4 ms·

Show HN: Staffjoy Boss – Automated Employee Scheduling

53 points by philip1209 11y ago

philip1209 11y ago
Hello - Andrew Hess and I are the founders of Staffjoy. We went through the first YC Fellowship class, where we launched automated contractor scheduling. Today we are excited to launch Staffjoy Boss, our automated application for employee scheduling. At the core, we have rewritten how scheduling works so that we schedule workers when they prefer to work. We have also added features like time off requests, clock-in/clock-out, and employment law compliance we make it easy to have Staffjoy run a business of hourly workers. On the technical side, we've rewritten our algorithms to search beyond optimal staffing levels for canonical optimal solutions that make employees happy. So, if one person prefers morning and the other prefers afternoon, from an optimality perspective it doesn't matter who gets assigned to which shift - but we'll try to put workers in their preferred time slot so that they are happier and more productive. Finally, today we are also announcing our first round of funding today with participation from Semil Shah, Ray Tonsing, David Ulevitch, and others. More details are available at https://blog.staffjoy.com https://blog.staffjoy.com
- e12e 11y ago
  Interesting. I've been thinking about this a lot - where I currently work (I work as a night receptionist at a hotel) -- there's been a few... challenges with scheduling. I ended up setting up our current rotation that was approved by our manager -- but only for the night shift. The early/late shift still have some issues (more below). I see a lot to like (from what I can read from the docs, I've yet to register for the demo to play around). I do find it interesting that your example for scheduling has such a short window (I realize this is just an example): schedule to be ready to view 3 days before week start: https://help.staffjoy.com/docs/schedule-timing https://help.staffjoy.com/docs/schedule-timing As a colleague is fond of saying: rotas and schedules aren't for knowing when you work, but for knowing when you're off (so you can plan your free time). Does staffjoy work well with most employees on a set rotation (eg: I know when I'm off in November 2016, barring any exceptional circumstance, just as if my off-hours where every Saturday and Sunday. This is especially important when working nights -- as having consecutive days off doesn't really help much to alleviate the extra strain of working nights, if the worker cannot plan their downtime (eg: have coffee with a friend, plan to take part in a group activity etc). I do see that you're not optimized for 24/7 work yet - which is fine of course (especially since you actually document it): https://help.staffjoy.com/docs/running-a-247-business-on-staffjoy https://help.staffjoy.com/docs/running-a-247-business-on-sta... Now, the reason I bring up rotations and long-time planning, is that I strongly believe predictability correlates with reduced stress for employees (and probably managers as well -- but your "pick-up" system for eg. sick days seems to a lot to help managers already). In Norway the law for overtime is different for managers and people that are able to determine their own hours - the idea is that if you can actually decide when you work, it's a lot less of a problem to work, say, a 100 hour week, than if someone else decides when you work. Finally about day/night shifts -- does your system make an effort to prefer scheduling shift changes early to late, rather than late first, then early? That is the final issue I've seen a lot at my work-place -- with seemingly random changes from late to early. Apart from being illegal (late shift ends at 2300, early starts at 0700 -- meaning that there's not enough down-time to comply with local labour law, never mind local agreements with the union) -- it's an example of a completely unnecessary extra strain on the workers due to -- IMNHO -- poor management (and/or poor tools for shift scheduling). In the general case, I think one would find that scheduling eg: 3 early shifts in a row, then 3 late shifts would be preferable to most people, rather than say 1 late, 1 early, 2 late, 1 early, 4 late -- even for those that in general prefer working the late shift. At any rate, looks like an interesting product. I'm afraid we'll never use it at my current work place, as all purchasing decisions are centralized (for a large, international chain). But I'll make sure to mention it to friends that manage smaller businesses (that also don't operate 24/7 - so a better fit overall :-).
  - philip1209 11y ago
    For the example - we set the window so slow so that trial users only had to think about one future week at a time. We're working on a new feature called "fixed shifts" so that businesses can set up similar rotations week over week. We've heard that businesses with a mix of full-time and part-time workers prefer to give full-time workers the same shifts week over week as much as possible (thus establishing a a consistent base), while using part-time workers to fill expected busy times, time off, etc. We're working on it - stay tuned! With regard to 24/7 - today's release fixes previous technical limitations on 24/7 scheduling. We're amid revising our help docs to reflect this. We agree with giving predictability where possibility - by setting your preferred working hours, we build in a lot of these schedules. However, changes happen often - holidays, vacations, sick times, hiring's ebb and flow - so changes have to happen quite often. Staffjoy enforces a configurable minimum time between shifts for roles so that workers have enough time to rest between shifts.
