Venues

Venues

A venue in StaffSavvy can be used for many different things; they are often physical departments or locations. A venue has its own shift schedules and budgets. Staff have a home venue but can also be given access to any other venues.

Each venue has its own management structure and a lot of different configuration options. You can create as many venues as you want and configure them to match your needs.

See the Venues page under the Shift Management section for more details.

An automatic notification will be sent to staff members when venue changes are made. This is to ensure that each staff member receives all information that pertains to them and might affect any upcoming shifts.

Venue Groups

Venue Groups allow venues to be grouped into different combinations for use in reports, shift management and time sheets.

Venues can be shown in as many venue groups as needed, so you can split your different venues in different ways to compare physical locations and venue types.

You can also set the order of the venues within the group, allowing you to manage how they will be displayed on various reports.

Automatically assigned to all venues in a venue group

This allows you to ensure that all staff within a venue group's venues can access all other venues. It’s perfect for departments as it prevents managers from manually assigning lots of venues to lots of new staff.

Note that you can only enable this option if you have permission to view all venues within that group.

Lone Working Notifications

Lone Worker notifications are designed to help keep single workers safe across a large venue, campus or complex. When enabled, the system will notify staff when they are the only clocked-in members on site or when they cease to be the only clocked-in staff member.

These notifications can be via Push notifications (in the apps or using desktop notifications), using SMS credits or email notifications. You can also choose the priority of the notifications so the system will try one before trying the next notification method.

Configure this feature on a venue group to cover all venues within the group. If you want the feature on a single venue, you’ll need to create a venue group with just that venue in it.

Then, enter the message you wish to show staff when they start working alone and when they finish. Remember that SMS messages are 160 characters so longer messages will take multiple credits.

Information Fields

These optional data fields are displayed on the manage Shift Week page, allowing data to be shared across a venue group. They might offer information such as occupancy levels, expected attendees, or other details that are useful for multiple teams.

To use these fields, enable the number of fields you need (up to 5) and provide a label. Once enabled then the venues who have this venue group set as their default group will have the options displayed within the week view:

Venue Staff and Access

Access to a venue must be granted. There are three ways this can happen.

Full Venue Access Permission

There is a permission that allows included staff to see all venues all of the time. This grants them access to the venue in a technical sense. They might not have permission to do anything at that venue nor have any roles/skills assigned that allow them to work there.

This option is useful for casual staff who you might want to offer additional shifts or unskilled shifts to in your organisation. It’s also useful for System Managers who need access to everything.

Home Venue

Every employee must have a home venue. This is where they are based and will grant them access to this venue. This will also dictate who their default line managers are. Home Venues are assigned via the Authorisation page, Staff Member’s Venues or Control Staff.

Venue Groups

Multiple venues can be grouped together to form an umbrella ‘Venue Group’. This can be managed under Dashboard > System > Venues > Venue Groups.

Under the actions menu, you can access the option to 'Create a Venue Group', which will allow you to manage multiple venues at the same time.

Assigned Venues

Every employee can also be assigned individual access to certain venues. This can be accessed via the staff member’s profile page in the actions bar under Edit Assignments > Edit Venues. You can also change their home venue via this page.

Venue Managers

Venue managers are the default line managers for all staff with this venue as their home venue. They are also displayed on different pages by the venue’s managers.

Managing Different Venues

If you can access different venues, you can jump between them using the button on the top right side of the screen.

Venue Settings

There are a lot of different settings on each venue that can control the tools available and the way the site behaves for shifts at that venue. Settings can be updated anytime and will take effect within a few moments. You can change your venue settings from the main page.

Details

• Venue Title
  The main title is used throughout the site. This should be the full name of the official department or venue. Please ensure your venue titles are unique within the site to prevent confusion.
• Venue Short Title
  A shortened title is to be used when space is tight. Try to use your existing acronym for the department/venue. Please ensure your venue titles are unique within the site to prevent confusion.
• Display Colour
  Some reports and views use colours to show which venue a shift or time entry occurred at. Colours also include the short title, but they help separate venues at a glance.
• Display Texture
  Where we can’t include the name of a venue, we’ll likely include the colour and texture to allow you to see which venue each shift is taking place at easily.
• Title for Exports
  This is used for several of the bespoke export formats. You can set any title to be used in the exports. You can also set the same title for several different departments/venues, and the exports will combine the figures for these venues into one line for your reports.
• Sage Payroll Department
  This will only display if you have the Sage Payroll service enabled.
• Venue Groups
  Venue Groups are a way to combine any combination of venues together for reporting purposes. Venues can be in any number of groups, so you can venue reports from a single location or all venues at the same time across different locations. See venue groups for more details.

