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- Background knowledge
- Who is covered by the Evanston Workweek Law?
- What are Fair Workweek Requirements and how can Deputy help?
Background knowledge
This article assumes you have read these general articles on Fair Workweek:
You can also find more information about Evanston Fair Workweek here:
Note: If team members clock in and out using the Deputy Kiosk for iPad or Deputy Time Clock for Android, make sure these apps have been updated to the latest versions. Fair Workweek will only be supported on iOS Kiosk version 5.3.7 and Android Time Clock version 0.11.0 and beyond.
Who is covered by Evanston Fair Workweek?
In order to be covered by these laws, a business must be:
- An employer in Evanston which employs 100 or more employees globally, including franchises, in the industries of Hospitality, Retail, Warehouse Services, Manufacturing and Building Services; and
- An employer in Evanston in the Food Service and Restaurant industries that has least 30 locations globally and at least 200 employees.
These laws then apply to all nonexempt employees who perform at least 2 hours of work in Evanston in a calendar week.
What are Fair Workweek Requirements and how can Deputy help?
Good faith estimate
A good faith estimate of working hours must be given to employees as an estimated set schedule that they can rely on. It must be provided to the employee prior to or on commencement of employment.
The good faith estimate must cover the first 90 days of work, and should include the average number of weekly hours the employee can expect to work each week; whether the employee can expect to work any on call shifts; and a subset of days and a subset of times or shifts that the employee can expect to work, or the days of the week and times on which the employee will not be scheduled to work.
How can Deputy help?
Deputy allows you to provide good faith estimates to your team members through our regular working hours feature. Read more at:
Advanced notice for scheduling
Fair Workweek requires managers to provide employees with work schedules in advance. For Evanston businesses, this has to be 14 days in advance of the first day of a work period. A work period is a calendar week.
How can Deputy help?
Deputy allows managers to schedule shifts well into the future - and when published, employees will always have access to their shifts, allowing them to plan ahead. Read more at:
Schedule change consent
Subject to limited exceptions, employers cannot add time to an employee’s schedule without their consent within 14 days from the first day on the work schedule. Consent must be 100% voluntary.
This includes situations such as:
- adding time to a shift or
- changing the day, time or location of a shift or
- requests to stay late to cover rush or
- request to cover for another employee who called out sick.
Consent must be documented in writing, or electronically and must reference the specific shift they are consenting to change.
How can Deputy help?
- When scheduling in Deputy with consent enabled, scheduling managers will be warned if they have created or changed a shift that will require consent from the team member and may trigger a pay premium.
- In the event of last-minute unscheduled changes to shifts, consent is also captured through the use of shift questions at clock in and out. Shift questions are used to capture consent ahead of time for changed shifts, when an employee clocks in early or late, or to attest to missed meal and rest breaks. These get recorded in the timesheet for audit purposes. If you have assigned the Evanston Fair Workweek pay rate to your team member, we automatically provide attestation questions for the following scenarios:
- Unscheduled Shift
- Early In
- Early Out
- Late In
- Late Out
Predictability pay for schedule changes
Fair Workweek laws require employees to be paid premium payments in addition to their normal wages for changes to the published work schedule. This is aimed at rewarding employees who are flexible, and as a disincentive to businesses for making last-minute changes.
For Evanston, predictability pay is paid according to the following rules:
If hours are increased, reduced, or changed within 14 days from start of the shift, the employee is entitled to one additional hour of pay at the employee's regular rate.
If hours are reduced within 24 hours from the start of the shift, the employee is entitled to the amount of hours reduced, or four hours, whichever is less, payable at half their regular rate.
How can Deputy help?
Deputy pay rates can take the stress out of manually calculating premium payments by automatically calculating premiums based on changes made to the schedule, allowing direct export straight to your payroll provider.
This library rate is available in both premium and enterprise accounts in the pay rates section of your team member's profile.
For more information on exactly how this calculates premiums, see Evanston Fair Workweek pay rate.
Right to rest (Clopening)
"Clopening" shifts are shifts where an employee works late one night and then works early the next morning.
Evanston’s covered employees are required to have at least 11 hours of rest between two shifts. Businesses cannot schedule clopenings unless the employee consents to work the shifts and are paid a clopening pay premium, which is 1.5 times their regular rate for all hours worked less than 11 hours since the previous shift the day before.
How can Deputy help?
Deputy will alert the manager when they have scheduled a team member on a clopening shift by providing a warning that this shift may incur a clopening pay premium. If the manager still proceeds to schedule the shift, then the team member will be asked to consent to work this shift. Read more at
Offer of additional work hours to existing employees (Access to hours)
Fair Workweek laws also state that available shifts must be offered to existing part-time employees before hiring new ones.
Open shifts must be posted in writing and include:
- the total hours of work being offered,
- the schedule of available shifts,
- whether those shifts will occur at the same time each week,
- the length of time the Covered Employer anticipates requiring coverage of the additional hours, and
- the process by which Part-time Employees may notify the Covered Employer of their desire to work the offered hours.
How can Deputy help?
Deputy allows managers to make open shifts that still require manager approval. We recommend using this feature to offer the shift to all participants, at which point the manager can decide on who fills it based on their own criteria (seniority, tenure, cost, etc).
We recommend posting these criteria and processes in the News Feed of Deputy so that all employees can see this, with a confirmation message so they can confirm they know the process.
Recordkeeping
Fair Workweek requires key information to be stored for several years that show compliance with the Fair Workweek laws. This includes copies of good faith estimates, rosters, timesheets, consents to schedule changes, records of all schedule changes, records of predictability pay, clopenings and clopening pay, and proof that open shifts were offered to current employees.
How can Deputy help?
Deputy will electronically store most records saved in the system, and in the event of an audit can provide employers with a copy of their records on request. Employers may also create numerous reports within Deputy to provide to auditors.