4 ms·

Show HN: Staffjoy – Automated Workforce Scheduling

48 points by philip1209 11y ago

philip1209 11y ago
Hi HN, Andrew (andhess) and I co-founded Staffjoy as a side project a year ago after doing college research scheduling. Today we are launching from YCombinator Fellowship! We saw a lot of tools on the market that helped managers to schedule their hourly workers, but we wanted to build a tool that used technology to do more than just digitize old workflows. Our whole goal is automating the workforce, and using math to create optimal shift schedules is our first step. Andrew and I will be hanging around here for the day - if you have any question about Staffjoy or YC Fellowship we’re happy to answer them!
- jamasenr 11y ago
  I tried out your demo and while the design is very stunning, I am a little confused about what I'm supposed to do. Is this meant for big company workforces (500+ employees), restaurants, any company? Would love some more insight as to who this is for.
  - philip1209 11y ago
    Hey Jamasen, We have primarily been focused on startups. This means that we have had people sign up with 20 workers, then end up with >200 after a few months. We're finding that it takes at 30 workers to recognize the automation benefits and cost savings. Workers also need to be treated equivalently in terms of skill. So, a small restaurant workforce where people change roles every day may not be the best fit. We think that call centers, fulfillment companies, and retail stores are good early fits. This is because they need different people at different times, and the number of people they need changes throughout the day.
- koesterd 11y ago
  I'm located in Germany and it takes around 50 seconds for most of the text to render on your homepage for me: https://i.imgur.com/N33T8Ci.png https://i.imgur.com/N33T8Ci.png
  - andhess 11y ago
    Thanks for the heads up! Looks like our cover photo assets need to be shrinked.
- brianbreslin 11y ago
  Can you add pricing information anywhere on the site?
  - philip1209 11y ago
    Hey Brian, We're working on finalizing pricing and packaging right now. If you have specific questions, I can send over a quote for your business -> team@staffjoy.com
tonomics 11y ago
Don't you guys think it could undermine contractors lives and even performance? Sure, it's fair to pay for the hours you've worked, but tracking every minute of work could be overwhelming. I'm pretty sure that's something many managers would do.
- JonnieCache 11y ago
  >Don't you guys think it could undermine contractors lives and even performance? A lot of people think that, yes. I've seen it happen to some of my friends. They can't plan their lives more than a week ahead. It's emotionally draining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-hour_contract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-hour_contract To be fair, this app seems to allow the employees to specify their preferred working hours too. I wonder how it's generally used in practice.
  - philip1209 11y ago
    We're finding that, due to better control of the workforce and enforcement of rules, managers have been able to provide more predictability in terms of hours to workers. This is because we make it easier to guarantee a certain number of hours each week.
    - JonnieCache 11y ago
      The problem is not knowing when those hours are going to fall, so you cant arrange to do social things more than a week ahead because you don't know if you're going to be working. An option to enforce scheduling to be fixed at least n days in advance would protect the employees, but that goes against the entire point of the app. Reading again, it looks like your app prioritizes the employees' preferences over the employers desires when resolving the schedule; that makes sense. You could set yourself to "not working wednesdays" and then safely organize social stuff on wednesdays. The problem starts when you dont have that right, as many workers in the UK now don't.
      - philip1209 11y ago
tcdent 11y ago
I've never really been a part-time employee, but I know a lot of people who have, and fluctuating schedules are a major pain point. Human decision-making really affects the process; people have to fit in somewhere and since one schedule change has a ripple effect, everyone is affected. The human in-charge goes for the easiest result, since this is something they have to do frequently, and everyone ends up unhappy because their schedule is unpredictable.
- philip1209 11y ago
  We're trying to make Staffjoy as friendly to workers as possible. For many businesses, when they need workers can vary from week to week. Things like holidays, seasonal weather, etc can make repeating the same weekly schedule a hassle. We accommodate workers by only scheduling them when they are available to work, making it easy to claim available shifts, and algorithmically-enforcing things like enough rest time and consecutive days off.
Splendor 11y ago
I'd like to see pricing information before I look at anything else.
- philip1209 11y ago
