Create a shift

A shift is the basic unit of the schedule: an employee's work slot, with its hours, its section, its skills, its breaks and any tasks. Creating a shift is the first building block of building a schedule. This article details every entry point and every field of the creation panel.

Open the creation panel

Go to Schedules → Schedule management and move to the right week with the navigation arrows. The creation panel opens in several ways:

• When hovering over a cell, the + Add a shift button appears. On an employee's row, that employee will be pre-selected; at the top of a day column, no employee is pre-filled.
• The + in a day's header creates a shift for that day.

The "Create a shift" panel opens on the right.

The panel's three tabs

At the top of the panel, three tabs determine what you create:

• Shift: a work slot (the case detailed below).
• Absence: an absence (leave, sickness, time off in lieu...) directly in the schedule.
• Unavailability: a period when the employee can't work.

The following describes the Shift tab.

The fields of a shift

Section The "Choose a section" dropdown attaches the shift to a section (for example Kitchen, Floor). It only appears if your account uses sections. The section's colour helps spot the shift in the schedule.

User The "Choose a user" dropdown designates the employee. If they were pre-selected via their row, it's already filled in. To the right of this field, a star rating (from 1 to 5) recalls the employee's rating when rating is enabled, which helps choose the right person.

Skills The "Select one or more skills" field lets you associate the required or performed skills with the shift (for example Production, Cleaning). You can choose several.

Start and End The two time fields, mandatory, define the shift's span (by default 09:00 to 17:00). You can enter any range, including a shift that ends after midnight.

Paid break and Unpaid break Two separate fields to indicate the break duration. The paid break stays counted in the work hours; the unpaid break is deducted. How the unpaid break is subtracted (from the start or end of the shift) depends on a global setting on your account.

Shift not counted in worked hours This box lets you create a shift that doesn't count towards the employee's total worked hours. Useful for a particular presence slot that you don't want weighing on the counters.

Tasks The Add a task button adds one or more tasks to the shift, each with its own start and end times. This is handy for breaking a service down into specific activities (for example a delivery, an inventory). You can add or remove them.

Comment The "Comment" text area lets you add a free note to the shift. Depending on your settings, this comment can be made visible directly in the schedule.

Recurrence The Add a recurrence button is used to automatically repeat the shift over several days or weeks, rather than recreating it by hand. You define the frequency and the repetition period, and Shyfter generates the whole series.

Save

At the bottom of the panel, two buttons: Cancel to close without creating anything, and Create shift to save. The shift then appears in the schedule, surrounded by a dotted line: it's a draft, still invisible to the employee. For it to become visible in the mobile app, you must publish it from the green button at the top right of the schedule.

Create a free shift

To open a slot without assigning it right away, leave the User field empty on creation. The shift becomes a free shift, which can be offered to the team or assigned later. You find it in the "Available shifts" area at the top of the schedule.

Legal constraints: think about your joint committee

Creating a shift isn't just about placing hours in the schedule: the slot must respect the legal framework applicable to your company. In Belgium, this framework largely depends on your joint committee (CP), the sectoral body that sets, by collective agreement, concrete rules that influence how you schedule: minimum duration of a work period, maximum daily span, weekly duration, premiums for night work, Sunday work or public holidays, or a minimum number of hours for part-time work.

In Shyfter, you indicate your joint committee in Settings ⚙️ → HR → Settings (selection of the collective agreement / CP). This choice then feeds the calculations and, if you enable it, the compliance check that monitors your schedules.

The main joint committees

Depending on your activity, you generally fall under one of these CPs:

• CP 302: hospitality industry (horeca): restaurants, cafés, hotels, caterers.
• CP 202: food retail.
• CP 201: independent retail.
• CP 311: large retail companies; CP 312: department stores.
• CP 200: auxiliary committee for employees (the broadest, tertiary sector).
• CP 322: service vouchers and temporary work.
• CP 330: health establishments and services.

A few concrete examples

• In horeca (CP 302), each work period cannot in principle be shorter than 3 hours, and the daily span is framed (in practice 14 hours): useful for framing a split shift or an evening service.
• In retail, Sunday and evening work is framed and often gives rise to premiums: to be taken into account when placing a shift at the weekend.
• For part-time work, a minimum number of hours per work period generally applies, which avoids scheduling slots that are too short.

These examples are given as an indication and do not constitute legal advice. The precise rules depend on your joint committee, your collective agreement and may change. In case of doubt, check with your social secretariat or the applicable agreement. For an automatic check of your schedules, enable the compliance check in the HR settings.