Fairness in work distribution

According to the International Labour Organisation, ILO Geneva, most nations have stipulated requirements for a weekly rest day. It is mostly Sundays or in some cases, a continuous rest period of 24 hours per week.

This is very straight forward for the human resources (HR) or management to convey to the employees if the business does not need to provide round the clock service. Industries such as food and beverage (F&B), hospitality (hotels and resorts), healthcare, data centres or telecommunications would need to ensure 24/7 service availability to consumers. How is operations manager (Ops) or human resource to ensure every single employee get the mandatory rest and keeps the business running? Ensuring that the work roster planned is fair with each having a fair chance for evening rest or weekend rest. Line managers have to keep track of seasonal demand and adjust manpower accordingly.

Coupled the above with the rise of casual workers in some sectors, it can be a constant logistic nightmare for those involved. Even if contractually, the workers have agreed to be flexible and accept the roster given to them. In the long run, without fair planning rules or leave application guidelines for weekends or preferred rest days, unhappiness would grow and snowball. High dissatisfaction among employees would lead to high attrition rate, it would also mean more time spent by the line manager in on-boarding, training and roster planning.

The universal guidelines in ensuring fairness and proper distribution of work rosters are:

• Allowing employees preference for a rest day to be taken into consideration as far as possible
• Each employee has a chance to have their preferences fulfilled, so there would be no biases perceived by them
• The planned roster is distributed with enough time for employees and planning managers to interact
• Allow fair swaps among employees through a seamless platform

A planner for a roster of above would probably have to keep track of various demands and requests in real-time and be able to multitask very well. At the end of a planned roster period, be able to tie in the overtime pay calculation, replacement leave for those being called back on standby, et cetera.

Casual worker and changes always complicate the planning process. An advanced system such as a software would be able to solve this more seamlessly and more fairly. Thus allowing line managers to spend time on improving the product, services provided or other value-adding activities instead of on attendance taking and shifts planning.

Why spend hours a week on generating roster when a roster planning software can do it for you in a few minutes?! Workforce Optimizer is such a software, it informs your managers if their staff are exceeding your organization’s business rules or government regulations, for work hours, schedules, holidays or claims. There is a mobile app that allows staff to post requests, swap shifts with colleagues that meet the shift-specific requirements. Our algorithm also considers business targets as well as ensures staff requests are dealt with in a fairer manner.

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