    - burfog 11y ago
      It's not just minimum time between shifts. People fall apart from jet lag if the shifts happen randomly. This increases workplace accidents and lowers productivity. Some places require by law that there are 11 hours between shifts. To avoid jet lag, add the requirement that 11 hours of downtime happen at the same time every day, in UTC or otherwise ignoring daylight saving time. This applies even on days when employees do not work. For example, a Monday-to-Friday daytime worker needs the 11 hour downtime scheduled on Saturday night even though he works neither Saturday nor Sunday. To move that 11-hour downtime to some other part of the day, there are two approaches. One approach is adjust by half an hour each day. The downtime becomes 11.5 hours (a half hour is added on one side or the other) and then back to 11 hours (a half hour is removed from the other side). The other approach is a brutal sudden shift, but giving several days off for recovery.
      - philip1209 11y ago
        We're always working to improve how our systems work, and when we have more users operating 24/7 I think that we will be improving the "time of day" consistency. Letting users set their preferences - e.g. "mornings" or "afternoons" - does actually create consistency. Managers can also set "working hours" for workers - which, for a 24/7 business, can turn the hours they are eligible to work into a hard constraint.
- DataJunkie 11y ago
  Super cool. In grad school I developed a system to schedule TAs for a new student counselor. I used simulated annealing because it was related to something I had just learned in class, and because it wasn't heuristic. It's an interesting problem because there are so many ways to define optimality. Does it mean working with the same manager? Working at the same facility? Minimizing travel between facilities? Number of shift in a week? etc. The problem can be extended with reinforcement learning with employee feedback. If there are manager preferences as well, there is a two-player problem with two perhaps competing interests. I would love to work on this problem with high school scheduling for building both a master schedule and individual student schedules. No clue where I would get data though. It's a very cool problem.
  - philip1209 11y ago
    I agree! We did an interview focused more on the pure mathematics side here: http://www.aistartups.org/2016/02/interview-with-philip-thomas-ceofounder.html?m=1 http://www.aistartups.org/2016/02/interview-with-philip-thom... Class scheduling for schools is a huge issue but selling to schools is a nightmare. That means that turning it into a business would be really hard.
    - DataJunkie 11y ago
      Yeah anything with schools is a nightmare. It would be more of a project than a product for me because Zangle and MMS already have the market completely saturated, at least in California.
brianjking 11y ago
Awesome, congrats. Is there a hybrid option between boss and the normal ataffjoy? Secondly, how would this work for an events based company that may have 8 events throughout the world during a given time period?
- philip1209 11y ago
  Flex is our product for contractors - where workers claim shifts. Boss is our product for employees -where workers are assigned shifts. They're very similar products, but we can't tell contractors when to work - they pick - and we don't have compliance built in for contractors (mainly because they pick when they work). For the events company - we have timezone support for each location. As you start to add locations with different timezones, Staffjoy begins to show more localization information to aid in scheduling.
  - raywu 11y ago
    We have been looking for a solution. Can you talk more about compliance?
    - philip1209 11y ago
      Sure. For each role, you can set how many hours a person works in a workday (e.g. California limits 8 hours before overtime), and how many consecutive days they may work (e.g. California limits to 6 consecutive workdays in a workweek before overtime - we technically go beyond this and limit to 6 consecutive days independent of the window). For a worker, you may set how many hours per workweek they may work (e.g. 30-40 hours). We define a workday as midnight to midnight, and you control the workweek start day when you create the trial. Other nice-to-have features include that we try to give consecutive days off (like a weekend) when possible and we allow you to control the minimum amount of time between shifts to prevent "clopens" (e.g. when a worker closes at midnight then gets assigned the opening shift at 7am). If you have more detailed questions, I'm happy to answer them via email too (philip at staffjoy)
