Understanding work rules
Work rules are configurable sets of items, rules, and parameters that determine how employees are scheduled and paid. Work rules define the processes and details that enable automatic payment and scheduling at employee, employee set, and property levels. For example, as a general rule, salaried employees do not receive overtime pay, and employees under the age of 16 can only work a certain number of hours per week. If you have a union at your property, there are specific rules dictated by the union, and if you have several shift times, you might give premium pay to employees who work the 11 PM – 7 AM shift. Work rules are used to address these complex issues.
Work rules can also be configured to address processes that have multiple steps and variations within steps. A process might have three steps: A, B, and C. In step A, all employees might be affected the same way. In step B, there might be variations that only affect subsets of employees. And in step C, there might be another variation that affects a small subset—possibly just a few employees—of the subset from stage B.
Work rules are designed to provide this flexibility in functionality.
In Unifocus RMS and Time & Attendance software, you can configure work rules to apply these principles to several employees at once. Work rules are applied at the following levels:
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Property
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Employee set
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Individual employee
For a detailed description of the Work Rules screen, see Work Rules screen.
Elements of work rules
To understand work rules, you need to understand how the Unifocus software identifies the parts of work rules.
There is an order to work rule configuration and behavior:
Rule Type → Rule Sets → Rule Items → Rules and Parameters
Unifocus provides various work rule types. For each type, you can provide your own rule sets, which can contain one or more rule item. Each rule item is based on one work rule and is defined by parameters.
Rule types
Rules are organized by types. Think of rule types as the types of processes that you typically perform. For example:
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Paying employees for the lunch breaks
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Configuring benefit accruals
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Setting earning rates
Rule types are provided by Unifocus and allow you to create your own rule sets and rule items.
Rule sets
Rule sets are the different possibilities for what might be chosen during the given step of the process. For example, in the Schedule Lunch work rule type, you would create different rule sets for the different variations of lunch schedule that could be assigned to specific employees. Rule sets can be useful in the case of unions. For example, when calculating overtime (OT), the United States Federal Government mandates that for nonsalaried employees, a minimum OT is required if employees work more than 40 hours in a single workweek. However, some employees might belong to a specific union in which employees also receive OT if they work more than 8 hours during a workday. In this example, there are two variations of how OT is paid, and they require two different rule sets to address the OT requirements of the groups.
Rule items
Once you have established the rule sets for the different types of classifications, you can determine the rule items that are associated with each rule set. Rule items are the specific steps that need to be processed for the rule set.
An example of rule items would be the case of shift premiums for unions. During the shift calculation phase, there's a step to calculate the shift premium on shift differentials. You create different rule sets for the unions. You might have Union A and Union B or Salaried and Hourly. Then you create rule items for each set. The Union A rule set might include a rule item called Night Pay that checks to see if the shift is entitled to night pay. You might have another rule item called Paid Break that checks to see if the employees working the shift get a paid break. These possibilities are what you configure as rule items in the set. In this example, the rule items would be all the different things you have to calculate for shift premiums—all the shift premiums to be calculated for each group.
The type of work rule type that you select determines if the included rule sets can contain one of more rule items. At the core of rule items are the work rules and parameters that define them.
Work rules and parameters
Work rules and associated parameters determine how rule items behave. A work rule provides the details that determine the calculation. Parameters are the configuration variables that define the work rule.
For example, in the case of an OT rule, you might have a work rule called Weekly OT. That work rule contains a parameter called OT Limit, with which you specify the limit (for example, 40 hours) for paying OT.
Work rules and parameters are provided by Unifocus.
Example
The table below displays an example of a Schedule Lunch work rule type.
| Rule Type | Rule Sets | Rule Items | Work Rules | Parameters |
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Schedule Lunch |
Standard Lunch Rule |
Standard 30 min |
Lunch Adjust End Time |
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Lunch Simple Adjustment |
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Lunch Start Time and Length |
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Starter Ranger Lunch Rule |
Starter Ranger Lunch Rule |
Lunch Adjust End Time |
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Lunch Simple Adjustment |
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Lunch Start Time and Length |
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In this example configuration:
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The Schedule Lunch type contains two work rules: Standard Lunch Rule and Starter Ranger Lunch Rule.
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Both work rules in this example contain three parameters: Lunch Adjust End Time, Lunch Simple Adjustment, and Lunch Start Time and Length.
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Work rules do not always contain the same parameters, and parameters with the same name might have a different effect depending on the work rule. For detailed explanations of work rules and their parameters, see Work rule types.
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