Actabl's new ShiftSwap feature for Hotel Effectiveness is designed to improve the ongoing challenge of shift coverage. ShiftSwap lets hotel team members view each other’s published schedules and offer to swap shifts as needed.
Among ShiftSwap's benefits for hotel scheduling managers and hotel team members are:
- Mobile capabilities.
- Automatic updates to employee schedules and the hotel master schedule in Hotel Effectiveness.
- Option to require manager approval before a swap or offer of a shift can be finalized.
- Insights to potential changes to employee total hours for the week, including overtime risk.
- Digital log of any requested swap or offer, along with the outcome.
ShiftSwap was developed in response to the coverage crisis of increased labor demand, limited labor pools and fluctuating staff availability, making it nearly impossible for managers to maintain proper staffing levels. This feature is part of Hotel Effectiveness' larger suite of labor management software solutions designed to help hotels optimize costs, leverage contract labor, streamline operations, and improve guest satisfaction.
"ShiftSwap solves fluctuation issues between the availability of hotel team members. It gives autonomy to the associates to manage their schedules and helps take the pressure off their managers,” Edie Lowe, VP of strategic accounts at Actabl, said in a statement. “With our first outreaches of this campaign, we've seen the food and beverage staff benefiting the most, particularly where hotels have trouble staffing for food and beverage service for onsite restaurants.”
With the introduction of ShiftSwap, employees can view their shifts and the entire team's schedule. Based on hotel settings, employees can filter between all departments and positions, just their department or their position(s). Managers save time by having a system in place that is programmed to understand scheduling, wage data and overall strategy.
“Since beginning our partnering with Actabl, we have proudly used Hotel Effectiveness’ labor management products to tackle today’s challenging labor conditions,” said Adam Dwelley, food and beverage manager at The Ben West Palm. “The latest feature, ShiftSwap, goes above the other scheduling options out there. Built into an easy-to-use app, it negates the 'mad dash' to pick up shifts that may cause shift swap deals to fall through. All in all it’s a great feature that contributes to the success of our managers, associates and hotel.”