Patent ID: 8744889

Claim:
A method for managing a shift schedule, comprising: obtaining employee data for a plurality of part time employees, a payroll constraint for a time period, and an employer requirement for the shift schedule; collecting, from the plurality of employees, an employee specific daily time period for each of the plurality of employees to work in one particular day in a particular week; generating, by a processor of a computer system, a plurality of daily shift schedules for the one particular day in the particular week based on the payroll constraint, the employee data, the employer requirement, and the employee specific daily time period, wherein the plurality of daily shift schedules comprises a daily shift schedule having a first employee of the plurality of employees assigned to work during the employee specific daily time period of the first employee in the one particular day in the particular week; determining, by the processor, a payroll budget associated with each of the plurality of daily shift schedules; ranking the plurality of daily shift schedules based on the payroll budget to obtain a ranked list of daily shift schedules; presenting the ranked list of daily shift schedules to an employer; providing the daily shift schedule to the first employee in response to an approval by the employer based on a ranking of the daily shift schedule in the ranked list; receiving a change request to the daily shift schedule from the first employee, wherein the first employee is no longer available to work during the employee specific daily time period of the first employee in the one particular day in the particular week due to an unforeseen event; sending, responsive to the change request and automatically without notifying the employer, a substitute request to a second employee of the plurality of employees, wherein the second employee is identified from the plurality of employees based on the employee specific daily time period of the second employee, and wherein the second employee has a pay rate that is same as or lower than the pay rate of the first employee; and revising, by the processor, the daily shift schedule to generate a revised daily shift schedule based on the second employee accepting the substitute request.