Team Scheduling and Black Out Days

[BofBArtStudio]

Curious, with planning for the holiday season starting again, there are so many big days throughout the coming months which require "all hands on deck".

What are ways that you communicate to your team and restrict time-off requests for certain days throughout the season?  How do you manage the need for staff to be present for the big days and the staff's desire for time off.  Do you have a system that works well?  We would love to hear these ideas of what has worked for you.

Days such as Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, the week/weeks leading up to Halloween, and Thanksgiving and Christmas, etc.  

[Twiggy]

It’s small business Saturday nearly every week in the UK. Amex small business day was huge here ( pre square ) but they don’t (Amex) include square users here. 

[BofBArtStudio]

Are there other times of the year that you have blackout days for the team?

What systems do you have in place to prevent time off requests during those days?

[Maegan]

We try to be clear about the expectations at hiring, during training, and regularly review it. Before the holidays (ie: mid October) we make a sign up sheet for all prime time holiday request off days. Like day before Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Biz Sat and Christmas Eve/Boxing Day, NYE/NYD, etc. and any other tricky ones. We usually put Halloween on there too.

All employees have to put their names down for AT LEAST FOUR (possibly 5 actually..) of those days as days they are able to work. 

They can put more if they are willing/able to. Each day has a minimum number of staff/shifts required for them (ie: we close early on Xmas Eve so we need 3, but need at least 6 for Black Friday), so we need AT LEAST that number of names under the day. Otherwise we will assign shifts. But if a staff member isn't available for the 4/5 shift minimum... then they likely don't have the availability required to be employed by us. 

They can note which ones they are most willing/able to work and which they would prefer to not, but CAN. Or note if they don't care. And if we have enough people who can work (some want the money!) we'll try and give people more off so they might not *have* to work four. 

But it at least communicates what is expected, they can visually see what the staffing may look like, and keeps it mostly fair. And we all are on the same page and prepared-- and possibly early enough that we can adjust by hiring more if we need to.

[Donnie-M]

@BofBArtStudio With square, one thing you can do is just go ahead and schedule those days and publish it.  Once it is published, no requests can come in.  I religiously require all time off to be requested through the app, no matter how minor.  It was the only way to get people to be responsible for letting everyone know. And I have much better records of requests.  I love using the schedule as it blocks those last minute, "Oh, I forgot I got an MD appointment on Tuesday" or "Hey, I told you I needed off Tuesday."  or the worst, the ninja write in on the calendar the day before like it had been there the whole time.

[BofBArtStudio]

@Donnie-M 

Thanks for responding! Yes we use square scheduling and our team uses the time off requests feature and that works really well. However we schedule 2 weeks out and our team plans vacations months out. So I was just wondering what everybody uses to have blackout days. Right now I'm approving (or declining) Time off requests for November December and in January for my team. 

So it's very difficult to ensure that I have a solid system for communicating blackout days especially since Square doesn't have a way to block out certain days for time off requests. 

So that's the kind of thing I'm looking for is those who already use Square Team and Square payroll and Square Scheduling,

What awesome systems have other sellers found to work really well to manage blackout days when you need all hands on deck. 

Thank you 🦋

[manchestercraft]

a blackout feature would be really helpful.