Workforce Engagement Management

I am excited to announce a new feature which enhances Shift Trades to allow agents to trade shifts across weeks to enhance flexibility, with new WFM Administrative configurations and shift trade rule types which allow admins to control the approval process for trades based on planning period paid hours, minimum time between shifts and more.  This feature is planned to roll out during the week of May 19th, 2025.

Here is a list of the enhancements this feature will deliver and some new concepts to consider as you plan to put these new capabilities to use:

• Management Unit, Shift Trades settings
  • Existing Settings:
    • Minimum Time Until Either Traded Shift Starts now has a maximum value of 6 weeks
  • New Settings:
    • Minimum Time Between Shifts.  This is a new setting, used in conjunction with a new minimum time between shifts shift trade rule type.
    • Maximum Trade Span Weeks.  The number of weeks you want to allow between the dates in a trade.  Subject to limitation of 6 weeks in the future, as well as the number of weeks in the published schedule, whichever limit is reached first (see below).
    • Maximum Trades per Agent per Week.  Control how many Shift Trades an agent can create per week.
  • New Shift Trade Rule Types:
    • Shift trades resulting in planning period minimum paid time violations.  If you use planning periods, this optional rule can validate minimum paid time across a multi week planning period as part of trade approval.
    • Shift trades resulting in planning period maximum paid time violations.  If you use planning periods, this optional rule can validate maximum paid time across a multi week planning period as part of trade approval.
    • Shift trades resulting in minimum time between shifts violations.  This optional rule can validate that at least the amount of time you specify above in the 'minimum time between shifts' setting as part of trade approval.
  • Existing Shift Trade Rules- these rule types have been enhanced to reflect the impact of Work Plan Rotations.
    • Shift trades resulting in minimum weekly paid time violations.
    • Shift trades resulting in maximum weekly paid time violations.
• Note that the new shift trade rule types planning period min / max paid hours rules and minimum time between shift rules can be used even if you do not allow multi week trades.
• Shift Trades which include dates in different weeks will appear in the Shift Trades module in the week of the earliest date in the shift trade.
• There are additional best practices for using the new Shift Trade rule types for planning period and minimum time between shifts rules- see below.
• This capability will be enabled in the Tempo mobile app in a future release.

Agent enhancements

• The expiration date the initiating agent configures with a shift trade can now be up to 6 weeks in the future
• If allowed, agents can specify Willing to Accept dates in different weeks while creating a trade.
• Willing to Accept dates now use an updated and more efficient UX control.
• Agents can configure the times of day they are willing to accept for each individual date.

As before, Shift Trades may occur in a 6-week window that includes the current week.  This new feature extends that by giving you the controls to allow Shift Trades within the weeks in the published schedule.  Publish a multi-week schedule and adjust the minimum trade span weeks setting to match to enable cross week trades.