At times, traditional job qualifications don't align with some companies' diverse structures. Take, for instance, smaller businesses operating on shift-based models rather than defined job roles. There are scenarios where roles are client-based and interchangeable among staff. To address this, Connecteam offers a solution: the ability to qualify employees for shifts independently of job qualifications. This empowers you to maintain control over who works and when, but with a more tailored and flexible approach. Whether matching employees to particular tasks or managing schedules more efficiently, this capability ensures a customized solution to your distinct operational needs.

In this article we will go over the following:

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To qualify employees for shifts, navigate to the schedule on the left sidebar and enter the relvent schedule. Begin by creating a shift either by clicking on the plus icon or through the add shift button. By default, the shift will be qualified for all users. To set specific qualifications for the shift on edit, then remove the current selection, assign either the relevant users or smart group, and publish the shift. Note that to be published the shift must contain a shift title.

Qualifying users to shift is flexible and works in various situations and even if you are already using jobs, you can still qualify users for shifts. The two can used in combination to meet your company's unique scheduling needs. Let's go over a few of these cases below.

Using the shift qualifications you can create a shift with no job and select who is qualified to do that job. You can duplicate those shifts and then dispatch them according to who is qualified.

Let's look at an example. I'm a small retail shop with a few employees and I have only opening and closing shifts. I created those shifts, gave them a shift title, and qualified the relevant employees. Now all I have to do is publish the shift (or save it as a draft), duplicate it, and dispatch those shifts to the relevant employees. Notice in the image below the shift has no job.

💡Tip: Qualifying users to shifts also works when creating shift templates. This can speed things up even more!

If you are using Jobs, and they are qualified for users or smart groups, you can override these to customize your needs. Say for example you run a cleaning service where the jobs are set up as clients which everyone is qualified for, but one client requests a specific cleaner on a certain day - you can create the shift assign the job (the client), and override the current job qualification to be only the cleaner requested.

In the example below you can see I'm creating a shift for my client Jordan Parker, everyone is qualified to work at this job, but on Wednesday he specifically requests only Anja. To override the job qualifications I selected edit, cleared the current selection, and chose only Anja.

Open Shifts that Only Certain Employees Can Work

Even if you use open shifts, you can still qualify them for certain employees. This is true even when the shift contains a job. For example, say I'm a restaurant owner who uses open shifts, and I'm creating a shift for my cooks (the job) on Saturday evening. I have 6 employees qualified for the job of cook but on Saturday the kitchen is crazy, and since two of the cooks are new I don't trust them to work that shift. I can override the current qualifications and qualify the 4 necessary users.

No problem! You can simply override the current job qualifications and set the shift qualifications instead. Take a look at how to do this in the example above.

In this case, you can also override the job qualifications and select only the users who are qualified to work the shift. Take a look at how to do this in the example above.

All admins assigned to the scheadule will be able to override shift qualifications. However, admins can only override qualifications for shifts and/or jobs that are qualified to users or smart groups they are admins on.

If a shift is qualified to a smart group that they are not an admin on the smart group will appear as hidden and the admin will only be able to add/remove new groups.

If the shift is qualified to users, whom the admin does not manage then those employees will appear hidden, and the admin will only be able to add/remove employees they are admins of.

If you would like your scheduling admins to override qualifications for shifts regardless of which smart group and/or user is assigned they should be an admin of all the smart groups you have created and all users smart group. To learn more about admin permissions on the user's category click here

I'm trying to publish a shift with custom qualifications but I'm getting a pop asking me to choose qualifications, what does this mean?

In this case, you likely set custom shift qualifications and then changed the job associated with the shift. When you change the job Connecteam will ask you to choose the qualifications because the job is qualified for either users or a smart group.

Here you will have to choose whether or not to keep the custom qualification or to use the job qualifications. Let's look at an example. In the image below you can see I have custom qualifications for my shift as a cashier

Once I change the job to Cook, I'm requested to choose the qualifications because the job cook has its qualifications.

When your employees clock in they will need to select a 'Job' (i.e. something you are tracking time for). Therefore it is important to set up jobs in the time clock feature, regardless of whether or not you are using them in the schedule.

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