• Scheduling in Fair Workweek locations on Deputy
• What are best practices when scheduling in Fair Workweek locations?
• Which schedule actions will require employee consent? 
• How to avoid scheduling shifts that will trigger consent or pay premiums
• Creating shifts that require consent
• Editing shifts that trigger consent 
• Deleting a shift that requires consent
• Cancel shift confirmation sent in error
• Overriding consent and pay premiums for schedule changes
• Which schedule actions are not available yet for Fair Workweek locations? 

Scheduling in Fair Workweek locations on Deputy

Before scheduling in Fair Workweek covered locations, you should:

1. Review specific jurisdiction requirements for consent
2. Select the relevant consent location setting for each relevant location

With this location setting selected, you can schedule on Deputy as normal, just as you would for non Fair Workweek locations.

Managers will be warned about all schedule actions in locations with Fair Workweek consent enabled which employees have a right to decline. 

 

What are best practices when scheduling in Fair Workweek locations?

When scheduling in Fair Workweek locations, you can do the following to prevent shifts from requiring employee consent:

• Ahead of jurisdiction-specific requirements for Advanced Notice of Schedules, managers can autoschedule regular working hours for every team member.
• Ensure there is adequate rest time between closing and opening shifts. Scheduling "clopening" shifts can incur Predictability Pay.
• Ensure employees accept or decline schedule changes ahead of their shifts.

 

Which schedule actions will require employee consent?

In many Fair Workweek regions, employees have the right to decline certain schedule changes.

Managers will be warned if they create or make changes to shifts that require employee consent. Employees can accept or decline shifts that require consent via mobile app or email.

Requirements for schedule consent will differ depending on the jurisdictions where your business locations are in. Refer to specific jurisdiction requirements for more information on your specific region.

Consent scenario	Relevant jurisdictions
Adding previously unscheduled hours within a certain number of days before the start of the work period or shift. This includes extending a shift or moving shift start or end times.	New York Fast Food, New York Retail, Los Angeles, Oregon, Chicago, Seattle, Philadelphia, Euless, Berkeley, Emeryville, Evanston
Scheduling a "clopening" shift that breaches Right to Rest requirements.	New York Fast Food, Los Angeles, Oregon, Chicago, Seattle, Philadelphia, Berkeley, Emeryville, Evanston
Scheduling a work schedule that is more than 15% different to an employee's Regular Working Hours	New York Fast Food

 

How to avoid scheduling or changing shifts that will trigger consent or pay premiums

Given that the above scheduling scenarios will trigger a requirement to obtain consent from your employees and perhaps require businesses to pay a premium as a result, how can you manage scheduling and changes to your employees' schedules to avoid these scenarios?

In any business, of course there are unavoidable last-minute changes to the schedule when someone calls in sick or a business is unexpectedly busy. However where possible, if you wish to avoid schedule changes that trigger the need to obtain consent or pay premiums, the scheduling manager should aim to publish and /or make any required changes to the schedule no later than 14 days before the start of the work period in these Fair Workweek regions :

• New York Fast Food
• Los Angeles
• Oregon
• Chicago
• Seattle
• Philadelphia
• Euless
• Berkeley
• Emeryville
• Evanston

Note: to avoid doubt, the requirement to give 14 days' notice of shifts or shift changes is not measured from the time of schedule publish until the start of the shift itself, but rather from the time of schedule publish until the start of the work period for that shift.

The start day of an employee's work period is determined in Deputy by the day set as the employee's regular working hours as set in their profile or in the absence of regular working hours then by the first day of the week as configured the Location settings > Scheduling settings.

Tip: setting up a weekly work period (as opposed to a fortnightly) for your employees will give scheduling managers greater flexibility in creating or changing a schedule that minimises the need to obtain consent or pay premiums.

Example

This business is subject to Fair Workweek legislation in New York City and has set a weekly work period for their employees that begins on a Monday. Since they are required to provide 14 days advance notice for adding new or changing the schedule, in the example below they will need to publish any new or changed shifts before Monday 8th April, to avoid having to seek consent or pay premiums for shifts scheduled in the work period Monday 22nd April until Sunday 28th April.

Note: There may also be circumstances where a manager could be justified in overriding the consent or pay premium triggered by some schedule changes. Read more about How to override FWW schedule consent and/or pay premiums in legally appropriate situations.

 

Creating shifts that require consent

Adding a shift in one of the above-described scenarios that require consent will result in a real-time warning to let the manager which specific consent rule has been broken based on the consent jurisdiction you have applied to the location.

This could be one or many rules depending on what the change is and when the shift is starting as shown below:

As this is a new shift, that an employee hasn't seen yet, this new shift can be published whenever you're ready by clicking on Publish on the Schedule tab. Any shifts that require consent upon publishing will be summarised as part of the standard publish flow. Managers can select any of the notification options:

• Notify (email, app)
• Notify (SMS, email, app) 
• Require confirmation (SMS, email, app)

and the team member will receive a request to accept or decline the shift via email or app if Fair Workweek scheduling consent has been triggered.

Note: even though you can choose to notify via SMS (fees apply), Fair Workweek related schedule consent is not supported when confirming shifts via SMS, therefore SMS shift notifications are NOT recommended for Fair Workweek.

 

Once the shift required consent has been published, the schedule is updated and all shifts that have changes that are pending consent have:

• CONFIRMING is shown on the shift to let you know input from your team member is still pending 
• When you click into the shift, a label informs the manager what the pending confirmation is for (in the example below it's "New shift"). The shift won't be confirmed until the team member accepts the shift.

