When I Work Reviews

Pros

The When I Work software is great at keeping track of my work schedule. On the Dashboard, it notifies me of my next upcoming shift, the date, and the time. It tells at which location I am working and what my position will be. It also tells what coworkers that I am working with during that shift. I can go into the schedule tab of the software and see what days during the week I am working. The software will also tally up my total hours that I will work per week. This is helpful because it allows me to see who is working and who is not so I can get a shift covered. The software also allows me to put in requests in advance of dates that I want to request off.

Cons

The availability scheduling feature takes some time to learn how to navigate. It is somewhat difficult to fully schedule availability. If you make a mistake and accidentally alter the availability for one day you have to go back to that day and fix it before adjusting your availability.

Pros

I like the web based system. I love the instant changes are communicated. I love the color coding of roles and the budgeting features on the schedule.

Cons

Reports are confusing. There should be more premade reports to choose from. I HATE that we can't report an absence without removing the employee from the schedule. When reported absent - the employees shift should be removed from the schedule as well as the labor hours.

Pros

able to see who is working with you on a daily basis

Cons

need managerial approval to take shifts off when you accidentally schedule yourself.

Pros

Drag and dropping shifts and the colour coded job sites.

Cons

After being a customer for over a decade since the very beginning. We missed the alterations to the annual plan deadline by less than a week due to being off work with a sick child.
When I work doesn't care and will not support.
They have now lost one of their longest customers.
They used to care about their customers, now they don't.

Pros

Being able to access my schedule from my phone was super important. I remember working where schedules were posted on paper in the staff room. People would have to go in and either write down their shifts or put them into their phone manually. Thankfully, apps like When I Work have become much more popular and schedules can be sent to employees digitally. I appreciated how simple viewing and accessing schedules has been through When I Work. (It makes planning the rest of my life much easier!)

Cons

The interface of the app is not very visually appealing. It's simple, which is what some may need. But I really appreciate a visually appealing, well configured app.

Pros

It is fairly easy to build the schedule every week and staff get notified right away. The time off feature works really well. I like the "Open Shifts" feature for weeks when we are short staffed.

Cons

So many things, but mostly that I have used it for 7 years and it has hardly evolved. Or at least when they do add features, you almost always have to pay for them. I made some changes a few years ago that broke somethings and tried to get someone on the phone and was basically told that I dont' qualify for phone support. They didn't solve my issue (I'm just tolerating it). Kind of annoying considering that I hav epaid about $8400 USD for this software over the past 7 years. I feel I'm worth a 15 minute phone call to troubleshoot my issues and make it work better for me.

Pros

Out of all scheduling apps I've used in multiple jobs, this one is by far the best.

Cons

Some features that I WOULD use are paywalled behind other features/services that I have no interest in

Pros

Perfect for online scheduling. Compunction with other members very helpful

Cons

Update email for all the new technology they add would be very useful

Pros

Super easy to navigate for both employee and employer. Accessible app right from your phone and is very straightforward.

Cons

From an employee perspective, my only thought is that it would be nice to have a better view to see all the shifts you signed up for. With what I’m familiar with, it’s a more individual view.

Pros

I like to manage schedules for our team.

Cons

I don't have any disadvantages regarding this application!

Pros

It is incredibly easy for both the employee to enter their availability and the manager to appropriately schedule. We love that we cant schedule somebody if they mark themselves unavailable, avoids confusion and holds the employee accountable

Cons

The inability to attach files to an email

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing When I Work

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to When I Work

Pros

The simplicity and accuracy are notable. It helps you from scheduling multiple employees on shifts. It allows for employees to swap shifts or release and pick as well. Notifications are immediately sent and acknowledgment of schedule and communications are recorded. Which is absolutely needed to employee accountability.

Cons

There are potential areas where this program could fail at advising the appropriate authority. If a shift was let go and needed to be picked up. Leading to understaffing concerns.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to When I Work

Pros

The Scheduling module works well for our 25-person veterinary practice where staff work rotating schedules. We can set up templates for each group and quickly deploy and tweak the schedule.

