This is how locations and positions relate to each other
Both locations and positions are a way of differentiating and creating overview for yourself and your employees. Generally, locations constitute the main division/structure of your scheduling, while positions are a more sophisticated way of differentiating shifts on a rota level and to indicate what competencies are needed to take over on a shift. However, you decide what exactly you want to specify through locations and positions.
The most straightforward way is to use the locations to specify the geographical position of where the shift is to be executed and the positions to specify what task is to be done during the shift.
For example:
Location 1 - London
- Position 1 - Chef
- Position 2 - Waiter/waitress
Location 2 - Manchester
- Position 1 - Chef
- Position 2 - Waiter/waitress
But if it makes sense in your situation, you can also use locations and positions the other way around:
Location 1 - Chef
- Position 1 - London
- Position 2 - Manchester
Location 2 - Waiter/Waitress
- Position 1 - London
- Position 2 - Manchester
So, as you can see, locations and positions can be applied quite flexibly. In order to know, which setup will result in the most benefits and the best overview, you first have to understand, what the unique features of both locations and positions are.
We will also look at two use cases where it could actually be beneficial to combine positions and locations by adding the locations to the job positions as well. Like so:
- Position 1 - London Waiter/Waitress
- Position 2 - Manchester Waiter/Waitress
- Position 3 - London Chef
- Position 4 - Manchester Chef
In short, we will go through:
- The unique characteristics of locations & positions
- Combining locations & positions with only one location
- Combining locations & positions with several locations
Characteristics of locations & positions
Let's take a look at the individual features of locations and positions.
Location characteristics
Locations in Smartplan split up your employee scheduling into several rotas. This allows you to receive a better overview on certain parts of your business. Whether that is a subsidiary, a team or a project.
The employees will have a better overview because each rota will contain less shifts and only contain information that is relevant for themselves.
There is another benefit when it comes to handling your data. In "Hours & Salary" you have the option to filter the account data by location. This way you can make a custom export only for that location.
When allocating employees to locations, the locations will also become a way of restricting employees from accessing and interacting with certain parts of your scheduling.
Let's say you created two locations for your independently working shops "A" and "B". Allocating your staff to these locations will ensure, that an employee from Shop A can not take over a shift in Shop B and vice versa. And an employee from Shop A will not be notified, if a new shift is available in Shop B.
So, by this setting, locations can also ensure that employees can only interact with those parts of the system that are related to their assigned location and at the same time prevent them from accessing the employees and rotas of other locations.
Position characteristics
Positions are always tied to a shift, so their main purpose is to limit the types of shifts, that employees can take over or swap. As we have seen before, the location allocations can help you with preventing to access certain rotas in general. Positions, on the other hand, help you limiting the employees options within a certain rota.
Positions are often used to manage qualifications and competencies. Imagine you have two shops and your employees receive shifts based on their proximity to each shop. You could create the positions "Shop A" and "Shop B" and then assign the employees the position (meaning: shop) that they should work in. They will not be able to take over a shift from the wrong shop by accident.
If some of your workers live in between both shops and can take shifts in both, you would simply assign them both positions.
Another purpose of the positions is to give information about the shift at hand. Is a certain skill needed for this shift? What will the main task be? Where should your workers meet up for their shifts? All this kind of information can be communicated through the assigned position.
Combining locations and positions in the same rota
Some need a complete overview of all their workers and the shifts of all their different locations. For these cases the easiest solution is to create one overall rota in a single location instead of creating several locations.
But then there will be the issue of how possible locations (shops, branches, addresses, etc.) can be specified, although the Smartplan locations are not being used. The solution is to extend the positions to reflect the locations as well.
Let's say that you have restaurants in London and Manchester, and that you would like to make rotas for the kitchen, bartenders and the waiters. In "Settings" → "Smartplan Settings" → "Positions" you could create the different positions you need:
You can also choose what color each position should have. Different positions can have the same color. If positions with the same task have the same color, no matter what location they contain, it may improve your overview.
When you add shifts to the rota, simply select all the positions that should be included in the rota. Since all the locations must be represented in the same rota, be sure to add shifts that have all the different positions you have created on the account. This means that a day in the rota may, for example, look like this:
When you staff the shifts, you will be able to see which employees are available on the day. The people below "Available Employees" are those with a suitable position for the specific shift:
In this way, you can make sure that employees only get shifts at the locations where they work on a daily basis.
An employee can easily be associated with several locations in your company. In that case, simply make sure that the employee has all the relevant positions added to his profile.
Combining locations & positions with several locations
Even though it is possible to split the rota onto locations and use location allocations, there are certain situations where it could still be relevant to add the locations to the positions as well. That is, because positions, unlike employees, can not be assigned to the locations. So if you are trying to pick a position during shift creation, you will be presented with all the positions on the account. If you have many positions, finding the right one in the list can become particularly cumbersome:
In order to be able to navigate the dropdown list more easily, you could consider to add the locations to the positions:
Although you should be aware of that this will only improve your overview, if the majority of your positions are exclusive to certain locations. If you have many positions, but all of them are present in all of your locations you could also try to cluster them in other meaningful ways:
This way, when scrolling through the list of positions, you now have a system in place that allows you to find the right one more quickly.