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Comment by untilHellbanned | Hacker News Reader

i mean do employees really want to deal with work stuff via text message too? We have email, calendars, various video and chat messaging apps, old fashion face-to-face communication, etc.

I'm pretty sure employees want to feel less on call, not to mention keep their one last silo of personal communication free from yet another greedy overlord.

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Some types of employees have very irregular schedules, which can vary on a week-to-week basis. Right now, the most common solution is to review the "master schedule", usually a large printout hung in a common area in the back of the establishment, and write down what your days and hours will be. This is inconvenient for employees, who may make transcription errors, not see a shift they're scheduled to work because they're trying to follow a large chart filled with dozens of other employees, or miss a change in the schedule that was made after they had already written theirs down.

When I worked retail I saw the above issues every week, and would have welcomed a solution that I would know to be always up-to-date, was not filled with irrelevant information, and was convenient to access.

--"miss a change in the schedule that was made after they had already written theirs down."

That is more of management incompetence issue- if they make a schedule change after posting the schedule, they should inform (and ask permission) from affected employees- duh! But, I am forced to accept that many managers (especially in these types of jobs) are indeed inept.

We found that this was a pain point for managers. They would text workers their schedule changes. Then, the workers treated that channel as two-way.

For instance, they would text the manager when they were running late to a shift. The manager would not be checking their phone, and it caused issues.

Our goal is to create flexibility for workers. We looked at why so many companies still used pen and paper scheduling, and built a product for that market.

We found in user tests that many employees don't have email, and even run on prepaid phones. So, every Sunday they drive to each of their jobs (sometimes two or more) to find out when they are working. Alternatively, their manager (or a coworker) takes a photo of the schedule and texts it to them.

That's the person we built this V2 for. We're saving them time compared to traveling to work to see a printed schedule.

We want to further increase flexibility with tools like shift swapping. However, like I detailed in our other comment, using methods like email didn't have high enough engagement to give workers access to the feature. So, we built Staffjoy V2 with the idea of increasing engagement so that we could build more worker-friendly tools.

Finally, the workers can turn it off if they want.

"We found in user tests that many employees don't have email, and even run on prepaid phones."

Anyone reading along should remember this point. It's worth remembering because I've seen it over and over from when I started in the job market all the way today with even Fortune 100 companies. Those I know that did something about it usually involves signing in with username & password over Internet. Many of these companies have workers that don't want to deal with their crappy intranets or just have prepaid phones. A service that either totally or as an option appeals to such people has a massive, potential userbase to draw on if they can convince companies to use their software.

When I did part time shift work, I always checked my schedule when I was at work... but that may not work too well if you only work at a job occasionally, or if your boss is too incompetent to make the schedule in advance.

It's tougher for employees who work multiple part-time jobs. They're in the business less frequently, and they can't keep up with changes.

This is fantastic! I can see this being helpful to shift workers. Really applaud the process you took to arrive at the big opportunity.

Text messaging is a great tool for reaching a wide group of users (think WhatsApp). Shift scheduling touches a lot of low income and part time workers who may not have access to smartphones or data plans. Missing a shift can be costly. To me this isn't about being on call, but helping the workers ensure they have some control over their time.

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