “machine” may also be taken to include any collection of machines that individually or jointly execute a set (or multiple sets) of instructions to perform any one or more of the methodologies discussed herein.
The foregoing disclosure of the exemplary embodiments of the present invention has been presented for purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise forms disclosed. Many variations and modifications of the embodiments described herein will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art in light of the above disclosure. The scope of the invention is to be defined only by the claims appended hereto, and by their equivalents.
Further, in describing representative embodiments of the present invention, the specification may have presented the method and/or process of the present invention as a particular sequence of steps. However, to the extent that the method or process does not rely on the particular order of steps set forth herein, the method or process should not be limited to the particular sequence of steps described. As one of ordinary skill in the art would appreciate, other sequences of steps may be possible. Therefore, the particular order of the steps set forth in the specification should not be construed as limitations on the claims. In addition, the claims directed to the method and/or process of the present invention should not be limited to the performance of their steps in the order written, and one skilled in the art can readily appreciate that the sequences may be varied and still remain within the spirit and scope of the present invention.
This patent application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application 61/545,764 filed Oct. 11, 2011 entitled “Methods of Employee Scheduling and Management” the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 61545764 | Oct 2011 | US |
