Employee form

This form may be opened from the Employee group or by choosing FORM |OTHER FORMS | EMPLOYEES from the menu.

All of your employees are listed, alphabetically, under the Employee group. When you select this group the information for the first person is displayed. To view a different employee's profile scroll through the list using the arrows and scrollbar until the employee you want to view is highlighted or use ESP's Employee filter feature to move more quickly to a particular employee.

Purpose of the Employee form

A separate Employee form is stored for each employee that includes information specific to that employee, such as when available to work, the stations qualified to work at, and the maximum number of hours and days allowed to work per week. This information allows ESP to assign valid shifts for each employee.

Form fields

Information for each employee is stored in four tabbed screens, each requiring information to be filled in before the employee can be properly scheduled. The four screens are:

1. General
2. Availability
3. Stations
4. Other

General

The fields on the General screen, shown above, store general information about each employee. The fields on this screen are divided into four areas:

1. Details
2. Address/phone
3. Other
4. Notes

DETAILS

• Name: the name fields store the employee's name; these fields are filled in when you add or import an employee. Each employee should have a unique name.
• Schedule name: the employee's schedule name is a unique short-form name that identifies the employee for scheduling reports. ESP creates the schedule name from the employee's first name and last initial; however, if you have employees with similar names you may wish to edit their schedule name.
• Hire date: the hire date is automatically filled in with the date the employee was added. This hire date is also stored on the employee's Other screen under the Hiring history.
• Release date: the release date will be blank unless the person will be leaving on a future date. The date is automatically filled in when you select the toolbar option Terminate employee. The date is also stored under the Hiring history fields on the Other screen.
• Pay: an employee may be paid a Wage or a Salary. Select Wage for hourly-paid employees and enter the person’s wage in the Wage field. Select Salaried for employees paid a salary. When you select Salaried, the Wage field is disabled. This information is used for statistics and reports.
• Labor category: displays the labor category that the employee has been assigned to. Assigning a labor category is a required field when adding an employee so this field is automatically filled in when you add or import an employee but it may be changed after you add the employee.
• Team: this field is only active if you have set up Team forms, which are located in the Staffing group. If you use teams this field will indicate the team that the employee belongs to. Most locations will not use teams; teams are only used by locations that are well-staffed to schedule groups of employees that are all scheduled together. For information on Teams refer to staffing.
• Wage: this field is only visible if the employee is paid an hourly wage and allows you to enter the employee’s wage amount. This information is used in statistics and reports.

ADDRESS/PHONE

• Address: use this area to store the employee's address information.
• Phone: use the phone fields to store up to two phone numbers for the employee.

OTHER

• E-mail: this field stores the employee's e-mail address. When the e-mail address is filled in you can e-mail employees their weekly work assignments from the E-mail reports section found in the Reports group.
• Gender: the default for this field is Not specified; select the correct option from the drop down list.
• ID: this field is used to store the employee's id or badge number.
• Birth date: this field stores the employee's birth date, which will appear on the Employee birthday report.
• Photo: can be used to display a photo of the employee. To add a photo, open the photo and choose copy, then right-click in the Photo field and choose paste.
• Full time: if checked this field indicates that the employee is a full-time employee. This option does not affect how they are scheduled.

NOTES

The Notes area can be used to make free-form notes about the employee.

Availability

ESP uses the information from the fields of the Availability screen, shown above, to assign each employee shifts based on their limits and availability. When you add an employee ESP will fill in some of the fields on this screen from the Labor category that the employee belongs to, you can then edit the information for the individual employee.

This screen is divided into three areas:

1. View
2. Limits
3. Availability

View

The View area at the top of the screen allows you to look at the employee's availability in different ways.

The first drop-down list box provides two options for viewing the employee's availability:

1. This week option displays entries only for the current schedule you are working on.
2. All entries option displays entries for the week you are working on plus future weeks. This also displays the employee's permanent and temporary availability, including any days booked-off.

The second drop-down list box provides two choices for viewing the availability section; select the option that works best for your screen size.

1. Single line displays all the fields for each entry across one line.
2. Double line displays the Temp, Start Date and Finish Date fields on a second line.

Limits

The entries in the limit fields help control the maximum number of hours, days and close shifts the employee is allowed to work each week. It is important to remember that ESP will not assign an employee more shifts than you permit on this form. To ensure ESP has the flexibility of filling shifts do not unnecessarily restrict the number of days or closes an employee may work.

