Shift Bidding allow employees to express an interest in working an Open shift, which the User has full control in deciding who to give the shift to by accepting a Shift bid.

Typically, they will choose the most competent employee to fill the shift. However, this can be decided by choosing favored or senior employees.

This article will cover the following on Shift Bidding in Schedule Xpress:

How it works

Settings

Notifications

Employee search rules

Shift Status Icons

The Process

The employee perspective

It's important that you understand the Shift Bidding process and how it works. Let's explore how the process begins from start to finish:

Shift Bidding is similar to Self-scheduling. However, the primary difference is that Self-scheduling allows the employee to acquire the shift immediately, whereas with this, the employee indicates that they would like to work the shift, but does not actually get the shift until it is assigned by the User.

In order to use Shift Bidding, you must be aware of the requirements. See the list here:

If you have any questions regarding your current setup, please Contact Support now.

Once Shift Bidding is enabled at a system level, you'll need to turn it on in your Schedule Xpress Settings. This can be turned on or off at anytime.

These settings will be located in Settings > Branch features > Shift Bidding.

Once inside, you can toggle the Allow shift bidding option to choose whether it is turned on or off.

In the Shift Bidding section of you Settings, you'll have a range of different customizable options.

Let's break down what they mean.

The Default rule gives you the change to choose an Employee search rule to be applied as default when searching for employees that match the criteria required to work a shift.

We discuss Employee search rules and what they mean for Shift Bidding a little further down in this article.

This is the default bidding deadline which defines when the latest time an employee can bid on a shift, unless the shift bidding deadline is manually changed. For example, 24 hours prior to the shift means that they will no longer be able to bid when the shift begins in less than this time. The default will always start at 24 hours, however, this can be changed on a daily basis for any individual shifts or a batch of shifts.

If this option is enabled, shifts will be assigned to highest ranked employee at the shift bidding deadline. For example, if you choose to review your shift bids in a priority sequence from most senior employees to least senior, then Auto-assign will choose the most senior employee for the shift.

This is used to prevent employees bidding on shifts that are identical. For example, if you have 4 shifts that are to be worked at the same location at the same time, then grouping them means that when the employee bids, they will only bid for a singular shift and not multiple. This also means they'll require much less filtering when searching for Shift Bidding shifts in their Team Xpress app.

This will determine the order that the shifts will be assigned to employees. Typically, this is set so that shifts are assigned in chronological order, with the earliest to last by shift date. Although, this order can be changed to however a User wants.

This panel allows the User to choose which Shift Bidding shift fields to display in the Team Xpress app. Note, if the fields have not been selected in the Shift grouping, then they will not be available to select in this section.

If Shift Bidding is turned on in your Schedule Xpress, then you'll have the option to customize your notifications.

Head to Settings > Branch features > Notifications > Shift bidding.

Let's break down each section of your Shift Bidding notifications.

Message templates allow you to define a message that will be sent to the employee for:

The User may receive:

Shift details in SMS allows you to choose whether you split multiple shift bid groups into individual SMS messages, or not.

This panel allows you to decide whether you want to receive notifications based on your Global default settings, or create a Custom notification schedule specifically for Shift Bidding.

If you want to customize your Shift Bidding notifications, you can choose distribution methods and a different Scheduler email.

If you've chosen to customize your Shift Bidding notifications, as opposed to using Global default settings, then you'll have to define your Notification timing.

Note: If you've chosen to use Global default settings, then this will autofill.

If you've chosen to customize your Shift Bidding notifications, as opposed to using Global default settings, then you'll have to define your Scheduler notification quiet times.

Note: If you've chosen to use Global default settings, then this will autofill.

You can receive notifications for Shift Bidding by clicking the notifications bell, and selecting Shift Bidding in filters.

Employee search rules are created and used to define specific criteria when searching for employees to fill shifts. These rules are used in the process of sending Shift Bidding invites, and allow the User to filter for suitable employees who can fill a shift. We will discuss the invite process further down this article.

Visit our Employee search rules article for more information.

You can also use Shift Status Icons to label any Shift Bidding shifts, and their current Shift Bidding status.

