By default, once shifts are published within the roster, employees are then notified of the shifts they are required to work. If you require staff to action published shifts and thereby acknowledge actual consent for such shifts, you can choose from the following settings:

1. Employees must accept shifts; or
2. Employees can choose to decline shifts; or
3. Employees must accept shifts they can work on and can decline shifts they cannot work.

This provides greater flexibility of choice to suit each business requirement and, as such, also ensures managers that staff are fully aware and have given implicit consent to what shifts they will work. The above settings are managed via the Rostering Settings feature.

Employees must accept shifts that have been assigned to them

By activating this option, employees must accept a shift as confirmation they will be working it. If they do not accept the shift within the shift cut-off action timeframe, the shift will no longer be assigned to the employee and, rather, will become an ‘Unassigned Shift’ in the roster.

The employee will then receive a notification advising them they are no longer assigned to that shift. On the roster, you will notice three different shift statuses:

• Draft shift: This is a shift saved against an employee but not yet published;
• Published shift: This is an employee shift that has been published and is now awaiting acceptance;
• Accepted shift: A published shift will convert to 'accepted' once the employee clicks on 'Accept' from their shift notification.

Employees can decline shifts that have been assigned to them

By activating this option, once shifts are published, employees have the option of declining shifts they know they cannot work. If they do not decline a shift within the shift cut-off action timeframe, the employee acknowledges that they will work the shift.

If an employee does decline a shift, it will no longer be assigned to the employee and, rather, will become an ‘Unassigned Shift’ in the roster. For this option, the roster has 2 types of shift status:

• Draft shift: This is a shift saved against an employee but not yet published;
• Published shift: This is an employee shift that has been published and has not been declined.

Employees must accept shifts or can decline shifts that have been assigned to them

This method combines both of the above options regarding how an employee can act on a published shift. If this option is chosen, you will need to assign a default shift action via the Rostering Settings feature. This is required so that the roster can automatically update the status of the shift if the employee has not actioned it within the shift cut-off action timeframe:

If an employee declines a shift or the default shift action is set to automatically decline, it will no longer be assigned to the employee and, rather, will become an Unassigned Shift in the roster. If an employee accepts a shift or the default shift action is to automatically accept, the status of that shift will convert from published to accepted.

Creating shifts after the shift cut off action timeframe

If a manager creates and publishes a shift after the shift cut-off action timeframe, the employee no longer has the option of accepting or declining the shift. Therefore, the employee will automatically accept the shift and the employee will receive a shift notification advising them as such. 

For employees to receive notifications when shifts are published within a roster, you must make sure their notifications are switched on. Roster notifications are managed one the employee's Pay Run Defaults page.

If any of the above options are selected and the employee does not have an email address and/or mobile number set up in their profile, you will see a warning. You must add the appropriate information to their profile for the notifications to work correctly.

Manager notifications

So that managers can easily keep track of the status of each shift and update rosters as required, they can choose to receive email notifications when an employee declines a shift. Additionally, managers can choose to receive daily reminders (these can be set to daily or set for specific days only) on what shifts are still pending.

If you have any comments or queries, please let us know via support@yourpayroll.com.au.