Bid-based rostering
Bid-based rostering is a scheduling model in which a business publishes all the work available for an upcoming period (which shifts, which roles, and how many people each one needs) and staff request the positions they want. A manager then decides who is placed.
It starts from the other end to traditional top-down assignment, where a manager or a scheduling system decides who works when and staff find out afterwards.
How it works
Bid-based rostering usually runs in four stages:
- Publish. The period's work is laid out: dates, roles or locations, and the capacity (how many people) each one needs.
- Request. Each person looks at what's on offer and requests the shifts they want, often within a minimum and maximum per period.
- Allocate. A manager checks the requests against capacity and places people, usually by priority tier or reliability record, and keeps a standby pool for the overflow.
- Confirm. Allocated and standby staff are told the outcome, and the roster is settled ahead of the shift.
What it changes
Top-down assignment is quick to build, but it can't see preference: a manager has no easy way of knowing who wants which shift before publishing it. Bid-based rostering collects that information first. Because people are placed against demand they expressed themselves, it tends to reduce no-shows and arguments about "why did I get this shift". It also shows uneven demand early, so a manager can see which shifts are contested and which are thin before committing anyone.
The cost is more moving parts. Someone still has to review the requests and allocate fairly, and the standby pool has to be managed so that shifts don't go unfilled.
In Chronomancer
Bid-based rostering is the core of Chronomancer. Each period publishes a 3-layer work hierarchy (configured per venue), staff request work through a signed link, and allocation runs on priority and a calculated reliability score, with a ranked standby list for each night.