      - 11y ago
jakestl 11y ago
How does it handle sick days? If I say I'm going to be sick tomorrow does it reschedule the entire next day or is that a manual process?
- philip1209 11y ago
  For time off handling: 1) If you haven't been scheduled yet - a sick day or approved time off request blocks you from being scheduled 2) If you have been scheduled - Staffjoy removes you from the shift, and other workers can claim it. (When showing available shifts to workers, we maintain compliance so that only workers eligible to take the shift can do so).
  - Vraxx 11y ago
    I think the more pressing question that was implied by "sick days" is what happens if nobody claims the shift before the shift starts? Sick days are often unplanned and have much less notice, so other employees may have no idea that a shift is available or it might be to short of notice for any other employee to cover it. How do (presumably) manual overrides happen in this scenario?
    - philip1209 11y ago
      Right now workers can claim available shifts, and managers can assign them manually (including viewing whether an assignment may trigger overtime). More advanced shift swapping workflows will be published in the coming months too!
netvarun 11y ago
s/Staffoy/Staffjoy/
- dang 11y ago
  Thanks, fixed.
buckbova 11y ago
Wouldn't consider this a "show hn". There's no code, demo or even screenshots I could see.
- philip1209 11y ago
  You can set up a free trial (no credit card required) to get a sandbox where you can interact with the application!
  - ProAm 11y ago
    Some sort of demo would be nice, Im not going to sign up for something when I have no idea what it is (beyond a text description).
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - philip1209 11y ago
      There's an 80-second overview on our Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I_StYG_cI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I_StYG_cI4
julianozen 11y ago
Congrats on the launch and the several weeks of iteration.
- philip1209 11y ago
  Thank you!
edko 11y ago
I couldn't find the pricing page. It is nice that you offer a 14-day free trial, but, wouldn't a potential user want to know how much it would cost beyond that?
- philip1209 11y ago
  Pricing is on the homepage -apologies for not copying to our Boss overview: https://www.staffjoy.com https://www.staffjoy.com
  - edko 11y ago
    Got it. Thanks.
physcab 11y ago
I have a number of friends who work in the restaurant industry including some very close friends who are opening a restaurant and their families have numerous restaurants throughout the Bay Area. I'm quite familiar with this pain point. Some questions: 1. Who are you targeting this to - small businesses or large managed groups? 2. How will you compete with time trackers as they get integrated with POS? Does yours integrate? 3. How are you going to handle training? In my experience, people in the restaurant business do not know technology and any type of software requires extensive training. 4. Do shift managers find value over using their own existing methods? The pricing seems ok but it's a tough market. Small businesses with hourly workers do not have a ton of money, while larger groups already have solutions in place. Just my 2 cents.
- philip1209 11y ago
  Restaurants are an interesting vertical because their technology is largely horizontally-integrated and heavily reliant on the POS system. We're currently working with courier companies and call centers primarily, and looking to move into retail, hospitality, and eventually medicine. 1. Who are you targeting this to - small businesses or large managed groups? Our target customers are in the range of 50 to 150 employees per location, and we support multiple locations (e.g. a chain). We've worked with teams as small as 8 and as large as 400. 2. How will you compete with time trackers as they get integrated with POS? Does yours integrate? The main benefit of time trackers in Staffjoy is that we can compare them to scheduled shifts. Detecting problems (missed shifts, truancy, clocking in without a shift) becomes significantly more powerful, and over time we can begin to model the performance of workers. We support integrations and are amid publishing our first. At least one app is looking to trigger clock-in/clock-out events from their courier app to our API using this. We have an open-source Python client for our API and will be publishing better API resources in the coming weeks. https://github.com/staffjoy/client_python https://github.com/staffjoy/client_python 3. How are you going to handle training? In my experience, people in the restaurant business do not know technology and any type of software requires extensive training. We're onboarding in new verticals very manually right now to learn the best way and develop more scalable training. 4. Do shift managers find value over using their own existing methods? Yes, because we automate a lot of decisions. The software shines when a new shift needs to be covered - e.g. somebody calls in sick - and the manager can find a replacement without having to recalculate a variety of overtime scenarios.

