Staff Skills/Roles

Staff Skills

Note: You can call these items skills or roles; contact our support team to change this.

Understanding Skills

Skills are the cornerstone of all shift and timesheet management within StaffSavvy. A skill is a group of interchangeable staff for a particular job or task. For example, you might have Cocktail Maker as a skill.

Everyone who is assigned to that skill is considered equal and interchangeable. If they are not, they need to be split into smaller skills, for example, Senior Bar Staff and Junior Bar Staff. You can have any number of skills; the key is that everyone assigned to that skill/role is interchangeable with everyone else.

Skills are used to easily categorise people into shifts (e.g., fill this shift with anyone with the skill of 'Senior Bar Staff') and swap shifts (e.g., only staff assigned to the same skill will be able to take the shift).

You can categorise skills as well, so you can quickly filter the long list down to the relevant ones to review. Click the ‘Set Category’ button to add a category as needed.

Changes to Skills

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

Pay for Skills

There are four options for paying staff for a shift: pay per hour, pay per item (e.g. per shift), pay on-call (fixed pay per instance plus an additional paid time if needed) and hourly with a fixed value (allows the hours to be reported but only a fixed pay item is paid).

Simply choose the option that matches the general payment process for that skill.

Note: Salaried staff should use a pay-per-hour rate set to 0. This allows the hours to be calculated and recorded without additional financial costs associated with the time entry.

Pay-per-hour payments mean the staff member will be paid an hourly rate for the exact time worked after breaks and adjustments.

Pay-per-item means that regardless of the scheduled shift length, the staff member will be paid one pay item for that “shift”. It’s important only to use this when absolutely necessary. Most combinations of payments can be archived with pay per time (including minimum payments, automatic double time, etc).

On-call shifts use a combination of both: there is a fixed pay item per shift, which is always paid, plus the option to add additional hours at an hourly rate. Once the additional hours have been added, they can be added when editing the time entry, and additional travel or active time can be paid on top of the fixed amount.

Hourly with fixed value is for special circumstances where staff need to be paid a fixed value for a shift, but you also need to report the actual number of hours worked as part of the shift.

Pay Element Rates and Skills

Each skill has a default pay element. This is the hourly rate the staff member will be paid when working a shift in this skill. This is edited under a staff member's profile. 

If the staff member should be paid a different pay rate, then you can override the default pay element when managing their skills. In the example below, Adam is paid a special rate whenever he works a cloakroom shift.

You can also configure automatic rate changes based on factors, including time worked for a company or age. You can see more in pay elements.

Adding display for hourly rates on profile pages.

You can now display hourly rates on a staff member’s profile under the training and skills tab (if enabled). You must have the ‘View Pay’ Permission enabled to view this. This should already be enabled, but to ensure this has been enabled, go to Manage Access Permissions and find under Clock in, Time Sheets, Pay & Expenses. This permission will be expanded to cover the protection of all pay displayed within the system; currently, it just covers the new features.

Clocking In Remotely

Cost Code Management

Skill Requirements

There is the option to stipulate requirements to work on a skill/role. The requirements mean staff must complete all requirements to be scheduled for shifts with that skill/role.

This can be altered via Staff > Staff Settings > Staff Skills > Edit > Requirements.

Be warned that changes to the requirements are applied instantly. This might prevent some staff from working until the requirements are met, even if they are already on the rota, so remember this when adding new requirements to established skills. It is advisable to complete the requirements before adding them to the skill/role.

You can set the mode to “Requested, not required.” This will warn staff to complete the items listed but still allow them to access shifts.

Requirement Options

Training Program Requirements

With this requirement, staff must have completed the required training program (and all the parts it contains).

The expiry settings on the training program will ensure staff keep their training requirements active to have access to the skill. Additionally, you can add a Certificate requirement here if a formal certification is required for that skill.

Document Requirements

Document requirements mean staff must have supplied documents uploaded to the site to be active in this skill.

You can create any number of document types and place requirements on the documents, such as requiring management verification.

You can also stipulate an expiry date for each document type. Therefore, managers must confirm the expiry date when the document is uploaded.

The site will automatically ask for a replacement document once the document expiry date approaches.

Exam Requirements

This allows you to specify exams that staff assigned to the skill must complete to work in the skill.

You can also specify an expiration period for which staff must retake the exam. This allows you to ensure staff repeatedly take this exam at regular intervals.

Staff Point of View

Staff will be informed via email if the requirements change in their skills/roles. A warning is also displayed on their dashboard and under their 'My Shifts' pages if the staff member’s requirements are missing or are due to expire.

Requirements Report

This report is available for each skill and displays all staff assigned to that skill. Next to each staff member is a current status for their access to that skill:

• Active (with any expiry dates): They can be assigned shifts for this skill. If there is an expiration date shown, then this is the limit to which they can receive shifts until new documents, training, or exams are uploaded or completed, which extends the expiration date.
• Inactive: Requirements not met. They cannot currently be assigned shifts for this skill as one or more of the required items have not been completed or have expired.

Across the rest of the page, all of the requirements and the status for each staff member are displayed. This allows you to see at a glance who has completed which items and which items expire on each date.

The options for each of the requirements per staff member are:

• Complete - The item has been completed and has no expiry date.
• Complete: expires X - The items have been completed and expires on the given date.
• Not provided or not yet verified -The item is outstanding; they might have provided the document but it’s not yet been checked or simply they haven’t completed the requirement at all.
• Not required, not complete - The requirement has not been completed but it’s marked as “Requested, not required”, so it does not block access to working the shifts.

Display Leadership Team for a shift

You can split the colleagues' section on the shift details page to show different skills as the leadership skill for that shift.

In addition, you can now display leadership staff from any of the venues within the same primary venue group. This allows staff assigned to a different venue to be still shown on the shift details page as either colleagues or as leadership for the shift.

Under Staff > Staff Settings > Staff Skills, edit the skill you wish to display. Under the General Settings tab, change the Colleagues section to change how and when those shifts are displayed.