Location

• Location Details
  • Address
    This is used to calculate distances and travel times.
  • Lock Weekly Preferences
    When enabled, this will show a Location Preview. You will need to add and save an address to preview its location.
• Staff Travel
  • Display Travel Time?
    This option decides whether to display the travel time if staff would be travelling depending on the length of travel.
  • Block Shifts
    You can then block shifts if travel time exceeds the specified time.
  • Schedule Creation Rules
    Choose to treat travel times as equal in blocks of time.
  • Trave Time Leeway
    This option allows for an additional few minutes to all travel times, allowing time to access parking, etc.
  • Minimum Travel Time
    Set a minimum travel time to allow for access to parking, etc.

Shift Configuration

• New Shift Notifications
  • Send new shift notification emails
    This option will automatically email your staff with their shifts. All changes before this notification will not be emailed to them but will be sent after this email.
• Shift Confirmation or Acknowledgement
  
  • Require shifts to be accepted or acknowledged?
    This option requires staff members to actively confirm each shift when it is assigned to them and again if its times are changed.
  • Rejected shifts status
    Choose what happens if the staff member rejects a shift that requires confirmation.
• Staff Availability
  • Weekly Preferences
    This sets how many different weeks of preferences staff are stored.
  • Level of Detail
    Decide how precisely you want staff to set their availability between days, hours and minutes.
  • Maximum Reserved Hours
    Choose how many hours each staff can ask not to work each week.
  • Minimum Gap
    Enforce a gap between reserved hours to prevent abuse of the reserved hours limit by adding one block of reserved time every few hours.
  • Show Week Numbers
    You can include the week 'number' if you have multiple weeks. This is helpful if it matches other schedules that use weeks or you simply want to label the weeks. The numbers will repeat once you reach the last week.
  • Staff Choice of Hours
    Allow staff to choose their weekly work hours between their contract's expected hours and general limit.
  • Remember Preferences
    Enable the system to remember the hours staff asked not to work last time so they only need to make changes if their availability changes.
  • Lock Weekly Preferences
    This prevents staff based at this venue from editing their weekly preferences. 
  • Reservable Hours
    Hours that staff can't reserve themselves, for example, busy hours of service for your company.
• Covershift / Extra Shift Restrictions
  • Allow Shifts to be Relinquished
    Relinquishing shifts is the process of simply giving up a shift and setting it to be unassigned/extra shift. This means the staff member has no further responsibility for the shift. It should be used carefully! You can see how close to the shift start time a staff member can simply give up the shift. Under this time setting, they will need to request cover instead.
    
    
  • Allow staff to post shifts for cover
    Allows staff to post their shifts for other qualified staff to cover.
  • Cover Request Approval
    This allows you to choose which cover requests you need to approve. We highly recommend you approve as few as possible to avoid delays, excessive management and other issues. Feel free to discuss this with our support team for more details.
  • Allow staff to send cover requests to specific colleagues
    Allows staff to send cover requests to specific staff. The recipient can either accept or reject the request.
  • Allow staff to exchange shifts
    Allows staff to send cover requests to specific staff and choose a shift they want from the recipient. The recipient can accept/reject the request or offer a different shift in return.
  • Number of cover/extra shifts which can be taken in advance
    This slows down how quickly staff can take shifts; it forces them to work some shifts before they can take more.
  • Remember Offered Shifts
    Remember if a staff member offered to work a shift in case you need to find another staff member.
    
    
• Operational Day/Timeline settings
  
  • Day Start Time
    This is what time your timeline will start on a given day. It’s useful for departments that open late as you can see your full set of shifts in one view. This setting also dictates what “day” a shift is displayed on. For example, if a shift works midnight to 4 am, you will probably consider it part of the previous day's rota. Using this setting, it will be included with all shifts from the previous day for reporting and editing. Ideally set this time to be before your first shift of the day. There are no limits to shifts, and they can be worked beyond this time, but viewing them on a timeline might be harder.
  • Timeline Rounding
    When using the shift timeline page, selecting the exact minutes you want to use for this can be difficult. This setting will automatically round shift times so that you prevent shifts starting at 10:01 am, for example.
• Shift Week Settings
  Empty Day Message - Set a message to display if a staff member has no shifts.
• Handover Period
  This option allows your staff to be assigned or pick up shifts that overlap slightly. It’s designed to allow a staff member who normally hands over to another staff member during an overlap actually to work both shifts. The system will automatically adjust the second shift so that its start time matches the finish time of the previous shift. Only shifts taking place at the same venue are eligible for the handover period.
• Staff Splitting Shifts
  This option allows your staff to split their shifts into two parts to put one of the halves up for cover. You can set the rules around this by stating how long a shift must be to allow it to be split, the minimum length of each resulting shift, and the time period they can choose between the two halves. For example, I can set it to allow shifts of 6 hours or more to be split. Each half must be 2 hours or more, and the staff member can choose which 30 minutes after 2 hours the shift can be split. This will allow the shift to be split at 2 hours, 2 hours 30mins, 3 hours, 3 30mins or 4 hours. This will always leave the second part of the shift at least 2 hours.
• Shift Schedule Generation Rules for Splitting Shifts
  These settings are used with the Rota Management tool, and the rules on how the Split option will work are set. When enabled, the split option will take the full requirement and break it down into the max shift length set. If any resulting shift will be less than the minimum length then the max length will not apply. If no staff is available to fill the max length of shift, then the shift length will be reduced by the Segment length, and the staff available will be checked again. If staff are available for the shorter shift, they will be assigned, and the remainder time will be assigned out.
  