53 points by philip1209 11y ago

Hello - Andrew Hess and I are the founders of Staffjoy. We went through the first YC Fellowship class, where we launched automated contractor scheduling. Today we are excited to launch Staffjoy Boss, our automated application for employee scheduling. At the core, we have rewritten how scheduling works so that we schedule workers when they prefer to work. We have also added features like time off requests, clock-in/clock-out, and employment law compliance we make it easy to have Staffjoy run a business of hourly workers. On the technical side, we've rewritten our algorithms to search beyond optimal staffing levels for canonical optimal solutions that make employees happy. So, if one person prefers morning and the other prefers afternoon, from an optimality perspective it doesn't matter who gets assigned to which shift - but we'll try to put workers in their preferred time slot so that they are happier and more productive. Finally, today we are also announcing our first round of funding today with participation from Semil Shah, Ray Tonsing, David Ulevitch, and others. More details are available at https://blog.staffjoy.com https://blog.staffjoy.com

e12e 11y ago
Interesting. I've been thinking about this a lot - where I currently work (I work as a night receptionist at a hotel) -- there's been a few... challenges with scheduling. I ended up setting up our current rotation that was approved by our manager -- but only for the night shift. The early/late shift still have some issues (more below). I see a lot to like (from what I can read from the docs, I've yet to register for the demo to play around). I do find it interesting that your example for scheduling has such a short window (I realize this is just an example): schedule to be ready to view 3 days before week start: https://help.staffjoy.com/docs/schedule-timing https://help.staffjoy.com/docs/schedule-timing As a colleague is fond of saying: rotas and schedules aren't for knowing when you work, but for knowing when you're off (so you can plan your free time). Does staffjoy work well with most employees on a set rotation (eg: I know when I'm off in November 2016, barring any exceptional circumstance, just as if my off-hours where every Saturday and Sunday. This is especially important when working nights -- as having consecutive days off doesn't really help much to alleviate the extra strain of working nights, if the worker cannot plan their downtime (eg: have coffee with a friend, plan to take part in a group activity etc). I do see that you're not optimized for 24/7 work yet - which is fine of course (especially since you actually document it): https://help.staffjoy.com/docs/running-a-247-business-on-staffjoy https://help.staffjoy.com/docs/running-a-247-business-on-sta... Now, the reason I bring up rotations and long-time planning, is that I strongly believe predictability correlates with reduced stress for employees (and probably managers as well -- but your "pick-up" system for eg. sick days seems to a lot to help managers already). In Norway the law for overtime is different for managers and people that are able to determine their own hours - the idea is that if you can actually decide when you work, it's a lot less of a problem to work, say, a 100 hour week, than if someone else decides when you work. Finally about day/night shifts -- does your system make an effort to prefer scheduling shift changes early to late, rather than late first, then early? That is the final issue I've seen a lot at my work-place -- with seemingly random changes from late to early. Apart from being illegal (late shift ends at 2300, early starts at 0700 -- meaning that there's not enough down-time to comply with local labour law, never mind local agreements with the union) -- it's an example of a completely unnecessary extra strain on the workers due to -- IMNHO -- poor management (and/or poor tools for shift scheduling). In the general case, I think one would find that scheduling eg: 3 early shifts in a row, then 3 late shifts would be preferable to most people, rather than say 1 late, 1 early, 2 late, 1 early, 4 late -- even for those that in general prefer working the late shift. At any rate, looks like an interesting product. I'm afraid we'll never use it at my current work place, as all purchasing decisions are centralized (for a large, international chain). But I'll make sure to mention it to friends that manage smaller businesses (that also don't operate 24/7 - so a better fit overall :-).
- philip1209 11y ago
  For the example - we set the window so slow so that trial users only had to think about one future week at a time. We're working on a new feature called "fixed shifts" so that businesses can set up similar rotations week over week. We've heard that businesses with a mix of full-time and part-time workers prefer to give full-time workers the same shifts week over week as much as possible (thus establishing a a consistent base), while using part-time workers to fill expected busy times, time off, etc. We're working on it - stay tuned! With regard to 24/7 - today's release fixes previous technical limitations on 24/7 scheduling. We're amid revising our help docs to reflect this. We agree with giving predictability where possibility - by setting your preferred working hours, we build in a lot of these schedules. However, changes happen often - holidays, vacations, sick times, hiring's ebb and flow - so changes have to happen quite often. Staffjoy enforces a configurable minimum time between shifts for roles so that workers have enough time to rest between shifts.
  - burfog 11y ago
    It's not just minimum time between shifts. People fall apart from jet lag if the shifts happen randomly. This increases workplace accidents and lowers productivity. Some places require by law that there are 11 hours between shifts. To avoid jet lag, add the requirement that 11 hours of downtime happen at the same time every day, in UTC or otherwise ignoring daylight saving time. This applies even on days when employees do not work. For example, a Monday-to-Friday daytime worker needs the 11 hour downtime scheduled on Saturday night even though he works neither Saturday nor Sunday. To move that 11-hour downtime to some other part of the day, there are two approaches. One approach is adjust by half an hour each day. The downtime becomes 11.5 hours (a half hour is added on one side or the other) and then back to 11 hours (a half hour is removed from the other side). The other approach is a brutal sudden shift, but giving several days off for recovery.
    - philip1209 11y ago
      We're always working to improve how our systems work, and when we have more users operating 24/7 I think that we will be improving the "time of day" consistency. Letting users set their preferences - e.g. "mornings" or "afternoons" - does actually create consistency. Managers can also set "working hours" for workers - which, for a 24/7 business, can turn the hours they are eligible to work into a hard constraint.
DataJunkie 11y ago
Super cool. In grad school I developed a system to schedule TAs for a new student counselor. I used simulated annealing because it was related to something I had just learned in class, and because it wasn't heuristic. It's an interesting problem because there are so many ways to define optimality. Does it mean working with the same manager? Working at the same facility? Minimizing travel between facilities? Number of shift in a week? etc. The problem can be extended with reinforcement learning with employee feedback. If there are manager preferences as well, there is a two-player problem with two perhaps competing interests. I would love to work on this problem with high school scheduling for building both a master schedule and individual student schedules. No clue where I would get data though. It's a very cool problem.
- philip1209 11y ago
  I agree! We did an interview focused more on the pure mathematics side here: http://www.aistartups.org/2016/02/interview-with-philip-thomas-ceofounder.html?m=1 http://www.aistartups.org/2016/02/interview-with-philip-thom... Class scheduling for schools is a huge issue but selling to schools is a nightmare. That means that turning it into a business would be really hard.
  - DataJunkie 11y ago
    Yeah anything with schools is a nightmare. It would be more of a project than a product for me because Zangle and MMS already have the market completely saturated, at least in California.

