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'Agency Staff' for an Organisation
'Agency Staff' for an Organisation

Use Workforce to schedule and manage agency staff who may work at your organisation.

Updated over a week ago

For organisations impacted by labour shortages, employers may look to hire agency staff or other types of non-permanent staff to cover shifts due to the increased labour needs.

Workforce's 'Agency Staff' feature allows you to manage agency staff directly within Workforce, as well as other types of staff such as:

  • Seasonal workers

  • Freelancers

  • Temporary staff

Pricing

'Agency Staff' is a paid feature that's based on the number of active agency employees per month. Agency Staff will be billed at £2 per agency staff member per month.

Functions of 'Agency Staff'

Agency Staff have similar permissions and access within Workforce as an employee. Therefore, Agency Staff can perform functions critical to their role, such as:

  • View their Schedule/Rota

  • Claim Vacant Shifts

  • View Timesheets

  • Answer Shift Questions

  • Upload Qualifications

  • Cover a vacant shift or another employee's shift via Shift Replacements

  • Clock-in and Clock-out

Restrictions of 'Agency Staff'

Agency Staff cannot perform certain functions in Workforce that a permanent employee can. The restrictions for Agency Staff are:

  • Communications: Agency Staff cannot receive or view announcements made via Communications

  • Leave and Unavailability: Agency Staff cannot request Leave or unavailability through Workforce

  • Shift Replacement: Agency Staff cannot request a replacement of a shift; they are able to cover another employee's shift which has been requested for cover

  • Timesheets: Agency Staff Timesheets cannot be exported to payroll systems, but can be downloaded to Excel via the "Download to Excel" function for reporting purposes.

Enable 'Agency Staff' for your Organisation

To enable* 'Agency Staff' for your organisation, navigate to Settings > Feature Management > Enable 'Agency Staff':

Once enabled, managers will be able to allocate on a per-employee-level staff who are Agency Staff for your organisation.

*You must have an "Admin" permission or access to your organisation's settings to be able to enable 'Agency Staff'.

Set staff as Agency Staff

Once the 'Agency Staff' feature is enabled, managers can select staff within their Staff List to set specific staff as 'Agency Staff'.

To do so, enter an individual staff profile via Workforce > Staff. If the agency staff doesn't yes exist within Workforce, you will first need to create a new staff profile via the + Add Staff.

On the staff profile, a new option for 'Agency Staff' will now be visible on the Personal tab:

When 'Agency Staff' is enabled on an employee level, a blue banner will display on their profile to indicate that the employee is Agency Staff:

Identify 'Agency Staff' within Workforce

An indicator will be displayed in several areas of Workforce to help management teams identify which staff are agency staff within their Organisation. Agency Staff can be recognised by the 'clock' icon, as seen in the examples below:

Employee Profile:

Staff Index Page:

Timesheet Index Page:

Schedule/Rota + Shift Card:

Filter 'Agency Staff' within Workforce

Once the 'Agency Staff' feature has been enabled and one or more agency staff have been added to your organisation, a staff filter will apply to several key areas of Workforce to help management teams filter out 'Agency Staff' and 'Permanent Staff', as seen in the examples below:

Staff Page:

Timesheets Page:

Rota Side Panel:

Note - you must be viewing the location/team which the Agency Staff is assigned to.

Cost Report by Employee:

Deactivating Agency Staff Members

When Agency Staff is no longer needed, a profile can be deactivated the same way as a permanent employee. Enter the staff profile and click Deactivate located in the bottom right of their profile:

Alternatively, admins can turn on “Automatically Deactivate Unused Agency Staff” from Notifications & Tasks → Scheduled Tasks, which will check and deactivate eligible agency staff* at local time 11 pm every night.

*agency staff that have not worked a shift for a month, and do not have future shifts

Disable 'Agency Staff'

If Agency Staff are no longer required, the 'Agency Staff' feature can be disabled by navigating to Settings > Feature Management > Disable Agency Staff.

Please note, to disable the 'Agency Staff' feature, all existing Agency Staff will need to be deactivated first by following the step above.

Reactivate Agency Staff Members

Managers can activate, deactivate and reactivate a Agency Staff profile provided the 'Agency Staff' feature is enabled. If the 'Agency Staff' feature is disabled, managers will be prevented from reactivating 'Agency Staff' profiles within Workforce, until the feature is enabled again.


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