If turned on, they will reflect in your Schedule.

The process of Shift Bidding begins with the User creating an Open shift, or a range of Open shifts. While creating the Open shifts, it's essential to ensure the Publish for Shift Bidding option is check marked.

Once your Open shifts are created, you'll then need to send out Shift Bidding invites.

To send Shift Bidding invites, highlight all the shifts you want to send invites for, and then click Schedule Tools > Shift bidding.

The next step is to Select a shift bidding action.

The Select shift bidding action has four options. The first two relate to sending Shift Bidding invitations. They are:

Quick send bid invitations is the fastest way of processing Shift Bidding invitations. You'll need to define a rule, and then the Shift Bidding invitations will be sent based on any employees who fit the rule's criteria.

Note: You WILL NOT be able to choose who these invitations are sent to. If you want to see and choose the employees you're sending invitations to, then your best option will be to Send bid invitations by shift groups.

Before inviting to bid, you'll need to define:

Once you're happy with your Quick send bid invitation settings, your can click Invite to bid.

Sending bid invitations by shift groups allows you to select a search rule per shift or for all shift groups, and the system will show you which employees you'll be sending the Shift Bidding invitations to, per group. You can unselect employees you don't want to send invites to.

The shift bid groups will grouped based on your shift grouping settings. For example, Shift date, Customer name, Scheduled start time etc.

The first step is to choose whether to pick a rule for a Currently selected Shift Bidding shift, or All outstanding Shift Bidding shifts. Based on which option you choose, the relevant shift(s) will display.

Select a shift bid group by clicking on it, and then apply an employee search rule to find a list a qualified employees.

Note: This doesn't necessarily mean that they need the required qualifications, such as English fluent, Security licensed or any site authorizations. It just means they need to qualify as per the rule's criteria. For example, the rule may be No overtime caused.

By default, all employees will be highlighted. If you want to send an invitation to all employees, you can leave the entire list checked. If you only want to send to a select few, then you can unselect those who you don't want to invite by unchecking the checkbox by their names.

If you know you only want to choose a handful of employees from the list, press the Clear all in the bottom right of the list, then checkbox only those who you want to invite. This process is much faster if you only want to invite a small number of employees from a large list.

Ensure that before you Invite to bid, you've chosen a Scheduled time or Immediately for Notification timing/Bid start time.

You'll need to determine your Shift bidding deadline. This is the time in which there will be no further availability to bid for a shift.

You can finalize your Shift Bidding invitations by adding a Custom note.

You can Review shift bids in progress to check up on any bids that have been made for any outstanding shifts that haven't yet passed the Shift bidding deadline.

Each shift bid group will be labelled with how many employees have bid on the shifts.

If you expand the shift bid group, you'll be presented with the following information regarding the Shift Bidding shift:

The last step in the Shift Bidding process is to Assign shift bids. Shifts can only be assigned when the Shift bidding deadline has passed.

The Assign shift bids section will show any shifts of which the deadline has passed.

You can open any of the shifts to see which employees have bid. From there, based on the number of shifts you need to assign, you can choose the employee(s) you want to fill them by checking the flag next to their name. The press Assign shifts.

Note: The User does not have to choose from the employees who bid. They always have the option of filling the shift with whomever they want, even if an employee who they wanted to fill the shift didn't bid.

After the shifts have been assigned to employees, all the shift bidders will be notified of whether they won or lost the bid.

Employees use their Team Xpress app to see the shifts that are available for them to bid on. If access to Shift Bidding is permitted, they'll have a Shift Bidding section in their app.

They can use the Shifts for bidding tab to search for shifts available to them, and check mark each. Then, they can either Submit bid or Decline bid.

They can use the Your bids status to monitor the status of their shift bids. This will be divided by an In progress section, and a Completed section.

In progress:

Completed:

Employees will receive notifications based on shifts available for bidding, and updates on the current status of their shift bids.

We highly encourage that employees turn notifications preferences on for both email and SMS (if your company has an SMS package).

For more information on Shift Bidding, please Contact Support now!