  If there is still no staff available, the system will reduce the shift length by the segment amount until the shift is filled or the minimum length of the shift is reached. If no staff are available, then unassigned/extra shifts will be created.
  
  
  • Minimum Shift Length
    The minimum length of each half of a shift that will be created.
    
  • Shift Segments
    The chunks of time added/removed from the minimum shift as the shift is being split between staff members. Note: the smaller the segments, the longer a rota will take to generate.
    
  • Maximum Length of Shifts
    Must be multiples of shift Segments.
    
  • Always Fill Requirements?
    This option allows the system to only fill part of the requirement and disregard part of the shift if no one can be found to work.
    
    
• Shift Event Titles
  This option allows shift titles or notes to be added to a certain day within the site. All shifts for that 24-hour period at this venue will contain this title for staff and managers.
  
  
  • Enable Events
    Allow a title to be given to each 24-hour period, otherwise known as an 'event' in the system.
    
  • Linking Shifts to Events
    When enabled, shifts will automatically be linked to whatever event is ongoing based on the shift start time.
  • Individual Events?
    This option allows you to set an event title for a set of shifts based on times during the venue. E.g., “The event today is X” or “The event from 6 pm is X,” or you can manually add the event title to each staff member’s shift. This allows you to provide bespoke information to the staff member.
  • Default Event
    You can also set a default title to be shown if there is no title set. This might be “(normal service)” or “(event TBC)”. You can also leave this blank.
    
    
• Event Briefing notes
  Enabling Briefing Notes allows you to add notes per day or event (if in use). It will be displayed to the staff on their shift details page.
  

Clock In Configuration

• Clock in Screens?
  
  • Clock in Screens
    This option is used to enable clock-in screens. Once enabled, you will see a list of other settings. Alternatively, suppose you do not enable clock-in screens. In that case, you can decide here whether to add time entries automatically or to use clock-in screens but automatically add time entries if a staff member does not clock in.
  • Pre-approve Repeating Shifts
    This option will only appear if you choose not to enable clock-in screens, and it requires you to choose if you want to pre-approve regular repeating shifts so they do not need to be approved once automatically added.
    
    
• Check-In
  
  • Check-in
    This allows you to require a staff member to complete a basic form when they clock in on a screen.
  • Alarm Message
    In the text box, write a message that will appear to a staff member if they trigger an alarm when clocking in.
  • Prevent Clock-In
    Choose whether or not to allow a staff member to be able to clock in if an alarm is triggered. For example if a staff member has signalled they are unwell and triggered an alert because of this, you need to decide whether to automatically prevent them from being able to clock in.
  • Alarm Attendance Reason
    If an alarm is triggered and a staff member is blocked from clocking in, choose the reason for the non-attendance on a scheduled shift here.
  • Check-In on Clock-Out
    This allows you to require a staff member to complete a basic form when they clock out. This will be one of your previously made check-in forms and can vary from performance and welfare check-ins. 
• Clock in Settings
  These settings allow you to automatically adjust the clock-in start and end times to match the planned shift times. Shift start simply sets clock in times to be the planned shift times even if staff clock in earlier. When in use, this will display the staff member under the Clocked In list but will show their actual start time in the green box under their name. Shift end settings mean that if someone clocks out just a few minutes after their shift ends, the end time will return to the planned times.
  Note that employment law is strict about what activities must be paid for, so speak to your HR and finance managers before adjusting this setting.
  
