Purpose of the Teams form

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 group of employees. Each employee is assigned as a member of a team 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:

• Team 1 might work Monday and Thursday evening, and the opening shift on Saturday
• Team 2 might work Wednesday and Friday until closing time, and then Saturday and Sunday afternoon shifts.

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 Team forms if you schedule using the team concept otherwise, leave them 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.

Defining Teams

There are two steps to setting up teams:

1. Define the times that you want each team to be available to work; and
2. Assign each employee to a team.

Define the times teams can work

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:

1. Name and description

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.

2. Team availability/restrictions

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:

• Day: enter a day, or select a day from the drop down list, that this availability is for.
• Start time/Finish time: enter the time that the team's availability begins for the day in the Start time field; and the time that the team's availability ends for the day in the Finish time field.
• Type: choose Available to make the members of this team available to work on the day and times listed or, choose Not available to indicate that this team is not available to work on the day and times listed.

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 3 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.

Assign each employee to a team

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 his/her team 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.

Generating shifts using teams

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:

• looks at the employee's personal current availability (regular or alternate)
• adds the team availability
• removes any time-off requests, since time-off requests override availability, and
• combines all of this information to determine each employee's availability for the week

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 he/she is available.

Modifying the teams form

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.