Microsoft today debuted StaffHub, a no-extra-cost Office 365 application meant to help staff workers manage their work day through shift-schedule management, information sharing and the ability to connect to other work-related apps. The application, immediately available to all Office 365 corporate licensees, marks a Microsoft bid to expand beyond corporate users into the world of shift workers.
Staff workers, numbering about 500 million worldwide, are those who labor in retail stores, hotels, restaurants, factories or other locales and who typically lack their own office, desk or computer but often do own a smartphone. Too often, Microsoft says, those conditions make it hard for such workers to get and share important information, forcing a reliance on paper schedules, bulletin boards crammed with notices and hurried phone calls and text messages.
StaffHub lets managers quickly create, update and manage shift schedules. Staff workers can access those schedules online or on their smartphones and can swap shifts as necessary, with a manager’s approval. Managers and workers can easily communicate with the entire group or with individual workers.
Administrators can put links in the app that let workers access important documents, such as return policies, or applications created with PowerApps, Microsoft’s low-code development environment, such as a clock-in/clock-out time-keeping system. The user interface is simple and can be color-coded to help workers more quickly see their shifts.
Plans call for building links to popular workforce-management packages, though Bryan Goode, Office 365’s general manager, declined to state which ones.
StaffHub is available in 15 languages, including all the major Romance languages and Chinese. It’s available as part of the Office 365 K1, E1, E3 and E5 plans (including the “education” version of these plans). StaffHub runs on the web and under iOS and Android. Each individual using it must have an Office 365 account.
StaffHub is the final result of Project Sonoma, an entirely in-house development effort that began in the fall of 2016. Private testing began in August. Links that formerly led to Project Sonoma now lead to StaffHub.
There are hundreds of workforce-management programs are on the market, and many of them, including Mitrefinch, Jolt and Deputy, offer scheduling services. Some, such as WhenIWork, address shift scheduling exclusively and feature an interface similar to StaffHub’s. Seattle-based Shyft, launched in 2015, goes further, aiming to help retail and service workers make adjustments to their work availability and pick up shifts to earn more money.
But Goode said the app has no direct competition and that its biggest challenge is “helping companies using cumbersome manual processes understand the benefits of StaffHub.”
Of course, StaffHub has the built-in advantage of being part of Office 365, the most popular software as a service, with 70 million active users as of last year, according to one estimate. And it’s free. The app could help Microsoft sell Office 365 to corporate users with significant numbers of shift workers. It won’t compel existing corporate customers to buy expanded licenses that cover more users, because it’s being made available only to unlimited-user licensees.