Hour limits

• Min: this entry tells ESP the minimum number of hours the employee is allowed to work. Use this field carefully: unless you have guaranteed an employee a certain number of hours, set this field to zero. Minimum hours are taken as a high-priority request, but are not guaranteed, since the employee may have requested days off or reduced their availability.
• Max: this entry tells ESP the maximum number of hours the employee is allowed to work per week. Unless someone has specifically asked you to limit their hours you should leave this field at the maximum allowed for the labor category.

Shift Limits

• Week: These entries tell ESP the maximum number of weekday shifts or closes that the employee is allowed to work.
• Weekend: These entries tell ESP the maximum number of weekend shifts or closes that the employee may work per week.
• Total: These entries tell ESP the maximum number of shifts or closes the employee may be assigned for the week. For example, an employee may be available for two week day shifts and two weekend shifts but only allowed to work a total of two shifts for the week.
• In-row: These entries tell ESP the maximum number of shifts or closes the employee may consecutively work per week. It is important to remember that ESP takes the previous week's schedule into consideration when determining how many shifts an employee has worked in a row.

Availability

ESP schedules shifts based on each employee's availability. You may enter three types of availability for each person.

1. Regular availability: the employee’s availability that will be used for all or most of the year.
2. Alternate availability: the employee’s summer or other alternate availability if it is different from their regular availability.
3. Team availability: this availability is only active if one or more team forms (under the Staffing group) have been setup. The availability from the team's form is automatically filled in here when you assign a person to a team (on the general tab). You cannot edit the information on this screen; enter additional availability or book off information on the employee's availability screen that is active for the schedule you are working on.

When entering Regular or Alternate availability you will fill in the following fields:

• the Day field indicates the day that the availability applies to.
• the Start time tells ESP the earliest time that the employee is available to start working on the day that the entry applies to.
• the Finish time tells ESP the latest time that the employee is available to work on the day that the entry applies to.
• select the Type of availability that applies to this entry, whether it is: Available to indicate the time that employee may be scheduled; Fixed to indicate the time and station that the employee will be scheduled; or Day off to indicate the employee is not available to work for the entire day. Keep in mind that a Day off applies to the whole day and ESP will not schedule the employee on a day that is marked as Day off.
• the Department column is only displayed if you schedule your employees at more than one location and allows you to tell ESP the site that the availability applies to. If you schedule only one location this option will not appear on the screen.
• the Station field is only active if the shift Type is Fixed; this allows you to assign the station that the employee will work during the fixed availability. If no station is entered ESP will schedule the employee where they are needed most. When you select this field you may enter the station in the field, use the drop down arrow head to scroll through a list of all stations, or select the additional (...) button to open the Edit fixed shift segments window where you can enter information about availability that involves two or more stations.
• a checkmark in the Temp box tells ESP that this is a temporary availability. When you select the Temp box, ESP will automatically fill in the start and finish dates with the current week. You only need to change them if this availability will apply to a future date.
• the Start date field is only active if the Temp box is checked to allow you to enter the first date that this temporary availability applies to. The start date will always be the first day of the week to which this time off request applies.
• the Finish date field is active only if the Temp box is checked to allow you to enter the last date that this availability applies to. The finish date will always be the first day of the week after the time off request has expired.

Example of a temporary entry: if your schedule starts on Monday and an employee asks for Friday, June 25, 2010 off, the start date would show Monday, June 21, 2010 and the end date would show Monday, June 28, 2010. This means the employee wants the Friday off that falls between those two dates.

Stations

ESP assigns each employee shifts based on the stations that the employee is qualified to work. Stations for your location are defined on the Stations screen, which is found in the Settings group.

An entry in the Badge field is optional. This field can be used to enter the employee's time clock number that is different from their regular ID number (found on the General screen). Employees who work at more than one location may have a different badge number for each department that they can work at. 

The following information is required for each station that the employee may work at:

• Stations: enter the station name or select it from the drop down list of all stations.
• Rating: rate the employee’s performance level at each station listed on a scale between 1 and 4. If the employee is just learning the station you may prefer to rate them Trainee or, if the employee trains others at the station rate them Coach.
• Restricted: a checkmark in this box tells ESP that the employee is restricted from working the station at a certain time during the day. NOTE: time restrictions will apply to every day.
• Start Restriction: active only if the Restricted box is checked; enter the time of day that restriction begins.
• Finish Restriction: active only if the Restricted box is checked; enter the time of day that restriction ends.

 Other

The Other screen stores additional information for the employee; this information is divided into two sections:

1. Emergency contact
2. Hiring history

Emergency contact

• Emergency contact field is used to store the name of the person who should be contacted in case of an emergency for this employee.
• Contact phone field is used to store the phone number that the emergency contact person is most likely to be reached at.

