Workforce management and database¶
Workforce management is an extensive set of features that allows you to efficiently build, manage and monitor your workforce, regardless of its size. Sinch is primed to manage thousands of temporary staff members.
List of staff members¶
The core place for workforce management in Sinch is the Staff list, where you can find information about every staff member that is registered in your company. It is possible to view any staff member’s profile with detailed information, create a new staff member profile and use the extensive filtering options to search for staff members based on various criteria, from general to very specific.
At the same time, it is possible to directly address staff members from the list with job offers or to sign them up for work.
Worker list
Self-registration and worker portal¶
With Sinch, you do not have to manually sign staff members into the application or for jobs. There are features that allow your staff members to search and register for jobs by themselves, while a sophisticated system of requirements ensures that only staff members with the required skills and experience can sign up for the job. This saves your company time and allows it to build a large workforce without the additional cost of coordinating it.
Staff members can register into the app by themselves by completing a basic information form on the login page. Their newly created account must be activated by an activation link they receive in an automatically generated email. Then they can sign in into their own worker portal account where they can fill in their profiles with all of the necessary information you need to know about your staff.
Above all, the worker portal is where staff members find available work that is being offered by your company and where they can apply, if they meet the requirements. You have the option to allow them to self-register for jobs without the need for your company coordinator to find, address and enroll a particular person for the job. This saves your coordinators’ valuable time while you still have full control over the occupation of the jobs. You can, of course, always manually sign up or sign off any staff members by yourself if necessary.
In addition, the worker portal allows the staff member to mark when they are available for job offers, check how much they have earned in their electronic wallet, apply for a payout, and sign up for a non-working events (such as team building or training).
For more information, see Worker portal.
As an administrator, you are fully in charge of what your staff members see in the worker portal and what they are allowed to do by themselves. They may or may not have the possibility of self-registration for jobs, self-requested payouts and more. It’s completely up to you to decide which way to go.
Worker portal
Worker profile¶
The staff members fill in information about themselves into their profiles according to your company needs. They see information about their personal and profile attributes, rating, badges, contracts and more.
In Sinch, you can even specify very sophisticated set of requirements based on attributes, rating, and badges, to ensure that only staff members with the right skills and experience can apply for the job. So the more detailed a staff member’s profile is, the better chance they have to be eligible for jobs.
As an employer who wants to provide a reliable service, you might need to know certain information about your staff members, whether it is for contracts (ID card number) or for the jobs themselves (qualification or experience, for example). You can set up and specify which information you need to know, and therefore your staff members will have to add it to their profiles. You can specify:
Personal attributes¶
All personal information such as profile picture, birth number, birthplace or ID card number can be specified here. You can create new attributes and filter through existing ones. Sinch gives you the option to choose among several types of new attributes depending on what format you need the attribute in (number, text, selection, file, etc.). It also supports citizenship specification in case you need different attributes for people from different countries.
Profile picture and profile verification¶
You can decide if you want to manually approve profile pictures and verify personal details in staff member profiles. That way you can be sure that staff members cannot apply for jobs until you personally make sure their profile is properly filled in.
For more information, see Photos to approve and Profile verification.
Profile attributes¶
Depending on your business, you might need to know the education, experience, and skills that your staff members have. Here you can easily make a list of attributes for work-related information your staff members need to fill in to their profiles. You might require to know and see language skills and certificates, driver’s licenses, clothing size, or anything else you might need. Again, Sinch gives you the option to choose among several types of new attributes depending on which format you need the attribute in (number, text, selection, file, etc.). You can also mark some attributes as important or that requires verification (submitting a scanned copy of a certificate, for example). You can also set an expiration date for for the attributes, if needed.
Profile attributes verification¶
If you decide to require verification for some attributes, they will automatically be shown in the Attributes to approve section.
Badges¶
Another way of marking your staff member’s experience and skills are through accomplishment badges. These can be acquired based on various criteria that you as the administrator decide. Badges can have levels, and are given to staff members automatically by the application, or manually by the administrator. Here are some common examples of badges, though there can be many more according to your business needs:
- Company badge for working for a specific company.
