Employee scheduling
Employee scheduling is the practice of planning who works which shifts, where, and for how long, before the work happens.
Scheduling sits ahead of time capture in the sequence: plan work, schedule the employee, capture time, approve, and pay. A schedule answers who is expected to cover which hours, at which work location, in which role. A time record answers what actually happened. A published schedule communicates expectations; it never records what an employee actually worked. Payroll pays from the approved time record, not the schedule. A schedule edited after a shift was worked must not silently reduce the time record.
Do advance-notice laws apply to employee schedules?
Where a requirement exists, it comes from state or city predictive schedulingPredictive scheduling (fair workweek). Predictive scheduling, also called fair workweek, is state or city law requiring covered employers to post schedules early and pay for late changes they make.Click to open the term rules. Coverage usually turns on industry and employer size rather than on the individual job. A multi-location employer can be covered in one city and not in the next. Confirm the current rule with the applicable state or city labor agency before publishing a scheduling policy.
| LEVEL | RULE |
|---|---|
| Federal | Wage and hour law sets no minimum notice for a work schedule |
| Oregon | Covered retail, hospitality, and food service employers give a written schedule at least 14 days in advance; later changes can trigger predictability pay |
| Cities | Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles have ordinances in the same family, each with its own industries, notice windows, rest-period rules, and penalties |
- Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, Predictive scheduling
- U.S. Department of Labor, Fair Labor Standards Act Advisor: When can an employee’s scheduled hours of work be changed?
General information, not legal or tax advice. Apply current federal and state rules with qualified guidance.