brianjking 11y ago

Awesome, congrats. Is there a hybrid option between boss and the normal ataffjoy? Secondly, how would this work for an events based company that may have 8 events throughout the world during a given time period?

philip1209 11y ago
Flex is our product for contractors - where workers claim shifts. Boss is our product for employees -where workers are assigned shifts. They're very similar products, but we can't tell contractors when to work - they pick - and we don't have compliance built in for contractors (mainly because they pick when they work). For the events company - we have timezone support for each location. As you start to add locations with different timezones, Staffjoy begins to show more localization information to aid in scheduling.
- raywu 11y ago
  We have been looking for a solution. Can you talk more about compliance?
  - philip1209 11y ago
    Sure. For each role, you can set how many hours a person works in a workday (e.g. California limits 8 hours before overtime), and how many consecutive days they may work (e.g. California limits to 6 consecutive workdays in a workweek before overtime - we technically go beyond this and limit to 6 consecutive days independent of the window). For a worker, you may set how many hours per workweek they may work (e.g. 30-40 hours). We define a workday as midnight to midnight, and you control the workweek start day when you create the trial. Other nice-to-have features include that we try to give consecutive days off (like a weekend) when possible and we allow you to control the minimum amount of time between shifts to prevent "clopens" (e.g. when a worker closes at midnight then gets assigned the opening shift at 7am). If you have more detailed questions, I'm happy to answer them via email too (philip at staffjoy)
    - 11y ago

jakestl 11y ago

How does it handle sick days? If I say I'm going to be sick tomorrow does it reschedule the entire next day or is that a manual process?

