[tonomics]

Don't you guys think it could undermine contractors lives and even performance?

Sure, it's fair to pay for the hours you've worked, but tracking every minute of work could be overwhelming.

I'm pretty sure that's something many managers would do.

[philip1209]

Hi,

We're trying to make the software as worker-friendly as possible.

We're doing this by:

* Letting workers choose when they want to work

* Giving consecutive days off - If a worker has at least two days off in a week, our algorithm tries to schedule two of those days off consecutively.

* Rest Time - Managers configure a minimum time between shifts through worker profiles, and we enforce this while creating schedules to make sure that workers have enough time to rest between shifts. This can be used to prevent "clopens".

For contractors - we have some customers operating in a "claimed shifts" mode where we generate unassigned shifts, then workers claim them: https://help.staffjoy.com/docs/claimed-shifts-mode

[JonnieCache]

>Don't you guys think it could undermine contractors lives and even performance?

A lot of people think that, yes. I've seen it happen to some of my friends. They can't plan their lives more than a week ahead. It's emotionally draining.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-hour_contract

To be fair, this app seems to allow the employees to specify their preferred working hours too. I wonder how it's generally used in practice.

[philip1209]

We're finding that, due to better control of the workforce and enforcement of rules, managers have been able to provide more predictability in terms of hours to workers. This is because we make it easier to guarantee a certain number of hours each week.

[JonnieCache]

The problem is not knowing when those hours are going to fall, so you cant arrange to do social things more than a week ahead because you don't know if you're going to be working.

An option to enforce scheduling to be fixed at least n days in advance would protect the employees, but that goes against the entire point of the app.

Reading again, it looks like your app prioritizes the employees' preferences over the employers desires when resolving the schedule; that makes sense. You could set yourself to "not working wednesdays" and then safely organize social stuff on wednesdays. The problem starts when you dont have that right, as many workers in the UK now don't.

[philip1209]

Jonnie,

On our Manager App, there is a setting for configuring when we generate a schedule relative to the work week. We've seen users be able to increase this number over time as they get better at forecasting.

Most of our users right now are on-demand startups, and with contractors that means that availability is a hard constraint. As we begin to onboard more employee-based businesses, I expect that we will focus on asking workers for their preferences in place of availability.