We are a large, well-known event organizer and are looking for a workforce scheduling solution for our company. We have some specific requirements that amount to a combination of workforce scheduling and project planning (short project durations).
We are looking for a flexible tool for scheduling system specialists for an access control system (= scanning event tickets). The following requirements represent the “ideal scenario” for us - while acknowledging that some of these may not be feasible.
Overview – Current Situation
There are two, and potentially three, user groups (distinguished by skill set).
- Systems Specialists:
- There is a core team of five systems specialists.
- In addition, there is a pool of three other employees who are also systems specialists but belong to other departments and can therefore only be deployed sporadically. There are also several system specialists from other countries in Europe (subsidiaries) who can also be called upon sporadically.
- Support staff:
In addition, there is a pool of about 10 support staff who are familiar with the system but are not specialists and may be called upon sporadically for support (setup work, etc.) (also from other departments).
- Future – External Network Specialists:
There will be a pool of external specialists (external company) whose skill set falls between Levels 1 and 2.
Team Composition and Framework Conditions:
- Assignments involve the implementation of major events such as festivals or large summer open-air concerts from May to August. Assignments range from three days (concerts) to seven days (festivals); two, usually three people are on the road (two specialists, one supporter). Events may take place simultaneously.
- The number of assignments exceeds the core team’s capacity, which is why there is often a mix of core team members and staff from the specialist and supporter pools.
- Occasionally, additional staff members join assignments - trainees for learning purposes, new employees as interns, or, for example, myself to familiarize myself with events, venues, or as a driver, so that the assignment duration does not exceed the legal maximum of 10 working days.
- For future assignments (involvement of external specialists, see point 3 above), one to two system specialists would be deployed along with one or two external network specialists; additional personnel (support staff or trainees) would be added sporadically “on top.”
Desired requirements for the software
- There is an overview of the various events, broken down by day. This is typically a project view.
- Deal-breaker: For each event, the required number of specialists and support staff can be defined on a daily basis (the demand per assignment varies by day, as, for example, fewer staff are needed after a main admission day at a festival).
- Deal-breaker: The system indicates when an assignment is fully staffed or on which days staff (how many?) are missing.
- Deal-breaker: The software should be able to display different skill levels (specialist/supporter; later external network specialists); based on this, it can be defined per assignment day how many specialists and supporters are needed. Additional roles can be added.
- The core team is preferred to fill these positions - so their availability must be clearly indicated. Vacation time is taken into account here (ideally pulled from the HR tool Loga3).
- For all other specialists and supporters, it can be specified how many days they are available (a supervisor “loans” us an employee for a total of five days over a season) and during which periods they are available or unavailable (due to vacation) or blocked periods when the employee cannot be deployed for internal reasons); Sometimes employees from other departments may only be scheduled for specific events (e.g., “you can have XY for event ABC”).
- In any case, it should be clear which person is available to what extent so that we can respond quickly to changes in planning.
- It must be possible to create external employees (e.g., employees from subsidiaries are not in the Loga3 system; nor, of course, are specialists from external firms).
- The system takes legal requirements into account, such as a maximum assignment duration of 10 days, and blocks an employee’s assignment for day 11 with a notification.
- Assignments can be visually marked as “likely, but not yet confirmed.”
- The following additions would be ideal:
- An event, such as a festival, can be opened, displaying a daily schedule; within this, shift planning can be carried out with the employees assigned to it.
- The system visually indicates on a daily basis when, due to assignments and vacations, no system specialists are left in the office.
- The system should be accessible remotely (Windows) (via web and/or app, then Android) and enable time tracking of the actual hours of service provided, which will later be used for invoicing.
- The system must have role-based permissions (read/edit).
- Scheduled appointments are entered into MS Outlook on a user-by-user basis.
- Windows-compatible
- Multi-tenant
Currently, planning is done via MS Excel; this is already quite well thought out, but it still has its limitations and ultimately becomes confusing due to missing rules (employees are only available during certain periods or for specific days or assignments), is time-consuming, and, above all, prone to errors.
Future expansions (2019) -> The system will be used by other departments or other consulting teams for their scheduling.
Between at least 10 and up to 50 software workstations are planned.