To see which days we are accepting reschedule & removal requests, scroll down or click here.

Overview

We pride ourselves in the scheduling flexibility we are able to offer to our employees while also delivering excellent transcripts quickly to our customers.

We experience fluctuations in how much work our customers ask us to complete, thus our operational need and scheduling flexibility fluctuates as well.

In times of low work, or during times where we have more than enough capacity to process our work, we aim to be more flexible. Similarly, in times of high work, or during times where we don't have enough capacity to process our work, we ask for additional worked hours from our transcription team.

Seasonality

Generally, the months that we receive the highest amount of work are January through March/April along with October, November, and December. During these times, our scheduling flexibility may change.

Proficient Scribes

When we are within our Turnaround Time, we will make available to you opportunities to remove or reschedule your hours.

If you are a Proficient Scribe, you may take advantage of our enhanced Schedule Flexibility system.

If you work on Custom, you should check to see if there is work available before inputting a removal request.

If you are not a Proficient Scribe, we expect you to work your shifts in full with a minimum of schedule changes. Our hope is that, by working on a regular basis with a minimum of schedule changes, that you have the most opportunity to practice and refine your transcription skills to become a Proficient Scribe. Note: even if you are not a Proficient Scribe, making on-time requests is acceptable.

The System

• If you are a Proficient Scribe then you may request removal or rescheduling of any of your scheduled shifts provided that:
  • You contact your office
  • You are rescheduling or removing hours on a day that is listed as being open for rescheduling or removing hours
  • The hours in question are not already make-up hours. (For example, if you have make-up hours for missing a shift, those hours are not eligible to be removed).
  • You are not already late to your shift (per the COSA document, schedule requests must be input before being late)
• We envision that the majority of requests will be approved on a "guaranteed" basis, however, requests are approved based upon operational need.
  • Operational need can change quickly and can change before this page is updated.
  • This is why contacting your office with a schedule change is required.

Explanation

As of April 30, we are trialing out displaying our progress towards achieving our "goal" scheduled hours within a day and, once we exceed that goal, how close are we to being "full" on scheduled hours in a given day.

Think of it this way: our projections on incoming work give us both a low number (minimum amount of work we'll receive in a day) and a high number (probably we won't receive more than this).

At minimum, we want to be able to process at least the lower number on how much work we' receive in a day. And then we want to avoid scheduling MORE people to work than the most amount of work we think will come in.

Another factor is how large our backlog is. Assume for a moment that there's a day that we are "on target" to process all our incoming work. If on that day we have a backlog of work, even if we process all the new work, there's still work left over. This is why being "on target" for scheduled hours is *not* the same as being "full" on scheduled hours.

This is why we are trialing out displaying how close we are to our target scheduled hours and how close we are to being totally full.

Note also that how we do on one day affects other days. For example: assume we are projecting to begin Monday with a backlog of work and that on both Monday and Tuesday we are "on target" for scheduled hours and 90% full. If that Monday we get less work than anticipated *and/or* we have many more people work than anticipated, and we totally clear out that backlog earlier than anticipated, we will actually be more than 90% full on Tuesday. Still, we are trialing out presenting this information to figure out what is useful for each of you.

Some Remarks

We never know for sure how much work our customers will send us. We can only guess (although we try to make informed guesses). This webpage is part of our efforts to be as transparent as possible. We want to rely on you and all our other transcriptionists throughout the year especially when we have a high amount of incoming work. We want you to be able to rely on us as much as possible, and we endeavor to be transparent and forthcoming with changes to our office hours and operational need.

On-time Request Deadline

We attempt to finalize schedules approximately two weeks in advance. Every Monday at 5:00pm is the deadline to make changes to the following week's schedule. By the time it is Monday at 5:00pm, the current week's schedule has already been finalized.

When you plan in advance and meet the on-time request deadline, we will endeavor to approve your schedule requests even if we are not actively looking for shift removals/reschedules.

Related pages:

Performance Metrics - Definition of what a "Proficient Scribe" is.