For contract and area managers covering same-day absence
Find qualified cover without rebuilding the roster
Somebody calls in at 5am for a 6am start. Fivexer turns that one call into a ranked list of people who are qualified, permitted at that site, rested and close enough to get there — and records why everyone else could not.
- Unaffected shifts are never touched
- Offer to several, or assign directly
- Unknown travel stays unknown
Calm Who can cover, already ranked
Illustrative: one sick call
- Home site, nearest journey
- Offered first
- Travel time not stated
- Flagged
- Rest rule not met
- Ruled out
One call-in, from impact to record
Reporting the absence turns Anna’s affected assignments into openings and leaves every other shift exactly as published. Assign the recommendation, or offer it further down the list.
Based at this site — no journey
Mark Kelly
Eligible at his own site, rested since Tuesday, and well below his contracted hours for the week.
Robert Turner
Not eligible: he is on Thursday’s night shift, which starts the minute this one would end.
RestA known journey away
Kate Parker
Not eligible: she is on Thursday’s depot early until 13:00 — an hour before this shift starts, not eleven.
RestLisa Ellis
Eligible, permitted at every site, and free from 14:00. Southgate to Northgate is a stated 50-minute journey.
James Shaw
Not eligible: this post requires a reception certificate he does not hold.
QualificationTravel not stated — never assumed to be zero
Thomas Reed
Eligible on every rule that can be checked. The travel gap cannot be checked, so a supervisor decides.
Nothing is decided yet. Assign the recommendation, or offer the shift to somebody further down — either way the reason is written down, and this is where you would read it back.
Ranked on the job and the rules, never on the person’s record
Five rules decide the order, and the third one is the reason this page can be shown to a works council.
Home site first, then by journey
A candidate’s origin is their nearest same-day assignment before the opening, otherwise their home site. Nothing else is inferred.
Unknown travel is not zero
Where no travel time is stated and no coordinates exist, the journey is unknown and the page says so. A convenient guess here is a person sent somewhere they cannot arrive.
No reliability score, ever
Acceptance history, no-show prediction and learned behaviour are not inputs to this ranking. That is deliberate, it is asserted in every result’s provenance, and it is what keeps cover ranking outside the EU AI Act’s Annex III profiling carve-back.
Offer, or fill directly
Offer to several with a deadline and the first acceptance wins; or assign directly when the supervisor has already spoken to them. An offer snapshots its travel context, so a later site edit cannot rewrite what somebody agreed to.
Running one short is a decision
A recorded one, with a reason. A tool with no way to say “nobody” is a tool people stop using on the morning it matters.
What this page will not claim
It does
- Turn one absence into scoped openings, not a rebuilt week
- Rank against the rules you configured, and show the exclusions
- Notify the worker and take their answer in their own portal
It does not
- Guarantee somebody accepts
- Prove attendance
- Judge whether an absence was genuine
Not for you if
- Any spare hand can cover any post
- Absence is rare enough to solve in a group chat
- You need demand forecasting before the rota exists
Questions we get asked first
How quickly can we find cover for a same-day absence?
Reporting the absence produces the openings immediately, and the ranked list is computed against your current roster and rules. How fast it is filled depends on whether you assign directly or wait for an offer to be accepted.
Does covering one shift change the rest of the week?
No. An absence scopes openings to the affected assignments only. Every other shift stays exactly as published.
Why was a particular worker not offered the shift?
Every excluded candidate is listed with the rule that excluded them — rest, qualification, site permission, contracted hours or the travel gap. The reason is stored with the decision, not recomputed later.
Can we offer one shift to several people at once?
Yes, with an expiry. The first acceptance fills the opening; a decline leaves it open for the next candidate. The offer snapshots its travel context so later edits cannot change what was agreed.
Does Fivexer rank people by how reliable they have been?
No. Cover ranking never reads acceptance history, no-show prediction or any learned behaviour. It uses declared qualifications, site permission, availability, working-time limits, cost and fairness from realised counts only.