Request Management overview

As part of the Workforce Management (WFM) Product that measures and leverages the talents and preferences of each employee, ensures that their skills are aligned with business objectives and customer needs, and produces optimum schedules. solution, Request Management provides a way to manage employee requests that provides benefits to both management and employees.

Management productivity can increase by automating many routine administrative tasks and providing employees with self-service capability for requests. Managers and supervisors can spend extra time focusing on more critical areas such as coaching and performance-related tasks.
Employees can feel more empowered and have greater job satisfaction because they participate in the workforce management process from their desktops. For example, they can access their schedule information, view the time-off calendar, submit their requests, view request status, and conflict information if any.

Time off

Employees can view time off availability, submit, withdraw, and track requests for time-off days and partial days, and receive conflict and request status information. They can request time off down to 15-minute increments. If employee requests cannot be approved due to insufficient hours in the time-off allotment, requests can be put on a waitlist.

After a time-off event is approved, an employee can opt to withdraw this request. If approved, the hours used from the time-off allocation are replaced and made available to other employees. The system checks for requests on the time-off wait list.

Flex time

Flex time requests allow employees to request time-off with associated make-up time instead of having time deducted from their time-off accrual.

Employees can do the following:

Submit a request for time-off before the makeup time. For example, an employee can request to make up for a late arrival by adding an extension to the end of the shift Work period in WFM that has a definite length. instead of being marked late.
Submit a request for makeup time before the time-off. For example, an employee can request to work extra time in advance to avoid taking time-off for an upcoming appointment.

Shift swap

Shift swapping efficiently enhances the flexibility of schedules without sacrificing service levels or quality.

Employees can swap either a shift or nonwork time using the following options:

Post a shift swap on the online swap board. The posting is listed for others to view and, when interested, accept the posting to negotiate the swap.
Send a swap request to a specific employee.

After a shift swap is approved, an employee can withdraw their request if needed.

Shift requests and changes

Shift requests and changes allow employees to submit requests for new shifts, to work overtime, and to extend or shorten an existing shift.

In addition, depending on how you configure the Workforce Management system, the requests can be approved or rejected automatically based on net staffing requirements you define to ensure shift coverage.

Shift bidding

Employees can identify and submit bids for the shifts that they want during an online auction. A set of rules can be set up to process the bids. Assignment of shifts is based on seniority, performance or rank, and unique discretionary points awarded by managers to employees. These points reward employees for hard work and superior performance.

Schedulers can start the auction by naming the shift period available for bidding, setting a deadline for the bids, and defining the scoring system. You can add all employees to the bid at the same time or one at a time according to a specified order such as seniority or rank.

Employees can view the available schedules and see their bid positions. They can filter shifts available for bidding using multiple criteria, and then sort and subsort on multiple columns to narrow down their search for shifts they want to bid on. Then, they rank their shift bids. Employee can use their bonus points to give them a greater chance of getting desired shifts. They can also add comments to their bids at the same time. After they submit their bids, the application automatically sorts them by seniority, rank, bonus points, performance rankings, and shift preferences.

Supervisors can view employee comments and then approve the bids, either all at once or individually. Then, with a click, they can fill the schedule and send it to the employees’ desktops.

Time-off bidding for vacation

Time-off bidding automates the vacation bidding process which is typically held for the next calendar year.

When administrators create a time-off bid, they set the period that employees can submit bids, period that employees can request time-off for vacation, minimum and maximum period that can be included in a time-off choice, and the maximum period that can be approved. The time-off approval limit can be set to one amount for all employees or to different amounts for employees.

During the bid period, employees submit time-off requests with their vacation choices for the bid request period.

Management can use a filter can be used to view only requests from a specific bid. Time-off bids can be processed individually or as a group. Multiple choices from a request can be approved with the group processing options.

Employees can be given the option to copy unapproved choices in a time-off request to a new time-off bid.