Hello everyone! I work with Shifton to optimize the shift schedule in our company, but I encounter one problem - frequent conflicts in the schedule. Everything looks good on paper, but when you need to take into account the wishes of employees, it often turns out that some shifts are overloaded, and others are empty. How do you deal with this? Maybe someone has already set up a process so that the system itself takes such moments into account? I tried automatic scheduling, but it does not always cope with adjustments in real time. Maybe there are some recommendations?

Yes, I also encountered this problem at the very beginning of working with https://shifton.com/shift-scheduling. In general, the problem is not in the system, but rather in how to configure it for real conditions. Automatic scheduling, of course, can give a good result, but it does not always take into account all the nuances, such as personal preferences of employees, their health condition or the need to work on a flexible schedule. If you have a standard process without too many non-standard cases, then the system copes well, but when it comes to complex changes, then improvements are already needed. The first thing I can recommend is to carefully configure the rules for automatic shift arrangement. Shifton allows you to set various parameters for automatic distribution, for example, the minimum amount of rest between shifts, the maximum number of night shifts in a row, and so on. But even with such settings, it is important to periodically check the results, since the algorithms may not always accurately take into account the peculiarities of the company. For cases like yours, when you need to take into account the wishes of employees, I would recommend using a hybrid approach. That is, based on automatic planning, you make an initial schedule, and then manually adjust it, entering people's wishes. The schedule generator for employees has a convenient "manual editing" function, which allows you to quickly change the schedule and take into account all the specific points. The main thing is not to forget about feedback from the team. Let employees communicate their preferences or restrictions in advance, so that you can correctly distribute shifts.

I agree with the previous comment that Shifton is generally good, but sometimes you really need human intervention to make everything work perfectly. In our company, after implementing the system, we also had some difficulties with automatic shift distribution, because it did not always take into account the actual number of people on certain days or their wishes. We started doing combined planning and found that it gives much better results. Even if the system did not take something into account, you can always adjust it manually.