- Profession badge for working as a specific profession.
- Appointment badge for attending non-working events.
- Tag badge that can be customized according to your needs, for example:
- Location badge for working at a specific location.
- Newbie badge for new staff members that will ensure that they get work to gain experience.
- Senior badge for experienced and skilled staff member.
Professions¶
Depending on which services your business provides, you can set up and customize various professions in Sinch (e.g. stagehands, technicians, hostesses, waitress, drivers, security guards etc).
Professions serve many purposes in the logic of managing work and staff members in Sinch.
- Professions structure your workforce – each staff members in your database can have one or more professions.
- Professions allow you to specify prices and wages in greater detail – each profession can have its own rate in the price list and wage list. For example, the work of more qualified professions can be more expensive etc.
- For each shift you must specify which profession the attending staff members are supposed to be. This ensures that only staff members from that profession can see the shift in the system and can sign up for it. It also allows you to calculate the price of the shift, based on the price rates of that profession.
For detailed information, see Professions.
Tracking of staff member performance, experience and reliability¶
Rating¶
A rating reflects a staff member’s reliability and experience. It can determine their wages and it is one of the main criteria for applying for work. It can be raised or lowered automatically by the application, or manually by the administrator.
For reliability and experience, a staff member’s rating increases. The essential way to score rating points is to be at work on time; more shifts on time, more rating points, up to an established limit. For rules violations and late arrivals, the rating drops as a form of penalty. For exceptionally good or bad performance, administrators can adjust both current and maximum ratings.
Problematic attendance and issues¶
Banlist¶
If for any reason (a previous bad experience for example), your client does not want a specific staff member to work for them, you can add the staff member to the company’s banlist. That way it is guaranteed that the staff member will not be able to sign up for any jobs for this company, and therefore will never work for this client as long as you don’t want them to (see Banlist).
Penalties and conditional penalties¶
In the event that a staff member seriously violates your company's rules regarding on-time arrivals, or does not show up for work at all, you can block their access into the application until they pay a financial penalty. The penalty is normally deducted from the staff member’s wallet after their agreement. If the staff member explains their late arrival or absence and provides a doctor’s note for example, the administrator can cancel the penalty and mark it as an excused absence.
Impersonation¶
Administrators with the appropriate rights can open a staff member's profile and use the "Sign in as" button, to log in as the staff member, to be able to see and do exactly what the staff member can.
Deletion¶
Any staff member can be deleted from the application by the administrator if needed. The information about the staff member will remain in the application in the form of a placeholder and the profile can later be restored without losing information about badges, ratings, etc.
Feedback¶
Staff members, as well as shifts, can be subjected to feedback from any staff member, admin or client, directly through the application.
Appointments¶
Appointments are any events or happenings that are not jobs or shifts, e.g. payouts, staff training, team building, etc. Creating an appointment, rather than a job, is helpful when you want to organize events that the staff members do not get paid for and your customers are not invoiced for. This way, you can still keep track of attendance, specify other important information or be able to send group messages to the attendees.
Finances¶
Sinch has several features to help you manage financial matters related to your workforce. It allows you to keep track of signed contracts, create detailed wage lists, simplify salary payouts to your staff members (by an electronic wallet system) and allows your staff members to request payouts by themselves.
Contracts¶
In Sinch it is easy to define any type of contract that suits you best. Then fill in whether the staff member has signed the contract or not and upload a scanned or electronic version. Therefore, it is possible to keep track of whether all legislative conditions of the country and/or company are met.
Wage lists¶
Wage lists determine how much your staff members get paid. You can set a wide scale of wages based on various criteria, such as the staff member’s profession, rating, role or the company for which they perform the job. You can set any number of necessary custom made wage lists and make them available either to all customers or to selected ones only. See Wage lists for more details on how to set them up and use them.
Wallet system¶
The electronic wallet system allows you and your staff members to have a constant overview of a current account balance by showing how much money was earned and paid out. When the job is finished, a staff member’s salary is added into their wallet. From here it can be paid out either on a specific payment day, or optionally, when the staff member requests it by themselves.
