Who Owns the Work Schedule in Your Organization?
Who Owns the Work Schedule in Your Organization?
“Shift workers want flexibility in their schedules but until now changing schedules required a convoluted and time-consuming chain of disconnected social media channels and phone calls,” Patrontasch said in a news release. “Shyft connects workers directly with others at their location and lets them quickly and easily exchange and cover shifts.”
I came across this story on Bloomberg yesterday and will be featuring in this friday’s CUE ,member newsletter. It’s about an app called Shyft that allows employees to set up their own shift trading communities on the app. According tot the description the app in the Apple Store, Shyft allows employees to “Swap shifts, share schedules and message co-workers instantly with Shyft”.
Sounds like a lot of the hurly workforce scheduling app that are already out there, right? What makes this one different, and potentially disruptive is that Shyft is an app aimed at the shift workers themselves, not their employers. This is something that service industry employers might want to keep an eye on.
Employees have been using social media tools like Facebook to set up informal communities for shift swapping for a while. Many employers use tools like Hot Schedules to manage scheduling and shift trade approvals internally. Shyft combines these two approaches into an app that put control into the hands of employees, which is great – but possibly concerning to manager who may have no insight or access into this external eco-system.
Here’s some insight from an article in the Seattle Times:
Currently, shift workers typically swap shifts by texting or calling each other, or posting on a group Facebook page. Shyft aims to simplify that with an app in which workers with a common employer can post requests to swap shifts and respond to fill shifts.
“Shift workers want flexibility in their schedules but until now changing schedules required a convoluted and time-consuming chain of disconnected social media channels and phone calls,” Patrontasch said in a news release. “Shyft connects workers directly with others at their location and lets them quickly and easily exchange and cover shifts.”
Shyft’s user base has grown by 400 percent over the past three months, with more than 26,000 hours of work swapped through the app, according to the company.
More than 12,000 Starbucks baristas, 7,500 McDonald’s workers and 3,500 Old Navy employees are registered users, Patrontasch said.
That is a lot of growth in a short time. In the past three months, workers have exchanged the equivalent of 26,000 hours on the app, according to Shyft Chief Executive Officer Brett Patrontasch.
Here’s an explanation of what Shyft does and why they created it from the app founders in an interview on GeekWire.
Explain what you do so our parents can understand it: “Shyft is a labor marketplace. Our app helps retail and service workers make adjustments to their work availability, and pick up shifts to earn more money.”
Inspiration hit us when: “Inspiration hit us when we realized that a schedule is a simple function of supply and demand: An employee’s supply of available labor hours, and an employer’s demand for labor hours worked. A biweekly schedule is a two-week prediction of supply and demand, but unfortunately this forecast becomes instantly obsolete the moment it is published.
For the last 20 years, all scheduling systems that have been built are demand side-oriented systems. These systems focus on payroll and tax from an employers perspective. The labor supply side, however — employees working shifts — has been treated with a secondary consideration. We realized that by building a supply side marketplace, employees will be able to respond to demand in real time. This will enable workers to substantially increase their earnings, and eliminate billions in loss for employers.”
With support growing for labor driven issue movements like Just Hours that seek to pass local legislation requiring employers to cretae steady stable work schedules and pay penalties if changes are made, apps like Shyft are something that service industry members might want to keep an eye on.