Staff availability: how to collect it and actually use it

In a small team, the manager usually carries everyone's availability in their head. Ben has college on Tuesdays. Emma cannot start before nine because of the school run. The weekend person does not do Sundays any more, or was that last year?

It works until it doesn't. A new manager takes over, the team grows past ten, or you simply forget, and somebody is scheduled for a shift they told you months ago they could never work. This guide shows how to get availability out of your head and into a form you can plan from.

Availability and time off are different things

Mixing these up causes most of the confusion, so it is worth being exact.

If someone uses time off requests to block every Tuesday, their balance and your records fill up with noise. If someone uses availability to take a week's holiday, nothing gets approved and nothing is recorded. Give each its own place.

What to ask for

Keep the question small. People answer short forms and ignore long ones. You need three things for each day of the week.

• Can work: the hours the person is free to be scheduled.
• Cannot work: fixed commitments such as classes, childcare, a second job or religious observance.
• Would prefer: things that are not essential but matter to them, such as mornings over evenings.

The line between cannot and prefer is important. If everything is marked as impossible, you have no room to build a schedule. Ask people to be honest about which is which, and in return treat a true cannot as fixed.

How to collect it

1. 1Tell the team why you are asking: so the schedule suits them more often and changes less after it is published.
2. 2Ask everyone to enter their weekly pattern by a set date. Give a week, and remind people once.
3. 3Read what comes back before you plan. Look for days when almost nobody is available. That is a hiring or contract question, not a scheduling one.
4. 4Talk to anyone whose availability does not match the job they were hired for. Do it in person, not through the schedule.
5. 5Set review dates, for example at the start of each school or college term, and ask everyone to confirm or update.

Use it fairly

Availability can make a schedule less fair if you are not careful. The person who says "any time" ends up with every late shift and every weekend, while the person with many restrictions gets the comfortable hours that fit around them.

• Share out the unpopular shifts among everyone who can work them, and count how many each person has had.
• Do not punish openness. Someone who is flexible is doing you a favour.
• Be honest when you hire. If the job needs weekends, say so before the person starts, and do not hope availability will sort it out.
• Treat similar requests in the same way, whoever makes them.

Depending on where you are and what your contracts say, staff may have rights around flexible working, guaranteed hours or refusing work outside agreed times. Check the rules that apply to you before you turn availability into a firm policy.

A worked example

The principle in that example is worth keeping: schedule the people with the least room first. The flexible ones can fit around them. The other way round does not work.

Keep it current

Availability goes stale quietly. A timetable changes, a child starts school, a second job ends. Nobody thinks to tell you until a shift clashes.

Make updating easy and normal. Ask people to change their pattern as soon as their situation changes, and say how much notice you need before it affects the schedule. Two weeks is common, because next week's schedule may already be published.

How ClockinBee handles availability

In ClockinBee each person has an availability pattern for the week, and can add single dates they cannot work, all day or for part of it, with a note for the manager. Staff keep both up to date from their phone, so you are not the one typing it in.

Auto-schedule uses those patterns. When it builds the week, it respects availability together with approved time off, rest between shifts and contract hours, and it shows you the result as a draft preview before anything is published. If nobody suitable is available for a shift, it becomes an open shift, and you can see the gap.

Time off is kept separately. It is requested, approved and counted against a balance, and approved time off always keeps a person off the schedule for those dates. Open shifts are only shown to people who have no clashing shift or time off that day.

One honest limit. Availability is a request, not a block: when you plan by hand in the week planner you are in charge and can still place someone outside it if you have agreed it with them. Holidays and sick days belong in time off, not availability.

Questions people ask