Note: If the scheduling manager realises they made a mistake when adding this new shift and want to remove the employee from the shift they can do that by cancelling the confirmation. This will make the shift empty and remove the need for the employee to confirm the shift but they will be informed that they have been removed from the shift. Managers will only be able to do this BEFORE the employee has confirmed the shift change.

 

Team member consent outcomes for adding a new shift

The table below details the possible outcome in the Schedule when a team member accepts or declines a new shift.

Shift accepted by team member	Shift declined by team member
Shift will appear like any normal shift on the schedule There will be no consent warnings in the shift details	Since the whole shift was declined, it will appear in the schedule as an empty shift with a warning attached Clicking on the shift in the schedule will let you know that consent was declined, what was declined and who it was declined by

 

Editing a shift that triggers consent 

If the scheduling manager needs to make a last-minute change to a shift that was previously published for the team member to see and that last-minute shift change requires consent from the team member, then the manager will see a warning to inform them of the specific consent rule has been broken.

In this example, the manager extends the shift by an hour and is warned this change within 14 days of the shift start time will need to be accepted or declined by the team member. If the manager accepts this they can click Save and Publish.

The manager then needs to click Schedule anyway and this will trigger a notification to the team member to accept or decline the change.

The schedule is now updated and all shifts that have changed and are pending consent:

• are listed as CONFIRMING and warning to let you know input from your team member is required
• have an explanation letting you know what the pending change is - the shift won't be updated until the team member consents

Note: If the scheduling manager realises they made a mistake with this schedule change and want to revert to the shift state before confirmation was triggered they can do that by cancelling the confirmation. This will remove the requirement for employees to confirm the shift change and return the shift details to the original state before the change that triggered confirmation. Managers will only be able to do this BEFORE the employee has confirmed the shift change.

 

Team member consent outcomes for modifying a published shift

The table below details the possible outcome in the Schedule when a team member accepts or declines a modified shift.

Shift changes are accepted by the team member	Shift changes are declined by the team member
Shift will be updated with the new details and look like any other shift There will be no consent warnings or changes in the shift details	Shift will stay with the original details A warning will be applied to the shift on the schedule so you know there is something to be aware of Clicking into the shift

 

Deleting a shift that requires consent

In some cases, like with the New York Fast Food regulatory requirements, if you need to get a team member's consent to remove a shift from the schedule, we'll let you know when you delete the shift:

Upon deletion and sending of the consent request, the shift will appear with a dotted border indicating that it's pending deletion:

And if you click into the shift you can see that the pending change states "Shift deleted".

 

Team member consent outcomes for deleting a shift

The table below details the possible outcome in the Schedule when a team member accepts or declines a deleted shift.

The deleted shift is accepted by the team member	The deleted shift is declined by the team member
the shift is automatically removed from the schedule
the shift is automatically removed from the schedule
The shift will be deleted and no longer be visible on the schedule in any capacity	The shift card will have a warning to let you know something needs your attention Clicking into the shift you will see that the consent has been declined and specifically what changes were declined - in this case the shift deletion

 

Cancel shift confirmation sent in error

If a manager makes changes to the schule by adding a new shift or changing an existing shift and that action it triggers the need for consent from the employee but then the manager realises they have made a mistake, there is a way to resolve this without triggering more consent notifications.

Note: It is only possible to cancel confirmation of a shift that is still awaiting the team members to confirm it. If the team member has already confirmed the shift then the manager will be unable to cancel the confirmation.

To cancel the confirmation, click on the shift with the CONFIRMING label you wish to revert, then click on the ... three dots icon next to Save and select Cancel confirmation.

If the shift in question was a new shift that triggered confirmation then you will see the following pop up and can click Make empty.

The team member will be removed from the shift and notified by email. The shift will now be empty so you can then delete the shift or fill it with another team member as required.

 

If the shift in question was an existing shift that had some details changed, such as shift start time, and that change triggered confirmation, then you will see the following pop up and can click Undo changes.

The shift will revert to the details before the change. If the team member later happens to click on the previously sent email to request confirmation of the shift changes, they will now just see the original shift details and will not need to confirm the shift.

 

Overriding consent and pay premiums for schedule changes

Depending on the Fair Workweek jurisdiction your business operates in, there are valid reasons why a Fair Workweek schedule change may not legally require Consent and/or Predictability Pay. They include employee-initiated changes, such as a team member calling in sick at the last minute, and also situational/environmental reasons outside of a business’s control such as inclement weather or public transport failure.

For more information about overriding consent and/or pay premiums in this circumstances please read: How to override FWW schedule consent and/or pay premiums in legally appropriate situations

 

 

Which schedule actions are not available yet for Fair Workweek locations? 

For the Fair Workweek early access program some schedule actions are currently blocked for Fair Workweek-enabled locations due to complex consent logic.

We'll be continuing to build these actions but in the meantime please use these workarounds:

Action	Scenario	How to action in the meantime
Changing Assignee	Only if the original assignee requires consent to be replaced	Delete the shift for the original team member and create a fresh shift for the new team member
Manager Initiated Swaps	All	Delete the shifts for the two team members you'd like to swap and create them as new shifts
Find Replacement	All	Delete the shift for the original team member and create a new open shift
Bulk Actions	All	Action the shifts individually to ensure consent requirements are adhered to
Changing Locations	Only shifts in Fair workweek locations	Delete the shift and create a new shift at the different location