Hiring history

The dates that the employee is hired or terminated from ESP's files are stored automatically in the Hiring history section.

When employees are terminated their name is removed from the list of active employees but their information is stored in ESP's historical files so that you can review past schedules. If you rehire an employee you simply reinstate them using the toolbar option Add employee. This is particularly useful if you have an employee who attends school in a different city but returns to work during the summer; this employee's record may show a number of Hire and Release dates.

• Hire date: This column displays the date(s) that the employee was added; with the most recent hire date appearing first.
• Release date: This column displays the date(s) that the employee was terminated.

Toolbar options

The Employee form's toolbar provides various options for working with the employee forms:

Employee filter/reset

The Employee filter option on the toolbar provides a quick way to switch between employees.

To use this option, in the Employee filter box begin entering the name of the employee whose information you want to view. As you enter more letters, the list of names in the employees group that match your entry lessens and the employee information displayed will change to display the information for the employee whose name appears at the top of the list. You can continue entering letters until the information of the employee whose information you want to view is open or you can select the name from the list of all possible options.

For example, if you wanted to select Shirley, typing the letter S would move you to the top of the list of S names, and then typing h moves you down the list further to the first person whose name begins with Sh and typing i moves you further down the list to the first person whose name begins with Shi, as shown above. Shirley's name is displayed because Shirley is the first person on the list; in the above example, if you have wanted to open the information for Shiva S you could now simply select her name in the list and ESP would change to open her information.

To start over, or to clear the filter field, select the Reset button on the toolbar.

Add employees

There are different reasons why you may be adding employees:

• After you install ESP you will need to enter all of your employees into the database. Depending on the number of employees you have, entering them may take a couple of hours or longer. This may be split into a couple of sessions.
• When updating your employees for the next schedule you will need to add new employees into the program.
• To reinstate someone who was terminated in error or who has returned to work after a leave.

Procedure

To add an employee to ESP's files, select the Toolbar option Add employee and the Add employee window, shown below, will open.

There are two options for adding employees; select the option that refers to the type of employee you are adding:

1. Add a new employee: enter the person’s first and last names and select the labor category that the person will be assigned to. The Schedule name is a unique, short-form name that is made up of the employee's first name and the first initial of their last name. The schedule name is filled in automatically as you enter the person's first and last names. You may leave the Schedule name as ESP creates it or you may modify it. Select the labor category that the person is assigned to and then press OK. The Employee form will open with the employee’s name, schedule name and labor category filled in.
2. Reinstate previous employee: selecting this tab will display a list of all employees who have worked for you in the past but have been removed from ESP's active employee files. Select the employee that you want to reinstate from the list, click the OK button, and the employee's form will open. This option is useful for someone returning after a leave of absence, or if you have a seasonal worker; e.g., a university student who attends school in another town but returns to work during summers.

Terminate employees

Terminating an employee from ESP removes the employee from ESP's active employee files. However, the information is retained in historical schedules, and is preserved in case you wish to reinstate the employee as described in Adding employees above.

Procedure

To remove an employee, display that employee’s information screen and then select the Terminate employee option on the toolbar. The Terminate employee window, shown below, will open displaying the employee’s name and the current schedule date in the termination date field.

Confirm that this is the employee you want removed from future schedules. If not, press the Cancel button at the bottom of the window, move to the correct person, and then select the Terminate employee option on the toolbar. Once you confirm that it is the correct person, check the date in the termination date field; if the date is not correct, select the correct date. After confirming that it is the correct person and termination date choose the OK button and the employee will be removed on the date that you entered.

The termination date may be in the future but cannot be earlier than the date of the current scheduling week. This is because you cannot terminate someone who may have been scheduled on past schedules.

Accept imported employee

ESP can import and export information using XML to and from external sources such as a payroll or HR system.

When employee information in ESP is updated via an external source, employees with changed or updated information will be displayed in bold type in the employee list. This acts as a reminder that you should review the employee’s information before completing your schedule for the week.

When viewing any employee with updated information, ESP displays the Accept imported employee button on the toolbar. Once you have reviewed the employee’s information and confirmed that it is correct, click the button. The employee's information will be marked as accepted, and the employee name will no longer be displayed in bold type.

It is not a requirement that you perform this procedure in order to produce a schedule. ESP will still produce a schedule with unconfirmed employee information. This does provide a good opportunity, however, for you to review the employee's information.