philip1209 11y ago
For time off handling: 1) If you haven't been scheduled yet - a sick day or approved time off request blocks you from being scheduled 2) If you have been scheduled - Staffjoy removes you from the shift, and other workers can claim it. (When showing available shifts to workers, we maintain compliance so that only workers eligible to take the shift can do so).
- Vraxx 11y ago
  I think the more pressing question that was implied by "sick days" is what happens if nobody claims the shift before the shift starts? Sick days are often unplanned and have much less notice, so other employees may have no idea that a shift is available or it might be to short of notice for any other employee to cover it. How do (presumably) manual overrides happen in this scenario?
  - philip1209 11y ago
    Right now workers can claim available shifts, and managers can assign them manually (including viewing whether an assignment may trigger overtime). More advanced shift swapping workflows will be published in the coming months too!

netvarun 11y ago

s/Staffoy/Staffjoy/

dang 11y ago
Thanks, fixed.

buckbova 11y ago

Wouldn't consider this a "show hn". There's no code, demo or even screenshots I could see.

philip1209 11y ago
You can set up a free trial (no credit card required) to get a sandbox where you can interact with the application!
- ProAm 11y ago
  Some sort of demo would be nice, Im not going to sign up for something when I have no idea what it is (beyond a text description).
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - philip1209 11y ago
    There's an 80-second overview on our Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I_StYG_cI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I_StYG_cI4

julianozen 11y ago

Congrats on the launch and the several weeks of iteration.

philip1209 11y ago
Thank you!

edko 11y ago

I couldn't find the pricing page. It is nice that you offer a 14-day free trial, but, wouldn't a potential user want to know how much it would cost beyond that?

philip1209 11y ago
Pricing is on the homepage -apologies for not copying to our Boss overview: https://www.staffjoy.com https://www.staffjoy.com
- edko 11y ago
  Got it. Thanks.

physcab 11y ago

I have a number of friends who work in the restaurant industry including some very close friends who are opening a restaurant and their families have numerous restaurants throughout the Bay Area. I'm quite familiar with this pain point. Some questions: 1. Who are you targeting this to - small businesses or large managed groups? 2. How will you compete with time trackers as they get integrated with POS? Does yours integrate? 3. How are you going to handle training? In my experience, people in the restaurant business do not know technology and any type of software requires extensive training. 4. Do shift managers find value over using their own existing methods? The pricing seems ok but it's a tough market. Small businesses with hourly workers do not have a ton of money, while larger groups already have solutions in place. Just my 2 cents.

philip1209 11y ago
Restaurants are an interesting vertical because their technology is largely horizontally-integrated and heavily reliant on the POS system. We're currently working with courier companies and call centers primarily, and looking to move into retail, hospitality, and eventually medicine. 1. Who are you targeting this to - small businesses or large managed groups? Our target customers are in the range of 50 to 150 employees per location, and we support multiple locations (e.g. a chain). We've worked with teams as small as 8 and as large as 400. 2. How will you compete with time trackers as they get integrated with POS? Does yours integrate? The main benefit of time trackers in Staffjoy is that we can compare them to scheduled shifts. Detecting problems (missed shifts, truancy, clocking in without a shift) becomes significantly more powerful, and over time we can begin to model the performance of workers. We support integrations and are amid publishing our first. At least one app is looking to trigger clock-in/clock-out events from their courier app to our API using this. We have an open-source Python client for our API and will be publishing better API resources in the coming weeks. https://github.com/staffjoy/client_python https://github.com/staffjoy/client_python 3. How are you going to handle training? In my experience, people in the restaurant business do not know technology and any type of software requires extensive training. We're onboarding in new verticals very manually right now to learn the best way and develop more scalable training. 4. Do shift managers find value over using their own existing methods? Yes, because we automate a lot of decisions. The software shines when a new shift needs to be covered - e.g. somebody calls in sick - and the manager can find a replacement without having to recalculate a variety of overtime scenarios.