Skill requirements are added within the Rota Drafting Bench. They help to ensure that the right number of employees working a specific shift have the right types of skills and qualifications to carry out their duties effectively and safely, whilst allowing you to satisfy any compliance requirements.

This guide will look at:

• Adding a Skill requirement to a shift
• Allocating a shift with a Skill requirement to an employee

Adding a Skill requirement to a shift

1. Select ‘Rota’ from the Menu Bar.
2. In ‘Options, Filters & Preferences’, select ‘Drafting Bench’ (Skill requirements can only be added via the Drafting Bench).
3. In the Drafting Bench, select the required day.
4. In the Bench Shifts that appear on the right of the screen, select the required Shift Rule that you wish to add to the Drafting Bench.
5. Select the appropriate ‘Skill’ requirement from the menu.
6. Select the number of employees that must possess the chosen Skill requirement for that particular shift ('Required').

Allocating a shift with a Skill requirement to an employee

1. In ‘Options, Filters & Preferences’, select ‘Skills’. This provides a visual aid of employees’ Skills and Skill Sets that appear underneath their names in the Rota.
2. Choose a suitable employee (ie. one who has the necessary skills to match the requirements) and drag & drop the shift up into the cell opposite their name.

Please note:

• In order to assist with the matching of skills, once the shift has been grabbed, employees who have the necessary skills will be highlighted.
• You will be prevented from dropping a shift with Skill requirements on an employee that doesn’t have the matching skills.

Example:

You need 10 employees to work the EARLY shift, one of which must be a Team Leader, one must be a First Aider and one must be a Fire Marshall.

• Add the EARLY Shift Rule with a requirement of 1 and select ‘Team Leader’ from the menu.

• Add a second EARLY Shift Rule with a requirement of 1 and select ‘First Aider’ from the menu.

• Add a third EARLY Shift Rule with a requirement of 1 and select ‘Fire Marshall’ from the menu.

• Add a fourth EARLY Shift Rule with a requirement of 7 but with no Skill selected.

‍

You should now see four different requirements in the Drafting Bench for the same shift.

Allocate these shifts by dragging & dropping them into the Rota.

Best practice - allocate the shifts that have Skill requirements first, followed by those without any requirements.

Additional information

You can only add Skill requirements to shifts from within the Drafting Bench, and only if they do not already have a Count in the Rota. Once a shift has been allocated to the Rota, the Skill requirements cannot be edited unless the shift is moved back into the Drafting Bench making the Count ‘0’.

‍