  We're still figuring out pricing. Different industries have different needs. For example, 24/7 workforce has different algorithmic demands than a 9-5 business. Contractor-based businesses where workers claim shifts rather than have them assigned are easier for us to accommodate too. Shoot us an email and I'm happy to provide a quote for your particular case!
tkiley 11y ago
Hey philip - nice work! Have you looked at going into the healthcare industry in particular? I've been working in the patient scheduling space for almost ten years, and people are constantly complaining about the sorry state of staff scheduling in every part of a hospital. Healthcare tends to be an infuriatingly unique industry, which means lots of client hand-holding and industry-specific product concessions, but the flip side is that healthcare is a great sandbox to play in - large enough to build a decent business, but specialized enough that you can be a market leader with a relatively small number of customers. Hit me up if this sets off your spider sense, I'd love to talk offline.
- philip1209 11y ago
  Hey Tyler, Medical scheduling is a fascinating place with unique constraints. AnalyticsMD from last winter's Y Combinator class did an amazing job of building a forecasting system for emergency rooms. We are interested in beginning Staffjoy deployments at outpatient medical facilities immediately. Operating in an actual hospital likely has unique constraints that we do not support right now. Down the line though, the medical industry seems like an excellent fit for our product vision!
bsbechtel 11y ago
I noticed there is API documentation, but I only glanced briefly at it. We've developed our own software for our business, and had >200 people working with us this past summer. I've been wanting to develop an automated scheduling solution like this for our managers for a while now, but it hasn't been the top thing to do on the priority list. My question is, does the API allow me to automate scheduling within my own application? We schedule jobs each day, instead of scheduling shifts or hourly based work. Also, I'm curious about pricing. Thanks.
- philip1209 11y ago
  Hello, We have not published much documentation about our API, but all of our applications run on it. We'll be expanding the documentation soon. Shoot us an email and we can discuss an integration and pricing! team@staffjoy.com
sharemywin 11y ago
if your plan is the mom and pop market. You could offer a free tier and you could monetize it by offering contracted workers for like an extra couple bucks per hour or something. when they don't have enough staff.
- philip1209 11y ago
  I agree. The only issue is that assigning people to shifts is legitimately a tough problem to solve, and I'm worried about high support load without much upside potential from small businesses. Medium and large-sized businesses known that scheduling is hard and they are willing to pay for a good solution.
dang 11y ago
Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10433010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10433010.
alext0 11y ago
I've used OptaPlanner recently for this kind of scheduling where planning affects both people and things. You don't mention whether your approach is rule-based or constraint-based. I'd certainly recommend the latter as it allows a bunch of factors to be considered which are really preferences rather than absolute requirements. It seems that the preferences quoted above (wanting two consecutive days off, minimum rest time etc) are examples of a potentially broad range of factors which typically differ across organisations, or even individuals. They may also change over time or be subject to external events such as a major emergency or building power outage. Resource planning is a broad and long-established field going back to the dawn of IT. My take is that, while another good planning tool is welcome, the main obstacle is in businesses understanding the problem and what IT can do to help rather than a lack of solutions.
- philip1209 11y ago
  Hey Alex. We treat most of these as hard constraints in our model. Some, such as consecutive days off, we will relax to a soft constraint if it breaks feasibility. Managers have the ability to modify our shifts as they see fit, e.g. to assign shifts that create overtime. Our approach to educating users is to treat our software as "autopilot" - they don't have to understand the complexities of resource planning, timing, etc. For optaplanner specifically - I am not too familiar, but I believe that the scheduling that they do is block-based, whereas ours dynamically adjust shift lengths. This lets us change the coverage hour-by-hour.
richardbrevig 11y ago
Bravo on your homepage language. A couple years back I looked into creating 'open shift management' scheduling software for caterers. It appears that you've created something similar. Though most OSMs send out a notice of available shifts. It appears you have the employee enter their availability. Either way, your approach is fresh.

