How to create shifts and assign them to employees?

Scheduling shifts in an organization can be beneficial for its employees as it provides a predictable work schedule and helps them in maintaining a work-life balance. This also allows the organization to maintain productivity and flexibility both by having a workforce around the clock without having the employees work overtime.

As an Admin, Keka allows you to schedule and assign multiple types of shifts for the employees in your organization. In this article we are going to show you:

• How to create shifts from scratch
• How to create shifts using available templates
• How to configure shift auto assigner
• How to manage and edit existing shifts
• How to assign shifts 
  • For multiple employees
  • Bulk (For Rotational Shifts)

Let’s jump in and see how you can do all this. 

On the left pane, find Time Attend (1) and then go to Shifts/Weekly Offs & Holidays (2). Now navigate to the Shifts & Weekly offs (3) tab and you’ll see the option to +Add Shifts (4).

Once you click +Add Shifts, you will see options to ‘Select from a template’, ‘Create from scratch’, and ‘Configure Shift Auto Assignment’. 

Creating a shift from scratch

Let’s see how you can create a shift schedule from scratch. 

A new Add Shift window will appear where you can add Shift Name, Shift Code, and a Description for your new shift schedule. You can also decide this shift's timing for each day of the week. 

While configuring Shift Timings and Break Duration, you can enable or disable the 'Different for different days of the week' option to manually input the timings for each day of the week.
Once you have decided on all the shift parameters, click Save to add this new type of shift to the portal. 

Creating a shift using templates

As another option, you can also choose Select from a template and you will have access to several standard shift schedules with the shift and break timings already configured.

Choose the template that best matches your requirement and click Select this template.

Now you have to provide a Shift Policy Name, a Shift Code, and a Description (Optional) and then click on Add.

You can customize the shift as per your requirement later by editing the Shift Versions.

Configuring shift auto assignments

The Configure shift auto assignment feature allows you to configure settings to automatically assign shifts to employees based on their first punch-in of the day. 

Before you enable the first punch auto-assigner, please take note of the following important warnings:

• The system assumes that the first punch is the employee's clock-in time, and the second punch is the clock-out time.
• If an employee has multiple shifts in a day, the system will not allow them to clock in for the next shift if they have clocked out early from the previous one.
• If an employee misses their clock-in, there can be no regularisation done, which can create issues during recalculations.
• The auto-shift assignment feature does not work with the "On Duty" and "Work From Home" capture schemes.

If you are good with all these options, check the box against 'I understand and wish to proceed' and then click Proceed.

Now you have to give the Shift Name,  Shift Code, and Description (Optional). 

Under Auto Shift Assignment Rules, select the time range for the first clock-in (1). This will be the basis for the shift assignment. Once you have selected the time range, enter the corresponding shift timing and break duration (2) that you want to assign to your employees during that period.

To ensure that employees don't work beyond a certain duration, you can set a Maximum Slot Duration (3) after which the system will automatically clock them out.

If you have employees with different clock-in times, you can add another shift by clicking + Add Row (4) and entering the relevant details for the new time range.

You can continue adding rows until the total of all the 'first clock-in' time ranges adds up to 24 hours.

Lastly, you can configure a default shift which will be assigned to employees for the days when there's no clock-in to ensure they don't receive LOPs on their weekly offs and holidays. It will also be used to mark any missed punch-ins if an employee fails to clock in for the day.

Click on Save once everything is configured.

If the cumulative of all the 'first clock-in' time ranges is not adding up to 24 hours, you'll get a warning message stating If the clock-in duration is less than 24 hours, it creates a gap in the shift cycle. As a result, any employee who clocks in during the gap will be assigned to the last shift. To avoid this, we recommend creating shifts for the remaining duration to ensure the accountability of employees across all shifts.

If you don't require to do so, click on Proceed to save on auto-assignment.

This shift will have an 'Auto Assigner' label to differentiate it from the other type of shifts

There can only be one 'Auto Assigner' shift type.

Tracking and Managing Shifts

If you want to view/update/delete any of the shifts (created from scratch or from a template) find the Shift (1) using the list and then go to Track Shift Versions (2). Here, you will find the options to view, update, and delete (3) the shift.

A shift version cannot be deleted if it was assigned to employees on a past date.

Shift & Weekly Off Assignment

To do so on the Keka portal, first, click on the Time Attend (1) located on the left panel. Then, navigate to the Shift/Weekly Offs & Holidays (2) section, where you can locate the Assignments (3) tab.

In the Shift & Weekly Off Assignments section, you can assign various policies to an individual employee, or multiple employees or import the assignment in bulk using Excel.

To assign shift and weekly off policies to an individual or multiple employees

To assign or update the shift or weekly off policy on any employee, simply find their name in the list, and under the Actions column, you will find the Update Shift and Update Weekly Off icons.

Or, if you wish to assign/update the shift or weekly off policy for multiple, then just select the employees you wish to assign the new shift to and click on the Update Shift or Update Weekly Off button. 

Either way, A pop-up window will appear, where you will need to specify the effective date range and choose the type of shift/weekly off you wish to assign. You can also choose to make this assignment permanent by selecting the "This shift doesn't have an end date yet" option. Finally, click on Update Shift/Weekly Off to complete the process.

Attendance adjustments (if any) done for the selected duration of the new shift/weekly off policy will be deleted.

To assign shift and weekly off policies in bulk

Alternatively, you can use the Import feature to assign different shifts and weekly offs for employees for a whole month. This is especially useful when employees are to be assigned to rotational shifts.

To do so, again navigate to Time Attend (1) >> Shift/Weekly Offs & Holidays (2) >>  Assignments (3)

And under Shift & Weekly Off Assignments only, click on Import Shifts & Weekly Offs (4).

This will open up a new window, from where you can download the Excel template. This will contain the employees' information along with their shift assignments for the next month.

In the downloaded sheet, carefully assign shift or weekly off for the employees for each day. You have to use the shift codes from the drop down in each cell to do so.

After making all the assignments on the sheet, save it, go back to the portal, and use the Upload Excel File button to import the new assignments.

To learn more about importing data on Keka using Excel, click here.

And that's how easy it is to schedule shifts on Keka. If you found this article helpful, please leave a like below.