Holiday Staffing Assignments

Holiday staffing assignments can be used to automate the process of assigning employees to work holidays. This ensures that the holidays are being fairly distributed. Holiday assignments are given to employees based on their Home Labor Distribution.

If core schedules are not populated on holidays, "need-based" scheduling is used. If the organization does not normally use need-based scheduling, such as if all employee schedules are core schedules, additional set up may be required to populate the activity codes and employee preferences for these dates. For more information, see Additional Need-Based Scheduling Set Up at the end of this chapter.

When the system validates the Holiday Rule during scheduling, it determines whether employees are "eligible" to work, which means they are not disqualified based on the holiday assignment settings. For example, with the Every Other Same holiday rule, if an employee worked the same holiday in the previous year, they are not eligible to work that same holiday in the current year--they are disqualified from working. Eligible employees can be scheduled if there is a scheduling opening available for them, and if they meet other scheduling rules, such as overtime or position permissions.

The number of staff required to work a holiday may be more or less than normal staffing, depending on the department. For example, Emergency Room staffing requirements may be higher than normal, but Medical/Surgical staffing requirements may be lower than normal, if routine appointments are not scheduled. Other department staffing requirements may remain unchanged.

• If the staffing needs should not be adjusted, but all eligible staff should be scheduled, this can be accomplished by setting the Staffing Level value in the Holiday Passes of the Selection Styles to a value higher than 100%, such as 150%.

• If the staffing needs should be adjusted on a holiday, these can be changed on the Staffing Plan or Core Staffing Plan.

  Note  

  Changing the Staffing Plan value will change the needs as viewed in the Schedule Needs grid and on reports.

Below is a listing of holiday rules that can be automated. For each rule, there is also the option of incorporating major holiday/minor holiday rotations, for example, X out of Y Major/X out of Y Minor Holidays.

 

Every Other Holiday Assignment	Employees in this assignment are eligible to work every other holiday. They are assigned to either the A or B holiday schedule.
Every Other Major/Every Other Minor Holiday	Employees in this assignment are eligible to work alternating Major holiday and alternating Minor holiday. Each holiday is specified as major or minor, so there are two rotations of holidays occurring simultaneously. Employees are assigned to work either the A or B holiday schedule.
Every Other Same Holiday Assignment	Employees in this assignment work a specific holiday one year, then the following year they do not work this same holiday. The system checks back to the previous year for the holiday with the same Holiday Category, to determine employee eligibility.
X out of Y Holidays Assignment	Employees in this assignment are eligible to work X out of Y holidays, for example 1 out of 3 holidays, or 2 out of 4 holidays.
Holiday Rotations Assignment	In this assignment, specific holidays are worked by the employees belonging to the assignment. For example, a Holiday 1 rotation assignment works New Year's Day and July 4; Holiday 2 rotation assignment works Memorial Day and Thanksgiving and Holiday 3 rotation assignment works Labor Day and Christmas. Each year the holidays worked in the rotations can be reset to a different rotation.
Maximum Holidays Assignment	The employees in this assignment are eligible to work X holidays in Y years; for example, 3 holidays in 1 year or 5 holidays in 2 years.
No Worked Holidays Assignment	Employees in this assignment do not work any holidays, for example, those that work in departments that are closed on holidays.
Holidays Not Tracked	Employees in this assignment do not have special rules for holidays. Holidays are scheduled like any other day. Note   This assignment only needs to be set up if there are employees with other holiday assignments being scheduled together, and so the Holiday validation is activated in the Selection Style.