48 points by philip1209 11y ago

Hi HN, Andrew (andhess) and I co-founded Staffjoy as a side project a year ago after doing college research scheduling. Today we are launching from YCombinator Fellowship! We saw a lot of tools on the market that helped managers to schedule their hourly workers, but we wanted to build a tool that used technology to do more than just digitize old workflows. Our whole goal is automating the workforce, and using math to create optimal shift schedules is our first step. Andrew and I will be hanging around here for the day - if you have any question about Staffjoy or YC Fellowship we’re happy to answer them!

jamasenr 11y ago
I tried out your demo and while the design is very stunning, I am a little confused about what I'm supposed to do. Is this meant for big company workforces (500+ employees), restaurants, any company? Would love some more insight as to who this is for.
- philip1209 11y ago
  Hey Jamasen, We have primarily been focused on startups. This means that we have had people sign up with 20 workers, then end up with >200 after a few months. We're finding that it takes at 30 workers to recognize the automation benefits and cost savings. Workers also need to be treated equivalently in terms of skill. So, a small restaurant workforce where people change roles every day may not be the best fit. We think that call centers, fulfillment companies, and retail stores are good early fits. This is because they need different people at different times, and the number of people they need changes throughout the day.
koesterd 11y ago
I'm located in Germany and it takes around 50 seconds for most of the text to render on your homepage for me: https://i.imgur.com/N33T8Ci.png https://i.imgur.com/N33T8Ci.png
- andhess 11y ago
  Thanks for the heads up! Looks like our cover photo assets need to be shrinked.
brianbreslin 11y ago
Can you add pricing information anywhere on the site?
- philip1209 11y ago
  Hey Brian, We're working on finalizing pricing and packaging right now. If you have specific questions, I can send over a quote for your business -> team@staffjoy.com

tonomics 11y ago

Don't you guys think it could undermine contractors lives and even performance? Sure, it's fair to pay for the hours you've worked, but tracking every minute of work could be overwhelming. I'm pretty sure that's something many managers would do.

JonnieCache 11y ago
>Don't you guys think it could undermine contractors lives and even performance? A lot of people think that, yes. I've seen it happen to some of my friends. They can't plan their lives more than a week ahead. It's emotionally draining. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-hour_contract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-hour_contract To be fair, this app seems to allow the employees to specify their preferred working hours too. I wonder how it's generally used in practice.
- philip1209 11y ago
  We're finding that, due to better control of the workforce and enforcement of rules, managers have been able to provide more predictability in terms of hours to workers. This is because we make it easier to guarantee a certain number of hours each week.
  - JonnieCache 11y ago
    The problem is not knowing when those hours are going to fall, so you cant arrange to do social things more than a week ahead because you don't know if you're going to be working. An option to enforce scheduling to be fixed at least n days in advance would protect the employees, but that goes against the entire point of the app. Reading again, it looks like your app prioritizes the employees' preferences over the employers desires when resolving the schedule; that makes sense. You could set yourself to "not working wednesdays" and then safely organize social stuff on wednesdays. The problem starts when you dont have that right, as many workers in the UK now don't.
    - philip1209 11y ago

tcdent 11y ago

I've never really been a part-time employee, but I know a lot of people who have, and fluctuating schedules are a major pain point. Human decision-making really affects the process; people have to fit in somewhere and since one schedule change has a ripple effect, everyone is affected. The human in-charge goes for the easiest result, since this is something they have to do frequently, and everyone ends up unhappy because their schedule is unpredictable.

philip1209 11y ago
We're trying to make Staffjoy as friendly to workers as possible. For many businesses, when they need workers can vary from week to week. Things like holidays, seasonal weather, etc can make repeating the same weekly schedule a hassle. We accommodate workers by only scheduling them when they are available to work, making it easy to claim available shifts, and algorithmically-enforcing things like enough rest time and consecutive days off.