  • Allow Clock-In
    Choose how early a staff member is able to clock in. For example, do you want them to be able to clock in fifteen minutes early for a shift?
  • Paid Shift Start (Clock in Early)
    These settings allow staff to be able to clock in early and get paid for the additional time or not, depending on what setting you choose.
  • Paid Shift Start (Clock in Late)
    This setting will decide if a staff member is late whether they will get paid for the minutes, you were late by. You can either choose to pay according to shift times or from the time of clocking in.
  • Paid Shift End(Finishing Early)
    These settings decide if you will only pay staff members up until the moment they clock out, or if they finish early, if you will pay them for the full shift time.
  • Paid Shift End (Finishing Late)
    These settings will decide if staff will get paid for the time after their shift ends if they have not yet clocked out. You can either choose to pay according to shift times or from the time of clocking out.
  • Overtime
    Decide how much additional time a shift is able to continue past the shift end time before it is classified as overtime and will require additional approval. 
  • Clocking back in for a Shift
    Allow someone to clock back in for a shift they have clocked out of already, and decide on how close to the end of a shift they can do this. For example, they might only be able to do this if a shift has more than five minutes left.
    
  • Clocking Back in
    On a similar note, we have the option to allow someone to clock back in if they clocked out recently. You can decide how many minutes since their clock out is appropriate for the staff member to be able to clock back in. 
• Break Settings
  These settings allow you to configure the rules you want to make for breaks when using clock-in screens.
  
  • Allow Split Breaks
    This option allows you to choose whether to allow staff who return from their breaks early to take their remaining break time later. This means that staff can take their break in two periods and be useful for longer break periods and shifts.
  • Paid Break Grace
    You can also set a certain amount of minutes past the set break time for which you allow staff to be paid before changing the additional time to unpaid.
    
    
• Back-to-back shifts
  
  • Automatically clock out/in on back-to-back shifts.
    This option, if enabled, will automatically clock a staff member out and then back in if they are working shifts one after the other, OR staff can physically use the clock-in screens themselves. However, this will only work if they are already clocked in. 

• Automatic Reasons/Excuses
  
  • Lateness
    This is the grace period after the shift start time so that the staff member can still clock in and not be late. Once this has passed, their button in the Awaiting column will be flagged as late, and they will be reminded that they are late when they clock in. The shift will also automatically be flagged as Late for reporting. You can see which Reason/Excuse is used for this lateness flag under Global Settings.
• Clock in Screen Changes
  
  • Select venues that staff are allowed to move to freely via clock-in screens. These might be venues accessible to all staff.

Budgets

• Budget Period
  This option decides what period of time to use for budget estimates.
• Shift Pay Elements
  This dictates where the staff costs should be calculated from; either actual staff rates or the set budgeting cost defined in the skills/roles.
• Target Origin
  Where should the budget target come from:
  • Fixed costs - You set a staff cost you wish to hit in £.
  • Sales Percentage - You provide a sales estimate, and the staff cost is a percentage of the expected sales.
• Budget Percentage
  Only used with the Sales Percentage Target, this is the percentage of the sales that should be spent on staff costs. 
• Acceptable Deviation
  Percentage up or down from the acceptable target and considered “on budget”. When set to 5%, any value between 95% of the budget and 105% will be marked as on budget.
• Actual Figure Display
  Only used with the Sales Percentage Target, this decides if the budget should show a percentage of the actual staff cost percentage. For example, if my staff costs are exactly 15% of the sales target, this will either show 100% (the exact target) or 15% (the actual staff cost percentage).

Skills/Roles

This tab allows you to set which skills/roles you want to use within this venue. This lets you keep the available skills/roles more relevant to your venue.

Actions/Tasks

This tab allows you to set which shift actions you want to use within this venue. This simply allows you to keep the list of available actions more relevant to your venue.

• Require a task
  You are able to decide whether a task is required to be finished whilst on shift or is just optional.
• Display tasks to staff
  You can set the visibility settings of tasks here. You can choose to hide all actions/tasks from your staff when they access their shifts via the system. This means they will not see the task for their shift. This will also affect all calendar feeds and emails about these shifts.
• Show all tasks
  This option allows you to filter by group who can and cannot see certain tasks. For example, perhaps only supervisors are able to see shift tasks rather than all staff.

Employment Eligibility

This field allows you to override the default message set under Global Settings. This means you can bespoke where the staff members based at this venue should take their documents to be checked.

Artifax Integration

This tab allows you to set up the Artifax integration and the specific settings. For more details, visit our Artifax Integration page.

Momentus Integration

This tab allows you to set up the Momentus integration and the specific settings. For more details, visit our Momentus Integration page.

YesPlan Integration

This tab allows you to set up the YesPlan integration and the specific settings. For more details, visit our YesPlan Integration page.