Managing PTO in StaffPro

Managing scheduling and coverage for branch employee PTO (Personal Time Off) is a challenging and thankless task in financial institutions (FIs) with multiple branch locations. It requires receiving requests, weighing multiple factors, granting or denying the requests, scheduling coverage and monitoring an evolving situation over a prolonged period. The StaffPro branch resource management system has several features that work together to facilitate and automate much of what is needed to manage PTO in branch networks.

StaffPro provides a feature called Time Exceptions for managing PTO. It is designed for area/region/central personnel who are assigned to manage PTO for a group of branches or the entire institution. Time Exceptions are closely integrated with StaffPro's automated float staff scheduling capability. ( see Float Management in StaffPro ) In addition, branch personnel who are already working with branch schedules will see PTO in their daily schedules.

Scheduling PTO from the Time Exception page

Separate from weekly branch schedules, StaffPro maintains base weekly availability for employees. Base availability is the hours an employee possibly could work on each day of the week, not the hours they are scheduled to work on a specific day. Availability can be defined for each day and be associated with multiple branches or "any location". Base availability changes infrequently because it defines what an employee could do, not what they may be scheduled to do in any specific week.

Layered over base availability are time exceptions, which are changes for a specific date range and times. StaffPro lets you define which work types apply to PTO, such as Vacation, Training, Sick, etc. The Time Exception page lets you see, create, modify and request coverage for PTO.

To create an exception an individual employee must be selected which then enables the grid to enter a new exception. This grid lets you specify the work type, start and end dates, start and end times, and optionally request float coverage. Whether or not a user is authorized to request float staff is controlled by StaffPro's security. Once the exception is defined, click the Add tool button and that's it!

Well, almost. StaffPro checks a number of conditions and provides an opportunity to add or cancel the request.

• Are there other employees at the location, or schedule pool when applicable, that already have time off scheduled for the date and time range?
• If the employee is a member of a float pool, are they scheduled to provide coverage during the range? This condition cannot be overridden. The coverage must be reassigned or deleted before a float employee can be granted PTO for the same time.

There are three ways to view exceptions and find an employee to select: Schedule Pools, Locations and Employees. Clicking on any level in the tree displays a chronological list of the pending exceptions from the current date forward, for that level. You can view an individual employee, a branch, all branches, a schedule pool, all pools, etc.

The summary grid lets you change start and end dates, or times, or delete multiple exceptions. It also provides an easy way to see potential complications as the PTO schedule evolves. The grid displays a red exclamation point when there is a conflict either in a schedule pool or a location, along with the specific pool or location. On the far right is a column that displays a user icon if float coverage is assigned to cover the PTO.

When deleting a PTO schedule, if float coverage is assigned StaffPro displays a confirmation dialog asking whether the associated float schedule should also be deleted. This helps to avoid creating orphaned float assignments.

Time exceptions in StaffPro make it straightforward to see, create, modify or delete PTO schedules, while automatically integrating with float staff coverage.

Seeing PTO from a branch schedule

StaffPro supports viewing or creating weekly schedules as much as one year in advance. When there is a time exception for an employee, their time is displayed as the work type of the exception on the schedule page for the location and date. The following screen snip of a schedule page shows Bilbo Baggins with PTO as the result of an exception, and Faye Goatee who is simply unavailable.

Managing PTO with automated float coverage is part of StaffPro's comprehensive feature-set to improve the task of managing a branch operation. Although many FIs have already reduced branch staff and operations management to minimum levels, StaffPro provides a single application that leverages your ability to deliver, and know you are delivering, a consistent level of customer service in the most efficient way possible.

• Forecasting and trend analysis
• Scheduling
• Employee availability and PTO management
• Automated float scheduling
• Reporting
• Employee and branch performance measurement
• Business analytics
• Branch cash management and ordering
• Form and task automation

Improving and automating supervisory and management functions, frees those employees to concentrate on customers, developing branch employees and profitability.