University of Arkansas Student Creates, Improves Online Schedule-Making Tool

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Tyler McCarley was 16 and working in a pizza parlor in Little Rock when he first recognized the scheduling difficulties faced by managers.

“The first thing I noticed when I started working at the restaurant was that it took managers way too long to create schedules,” McCarley said.

Now a senior at the University of Arkansas, McCarley created MyWorkShift, an online tool that allows managers to quickly and effectively schedule their employees, after his second year on campus.

McCarley says that nearly 5,000 organizations, companies and educational institutions across the country have signed up for MyWorkShift, but he hopes the new version will become even more popular. The updated version features a re-designed user interface, manager dashboard, auto-scheduling feature, as well as timesheets that export into QuickBooks for payroll. McCarley, who will soon be graduating with a marketing degree from the Sam M. Walton College of Business, is building a team to help support the new version after its recent launch.

 “Right now we’re in start-up mode,” he said. “We’re trying to bring together the team. I’m a college student; there are a lot of other college students I think would like to be involved.”

He came up with the idea for MyWorkShift while working at the pizza restaurant when he had a hectic schedule, like many teenagers who shuffle after-school jobs with extracurricular activities. He discovered that filling a schedule dominated by part-time workers was a puzzle for the restaurant manager.

“I began thinking that there has to be a better way to do this,” he said. “You could create a scheduling program that was online and could save companies money by saving managers’ time. And if it would facilitate communication in the workplace by allowing employees to easily check their schedules and request changes, then that would be a big benefit.”

MyWorkShift holds employees more accountable for their hours and reduces the time supervisors and accountants spend on scheduling and payroll, leading to company-wide savings.

The web application uses a dashboard panel that allows the managers to see who is scheduled on different shifts, monitor shift-trade requests and be alerted when workers come in late or request time off. Scheduling shifts can be done by dragging and dropping the person’s name to the shift blocks or by using MyWorkShift’s proprietary auto-schedule feature.

Employees can define their availability and quickly check their schedule with MyWorkShift, promptly receiving any on-the-go updates through e-mail and text message notifications. Employees can also send requests to their co-workers to ask them to trade or cover their work shift.

One company, which employs 70 people and uses MyWorkShift, has reported significant time savings, according to McCarley.

“Prior to MyWorkShift, it took the accountant six hours to do the payroll, to look at everyone’s timesheets and type them into QuickBooks,” he said, referring to the popular small-business accounting software. “Now they can import the spreadsheet to QuickBooks and it takes about two minutes.”