Cons

We tried to integrate with Gusto Payroll to streamline time-sheet reporting. It's a mess, and does not often work. It's really hard to troubleshoot because WhenIWork hides all the integration details. For instance you can not see the mapping of employees and their roles/jobs between the two companies. After a while I realize that it's faster to manually type in all the data since troubleshooting this is so time consuming. Plus you can not get support on the phone!

Pros

Notifies employees of upcoming schedule, published schedules.

Cons

Unable to approve time cards if you schedule a manager that is not required to clock in and out

Pros

It's visual and simple. It schedules down to 15 minute increments. It makes a very dynamic schedule like ours, easy to manage and understand.

Cons

It would be good if a shift automatically started from the time you first click on the schedule. It would be good if they understood how tricking and overcharging their customers leads to a complete lack of loyalty. Buyer beware! Just keep on checking your subscription amounts each month. As if you don't have other things to be occupied with.

Pros

My employees can use the app to get alerts and check their schedules. Employees can swap shifts with my approval. The time card is integrated into the schedule app. It is somewhat easy to use. We have used this software for about 2 years. When we first started with them there were not a lot of options out there. And it served its purpose. Our employees seem to like using it.

Cons

There are several cons. I think the price is too high for what you get. Trying to process the time cards is very cumbersome and not very easy to understand. We run 24 hours a day and this software is not well suited to a 24 hour clock. Overall I spend too much time trying to understand how to use the time clock - punch in/out- and it is really frustrating. Also- their customer support is really pretty horrible. There is not a way to call someone and you have to submit an email to support and it can take them a bit to get back to you. Issues with time cards are things you want an answer for right away and they do not offer a quick response. Also- you really have to use a desk top to process the time cards and it does not function so well with google chrome- I think safari works better- but I prefer to use chrome. There are glitches with it that are just frustrating.

Pros

-Allowing for employees to be in different timezones
-Allowing for employees to set their unavailability and their preferred scheduling times
-Allowing employees to shift swap within the software

Cons

-Software is often buggy. It auto schedules my employees during times they are marked as "unavailable". This may be due to the fact that we have people all over the world and could be a time-zone issue, but the fact remains that they are often scheduled during "unavailable" times, and it has to be adjusted.

-It also doesn't seem to honor the "schedule weekends first" feature correctly when I'm using auto scheduling. One of my employees ends up never being scheduled and I have to adjust. (TBF I have to adjust EVERYONE'S schedule after using the auto scheduler, but the issue with this one employee in particular is consistent and weird.)

-Making shift templates is cumbersome.

-There is no way for me to view someone's schedule in their timezone (and I'm talking about Singapore vs. CST) without switching my OWN timezone preference, which requires me to then immediately refresh the site or it won't show properly.

-There is no "undo" -- If I have a schedule pushed and I need to play around with a swap, the moment I shift someone's shift, it goes into draft mode and if I decide, "Hey, I'm gonna actually just leave them where they are," there is no way to undo the movement without republishing (and sending them a notification) the shift.

-Shift swapping doesn't allow for a FT employee to cover a PT employee's shift if they want, or for a PT employee to cover part of a FT employee's shift. I have to manually do this.

Pros

It has many of the features we needed for scheduling employees.
We liked that more than one location can be scheduled for different employees, even sometimes on the same day. When we finally figured out how to use it, the map function was convenient because we go different places nearly every day. We liked that employees could see who was working with them each day.

Cons

There is no ability for employees to decline a shift. For several years, we requested the company add this feature. This turned out to be a deal breaker for us, and we finally went to another software.
I also thought it was odd that when a loyal customer of many years left, no one from the company contacted us to find out why.
Interestingly, the software we changed to also costs less per month, in spite of the fees they charge us for employees to accept/decline shifts by text message.

