Employee scheduling

Fire departments, conceivably, have the most complicated work schedules of any industry. The sheer number of scheduling schemes that are used for line employees is staggering. Administrative staff can also choose from a wide variety of schedules.

The FireManager supports any number of work schedules. The only requirement is that each schedule must repeat itself at regular intervals. For example, the standard Berkely three-platoon schedule repeats every 9 days. The newer 48/96 work shedule repeats every 6 days. And most staff schedules repeat themselves every 7 or 14 days. Each of these schedules can have meals and breaks built in, if appropriate.

Once an employee has been assigned to a work schedule, other scheduling matters such as time off, shift trades, on call schedules and overtime signup must be managed.

Leave Schedule

The leave schedule is the primary tool for scheduling future time off. Any type of leave is supported, and is agency-configurable.

When an employee is selected, his or her scheduled work days will be displayed in green on a calendar. Adding the employee to the leave schedule is as easy as clicking on a green day.

Shift Trades

Most line employees can schedule additional time off by arranging a shift trade with another employee. The FireManager allows you to do this electronically. This paperless, three-step process uses email to notify employees and supervisors of a shift trade, and even reminds the person working the trade a few days in advance!

Requesting, accepting and approving a trade is a matter of simply pressing a button. When the roster is completed for that date, the trade will automatically appear.

Overtime Signup

The FireManager eliminates those revolving 3x5 card files that so many fire departments are still using to manage overtime. Employees are allowed to sign up electronically for days that they truly are interested in working. When the staffing officer needs to fill a vacancy, he can view a list of interested employees right from his roster. The list will already be rank-ordered according to your policy so that the person that should get the overtime will be right at the top of the list.

Signing up for overtime works much like the leave schedule. The employee's work schedule is displayed. A simple click of the mouse puts you on the sign up list. You can sign up for your normal postion or any position for which you are qualified or promotable.

As you sign up for a day, you can see the entire list of employees who also want to work that day, rank ordered in the order that they will be called. This gives you a very good idea of whether or not you will get the overtime.

On Call Schedule

Fire investigators and others often share on call duties with their peers. The FireManager allows you to manage multiple on call schedules.

Static Unit Assignments

The Human Resource module is integrated with all other modules, including Incident Reporting. Static Unit Assignments allow you to associate an employee with a permanent radio ID. For example, you may want to indicate that the fire chief is always assigned to a unit known as Chief 1. By doing this, whenever Chief 1 is assigned to an incident, the employee can be added to the unit by name automatically. This is only necessary if the employee does not normally appear on a staffing roster.

Long Term Riders

If you entertain non-employee riders, such as paramedic students, you can use the Long Term Riders function to assign a pseudo work shedule to the rider. This is useful if you know, in advance, on which shift and unit the person will be riding. Once this is set up, the rider will automatically appear on the daily roster when it is completed.