Payouts¶
Sinch gives you several options on how to help deliver payouts to your staff members. Do you want to give your staff members flexibility, and have the possibility to be paid directly into their bank accounts upon their request? Do you prefer to handle payouts in person on specific dates only? With Sinch, you can do whatever suits you best!
Setting payment methods and types¶
You can conveniently set up payments based on different types of employees’ contracts (see Contracts) or invoices from contractors (see Invoices). To learn more about payout methods go to Settings → Payouts.
Sinch, of course, supports payouts by bank transfers but has various features to help you with payouts in cash as well, if you wish.
Tip
To make payouts in person quickly and smoothly for your staff members, you can create an appointment with allocated time slots so nobody needs to wait. For more information see Appointments.
Payments by users’ request¶
To maximally facilitate and speed up payouts, Sinch offers an optional feature to let the staff members request their payments any time, by themselves, from their wallets (see Wallet), while you still have full control over those payments. If you allow it, the staff members can request payments in their profiles and you only need to check and approve them. The money is then sent to the staff members’ accounts with one click.
In both cases, you can deal with payments individually or in a batch request, based on your preference.
Note
A full list of bank transactions, with details, can be seen and filtered through the main menu Finance → Payments and Transactions.
CMS: Content Management System¶
CMS allows you to manage content in the application with the ability to add text, links, images or videos to the menu. Whether you need to publish a new document about your company’s rules, communicate your company’s benefits or share worker manuals, this is the way to do it. It can also be the help, FAQ or contacts section for your staff members. You can also publish content to clients, or admins only.
Communication¶
Sinch has many features to make communication with your staff members as quick and smooth as possible. You can choose from various channels to contact your staff members:
Email management¶
System emails are sent to staff members (and also admins, and clients in certain cases) automatically, any time a specific action happens in the application. After registering, for example, your staff members automatically receive an email with an activation code. But there are many more handy templates! Sinch can send emails:
- After an administrator changes the time of a shift, your staff members receive an email: There has been a change in the shift you are attending.
- After an administrator approves a profile photo the staff member submitted, the staff member receives an email: Your profile photo has been approved.
- After an administrator confirms wages for a job, the money is paid out to the staff member’s electronic wallet, and they then get an email: There is a new item in your wallet.
All templates are easily editable directly in Sinch.
Emails can also be sent directly from a shift detail when it is necessary to send information to staff members that are registered for the shift. It is possible to write an email to selected staff members directly from the staff list.
Newsletters¶
Sinch allows you to send email newsletters to its users. You can search for any recipient using a filter or choose from predefined groups of recipients. It keeps a history list of all newsletters and saves drafts just as your personal email account does.
Note
A list of all sent emails can be found in Settings → Sent emails. A list of all emails waiting to be sent can be found in Communication → Emails → Mail queue.
SMS Gateway¶
If you have a functional SMS Gateway for your company, you can send text messages to Sinch users from Sinch. There is a list of all of the messages ever sent, the possibility to filter them and information about whether they have been delivered.
With a functional gateway, you can also send text messages from a job detail page. That way, the message will be sent to all of the staff members attending the job. It is possible to send a text message to selected staff members directly from the staff list.
Snippets¶
Snippets are boxes with brief editable texts that appear on certain pages in the staff member portal. You can use them to communicate customized messages to all of your staff members, directly in their worker portals. Here are some common examples:
Staff member dashboard snippet examples:
"Please read the Help and Rules section carefully before signing up for work."
"Please fill in your profile attributes in order to be able to sign up for work."
Staff member signed up for job snippet examples:
"You are now successfully signed up for job J123, remember to read the detailed job description below."
"You are now successfully signed up for job J123, the limit for self-sign off is 24 hours before the job starts."
Snippet example
News¶
An administrator can create a news article that will appear for staff members when they log in to their profiles, as long as you keep it in an active status. You have the option to choose force read for articles that require your staff members’ acknowledgment or agreement, such as policy changes.