Splendor 11y ago

I'd like to see pricing information before I look at anything else.

philip1209 11y ago
We're still figuring out pricing. Different industries have different needs. For example, 24/7 workforce has different algorithmic demands than a 9-5 business. Contractor-based businesses where workers claim shifts rather than have them assigned are easier for us to accommodate too. Shoot us an email and I'm happy to provide a quote for your particular case!

tkiley 11y ago

Hey philip - nice work! Have you looked at going into the healthcare industry in particular? I've been working in the patient scheduling space for almost ten years, and people are constantly complaining about the sorry state of staff scheduling in every part of a hospital. Healthcare tends to be an infuriatingly unique industry, which means lots of client hand-holding and industry-specific product concessions, but the flip side is that healthcare is a great sandbox to play in - large enough to build a decent business, but specialized enough that you can be a market leader with a relatively small number of customers. Hit me up if this sets off your spider sense, I'd love to talk offline.

philip1209 11y ago
Hey Tyler, Medical scheduling is a fascinating place with unique constraints. AnalyticsMD from last winter's Y Combinator class did an amazing job of building a forecasting system for emergency rooms. We are interested in beginning Staffjoy deployments at outpatient medical facilities immediately. Operating in an actual hospital likely has unique constraints that we do not support right now. Down the line though, the medical industry seems like an excellent fit for our product vision!

bsbechtel 11y ago

I noticed there is API documentation, but I only glanced briefly at it. We've developed our own software for our business, and had >200 people working with us this past summer. I've been wanting to develop an automated scheduling solution like this for our managers for a while now, but it hasn't been the top thing to do on the priority list. My question is, does the API allow me to automate scheduling within my own application? We schedule jobs each day, instead of scheduling shifts or hourly based work. Also, I'm curious about pricing. Thanks.

philip1209 11y ago
Hello, We have not published much documentation about our API, but all of our applications run on it. We'll be expanding the documentation soon. Shoot us an email and we can discuss an integration and pricing! team@staffjoy.com

sharemywin 11y ago

if your plan is the mom and pop market. You could offer a free tier and you could monetize it by offering contracted workers for like an extra couple bucks per hour or something. when they don't have enough staff.

philip1209 11y ago
I agree. The only issue is that assigning people to shifts is legitimately a tough problem to solve, and I'm worried about high support load without much upside potential from small businesses. Medium and large-sized businesses known that scheduling is hard and they are willing to pay for a good solution.

dang 11y ago

Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10433010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10433010.

alext0 11y ago

I've used OptaPlanner recently for this kind of scheduling where planning affects both people and things. You don't mention whether your approach is rule-based or constraint-based. I'd certainly recommend the latter as it allows a bunch of factors to be considered which are really preferences rather than absolute requirements. It seems that the preferences quoted above (wanting two consecutive days off, minimum rest time etc) are examples of a potentially broad range of factors which typically differ across organisations, or even individuals. They may also change over time or be subject to external events such as a major emergency or building power outage. Resource planning is a broad and long-established field going back to the dawn of IT. My take is that, while another good planning tool is welcome, the main obstacle is in businesses understanding the problem and what IT can do to help rather than a lack of solutions.

philip1209 11y ago
Hey Alex. We treat most of these as hard constraints in our model. Some, such as consecutive days off, we will relax to a soft constraint if it breaks feasibility. Managers have the ability to modify our shifts as they see fit, e.g. to assign shifts that create overtime. Our approach to educating users is to treat our software as "autopilot" - they don't have to understand the complexities of resource planning, timing, etc. For optaplanner specifically - I am not too familiar, but I believe that the scheduling that they do is block-based, whereas ours dynamically adjust shift lengths. This lets us change the coverage hour-by-hour.

richardbrevig 11y ago

Bravo on your homepage language. A couple years back I looked into creating 'open shift management' scheduling software for caterers. It appears that you've created something similar. Though most OSMs send out a notice of available shifts. It appears you have the employee enter their availability. Either way, your approach is fresh.