Sick call at 6 a.m., phone chain, WhatsApp group: this is how you fill open shifts in minutes instead of hours - with a shift marketplace that checks qualification, rest periods and weekly hours before sending, and an interface for temp staffing and staffing agencies.
It is 6:05 a.m., the early shift starts at 6:30. A registered nurse calls in sick, and the schedule now has a gaping gap. What happens next is familiar to every ward manager, every shift lead in the warehouse and every site manager in cleaning: the phone chain starts. Who is off today? Who had the late shift yesterday and isn't allowed yet? Who lives close enough? After twelve calls and three voicemails, someone says yes - or not.
The second variant is the WhatsApp group: “Who can cover the early shift today?” That is faster but not better. The wrong people respond (no matching qualification), the unsuitable ones (right after the night shift) or nobody, because the message gets lost between cat pictures. And in the end nobody knows who actually said yes. Data protection is an issue anyway as soon as names and absences are in a private group.
This is exactly where Absence management comes in: with short-notice staff absence what counts is not how many people you reach but how quickly you find the one suitable person - and how cleanly the shift sits in the schedule afterwards.
A Shift marketplace is a marketplace for open shifts within your business. Instead of making calls, you post the shift as a Shift offer : date, time, workplace, required qualification, number of slots. Everyone eligible receives a notification in the schedule app via push and can accept with one tap. Scheduling sees all responses in one place, and as soon as the shift is assigned it lands directly in the schedule.
The difference from the WhatsApp group is not the message but what happens before and after: beforehand, the system checks who is even allowed to receive the offer. Afterwards, the staffing is in the schedule, the time records and payroll preparation without any detour. Anyone who has been working with a floater pool list in Excel or is looking for an INSITU alternative that does not run as a separate system alongside the schedule is in the right place here.
The biggest time-waster in the phone chain is not the calling but the sorting out. A good shift marketplace takes over this work before the first push notification goes out. These checks are part of it:
Whoever accepts first has the shift. That is the fastest model and fits when the shift starts at 6:30, all candidates are equivalent and the check rules are clean. The advantage: nobody has to wait for a decision, the gap is closed in minutes. The disadvantage: whoever does not have their phone in hand at that moment misses out - and whoever wants the stepping-in bonus always wins.
Everyone interested responds, and scheduling decides who gets the shift. That takes longer but is fairer and makes sense when it is about shifts a few days away, when you want to distribute stand-ins evenly or when extra hours are undesirable for certain people. With several open slots (three pickers for Saturday), this model is also clearer.
In practice you need both: first come, first served for the acute absence in the morning, selection for the planned gap next week. What matters is that the model is set when the offer is created and everyone involved can see it.
Sometimes your own floater pool is not enough. Then temp staffing in care, a temp agency for logistics or a subcontractor in building cleaning comes into play. So far this runs by phone and email: request, follow-up question, confirmation, and then someone types the name into the schedule by hand. A temp staffing interface in the schedule saves exactly this detour. This is what it should look like:
Anyone with several partners connects them all. The first offer goes out internally, then after a deadline or directly in parallel to the external partners - depending on how tight it is.
Absence management in hospitals and care homes: Here the skilled staff ratio counts. If a skilled nurse drops out, an assistant is no help, even if they could come right away. The shift marketplace therefore has to filter strictly by qualification and keep the PpUGV requirements per shift in view. The internal floater pool gets the offer first, temp staffing via interface as the second stage. And because rest periods after the night shift are especially prone to being breached in care, the note belongs in every candidate list.
Understaffing in logistics: Peak days, goods receipt, picking: when three people are missing on Friday, it is about slots, not individuals. One offer with three slots, model “Scheduling selects”, forklift license mandatory for goods receipt, temp agency via webhook in parallel. By the afternoon, staffing is settled.
Site staffing in services and cleaning: In building cleaning and security services, the site is the workplace. If someone at Site North drops out, only workers who know that site or have been briefed should be asked - qualification per workplace. Anyone with floaters across sites sees them first in the candidate list.
We built the shift marketplace as part of the schedule, not as a separate tool alongside it. The process is the one you know from everyday life, only without the phone chain:
GET /offers the partner retrieves open offers, via POST /offers/{id}/respond you submit a worker with name, qualification and contact, via GET /responses they see the status of their submissions. Details are in the Partner interface documentation.In short: Filling open shifts becomes one click and one push notification in Presio. And because the shift marketplace is built into the schedule, time tracking, surcharges and payroll preparation are correct afterwards without anyone entering anything later.
An internal marketplace for open shifts: scheduling posts a shift with time, workplace and qualification, all suitable employees receive a push notification and can accept. The assigned shift lands directly in the schedule - without a phone chain and without a WhatsApp group.
No. A shift offer is voluntary, especially when it concerns shifts on days off. Whoever accepts is scheduled; whoever does not respond suffers no disadvantage. Whether and which bonus is paid for stepping in is governed by the collective agreement or works agreement.
Both have their place. First come, first served is fastest and suits the acute absence in the morning. Selection by scheduling is fairer and makes sense for shifts a few days away, for several slots or when extra hours are to be distributed evenly. The model is set per offer.
The staffing agency is created as a partner and receives an API key. It retrieves open offers via the interface or has them delivered via webhook and submits its own workers with name, qualification and contact. If the business confirms, the worker counts toward staffing immediately.
Shift data only: date, time, workplace, required qualification, number of slots and an optional note. No names of the permanent staff, no reasons for absence, no personnel files. Conversely, the business only receives the details of the submitted worker.
Yes. Before sending, qualification, overlaps, absences, not-available rules and weekly hours are checked. Breached rest periods under § 5 ArbZG are flagged as a note in the candidate list so that scheduling decides consciously.
Click the red cell, offer the shift, push to everyone suitable - and add temp staffing via interface. In Presio, the shift marketplace is part of the schedule. Free to start until 31.10.2026, no credit card.
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