Pros

This tools allows me to more easily schedule my staff with my staff entering their unavailable times which display when I am scheduling. The time tracking in the application, allowing my staff to clock in and out on the app is great. All of their time is tracked, and I get their total time worked at the end of each period which has saved me hours of my time already.

Cons

Some features seem to need a little more work. Additionally, this tool has required a lot of experimenting to figure out how I can use it best for my business. The task lists are great once they are figured out. Unfortunately, updating (reordering the items) is not easy. Additionally, my staff have struggled a bit with marking tasks complete on the wrong shift, causing issues. The fact that the Android and iOS versions vary in navigation on the phone has also led to issues in the "implementation" of the product. Extraction of the time totals is not great, as it only works for certain products. I end up manually transferring time totals from this tool to my payroll system.

Pros

What I liked about When I Work the most is that it is very easy to use. The link to download app feature works great. Its great for scheduling.

Cons

What I liked the least about When I Work is the time tracking feature because it real time updates are not automatically available without refreshing the screen. Also sometimes new shift updates also lag and require refreshing the app as well.

Pros

We love the fact that our employees can access it on their phones. Our employees are college students, so being able to use it on a mobile device is crucial. Our old program didn't have that functionality. I also like that I can go in and move someone's shift to "open" for any other employee to accept. Since our employees are college students and anything required for a course is excused from work, so it is really nice to be able to go in and move a shift for an employee that has an exam or something like that. I also like that employees have to acknowledge their shifts.

Cons

Two things - I can't go in and schedule just one person. We are on a college campus that operate on quarters. I would like to be able to look at an individual schedule for a certain time period and edit it as necessary, but that functionality doesn't exist. My employees are frustrated with the notifications. It is great that someone can do a "drop shift request" that goes out to all of the other employees, but it is frustrating to get 10 emails about that. We (mainly our hourly employees) wish there was an option to get the notifications in a digest once a day instead an email for every single notification.

Pros

It’s a great application if you handle a large team and you need to keep track of your employees schedule, time clock , and shift staffing. It can handle up to 75 users. We used this application when i joined a part time job in sales. And it was easy to set up both in desktop and mobile. And when i logged in I can see all members of our department in the Team messaging feature. You can easily read and track all conversation within the team. Choosing your shift or schedule was easy. Just add the shift or schedule you chose for up to 2 weeks and the Manager can view your schedule for the day. Time clocking was easy, just press the IN button and break button if you are on break. Its an awesome application and whats good is that its free to sign up and use these features.

Cons

Well since its free, the features and function are just limited to what the employees clicked on the app but no screenshots of their desktop or other feature that other time applications have that can testify that the logged hours are indeed productive. Unlike Some paid applications that would have integrations to payment system after approval of hours, When I Work does not have other app integrations that would be complete the staffing and accounting system of your business. But so far everything went fine for this application, and moving through features or tabs does not hang and does not have much errors.

Pros

I have numerous staff working different jobs at different locations. Previously I was using Excel to schedule them all. Keeping track of days off and their class schedules was next to impossible. Letting the staff request time off and set their availability streamlined the process drastically. Since switching to When I Work my time spent scheduling has been greatly reduced. The mobile app is very helpful for my employees. The ability to designate positions is also very valuable. A large portion of my staff work in a child care setting so there are rules about qualifications necessary for each shift. I can designate which staff have which qualifications so that only eligible staff can be scheduled for a specific shift.

Cons

I don't believe I have any cons. Occasionally when they change or update something it will cause an issue. I contact their customer service and it is corrected immediately.

Pros

The ease of navigating the app. Being able to put the scheduling software directly on the phone of the employees is outstanding.
We also really enjoy utilizing the messenger tool. Its a great way to speak to everyone in an efficient manner.

Cons

We dont like the add drop portion of shift scheduling and changes. As a management staff we would like to use this but it has been difficult to create a process do to implement this do to it not requiring a manager approval.

Pros

Employees find it easy to use. Admin uses it daily

Cons

Workchat is often faulty. Our manager (Android user) is so frustrated and has contacted support over 10 times.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to When I Work