Some operations divide their crew into Teams; groups of employees that share the same availability. The Teams form allows you to set up availability that will be applied to a large group of employees. Each employee is assigned a team number and will be available any time their team is available. The teams have set days and times that they work, but these set days/times are usually rotated each week. For example:
The following week you might reverse these times to ensure all employees get fair rotation of their shift.
Most locations will not use the Teams
form. Only fill in this form if you schedule using the team concept otherwise, leave it blank
or it may cause extra editing work for you. The team concept is an advanced method of scheduling
that only works well in locations that are very well staffed and have low turnover. It should not
be used in locations that are understaffed or have high turnover because the teams would suffer
from too much change and chronic shortage.
There are two steps to setting up teams:
If you open the team forms and the screen is blank, choose the Add team option on the toolbar and a team form will be displayed. If you have already defined your teams, the first team's form will appear and you can access the other team forms using the tabs at the top of the screen. Either add a team or select the tab of the team that you want to review.
Each team form is divided into two sections:
Enter a short name for this team in the top box, something like Team 1 or Team A works well; this name will appear on the form's tab. The larger box at the bottom of this section may be used to enter a longer description about the team.
In the bottom half of the form, enter the days and times that the team will be available to work. The information you enter here is automatically added to the Availability screen on the information form for each employee who is assigned to this team. Changes you make on this form will also be automatically updated on each team members' availability screen. If an employee has additional available times of their own, the two sets of availabilities are combined.
To Add a new entry, click in the top row labeled Click here to add a new row and enter the information under each column:
When setting up teams you must ensure that you adequately cover all day parts and all days. Usually this would require at least four teams; if your employees are all part time you may need as many as six. Each day should be divided into no more than three day parts to ensure complete coverage. For example you might have the following three day parts:
| Name | Available starting | Available ending |
| Morning | 5:00 AM | 4:00 PM |
| Day | 9:00 AM | 7:00 PM |
| Close | 3:00 PM | 1:00 AM |
In the above example all day parts are covered with enough overlap to ensure that all your shifts will be filled.
Care must be taken to distribute employees to the teams evenly and fairly, taking into account their station qualifications and skill level.
After you have setup the team forms, open the employee forms. In the Team field on the General screen select the team that the employee is to be assigned to from the drop down list. If the employee is not part of a team, select No team from the drop down list. Once you assign an employee to a team the Team availability on the Availability screen will be filled in.
If an employee is available in addition to the teams availability, enter a personal Regular or Alternate availability for the employee. If an employee requires time off when the team is normally available, enter a personal availability time-off request.
Your employees' availability will be a combination of their own personal availability plus the team's availability.
When using teams remember that your employees may have personal availability in addition to their team availability. When ESP generates a schedule using the team concept, it does the following:
ESP will then assign shifts for the employee based on this combined availability. That means an employee who has personal availability as well as team availability may be scheduled any time the employee is available.
Changes you make on the teams form will be automatically updated on the Team availability screen, of the employee information form, for each employee who is assigned to the team.
To remove a team form, open the form that you want to remove and choose the DELETE TEAM option on the toolbar. A confirmation window will open where you select YES to confirm that you want to remove the form or NO to cancel the request. When you select YES, if no one is assigned to the team the form will be removed. If, however, there are employees assigned to the team that you are trying to delete, an error window will open telling you that the team still has employees assigned to it so it cannot be deleted. When you select OK the window will close and the form will remain in ESP's files. You must then remove this team from the Team field, on the GENERAL screen of the information form, for each person that has been assigned to this team. Only then will ESP allow you to remove the team from your database.
Return to original page: Online help, The Teams form
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