Fairness Rules and Coverage Priority for Schedule Generation

Administrators can define fairness rules in scheduling rule sets to help distribute selected shift occurrences more equitably across eligible workers. A fairness rule can be based on shift type family, shift type, or shift category, and can apply over a week or schedule period.

Schedule generation applies fairness during auto assignment and open shifts assignment. Fairness is a soft rule, so hard scheduling rules and workload coverage remain higher priorities.

Schedule managers can also select a coverage priority when they create or regenerate a workforce schedule. The selected priority determines how schedule generation handles situations where demand can’t be perfectly matched.

Coverage priority options let managers:

Minimize overstaffing while risking undercoverage.
Balance overstaffing and understaffing.
Minimize understaffing while risking overcoverage.

Coverage Priority options

Select Coverage Priority When Generating Schedule

Example Scenarios

Night-shift equity: A manager wants night shifts shared more evenly across eligible employees. A shift category-based fairness rule helps avoid concentrating night assignments on the same workers.
On-call equity: A manager wants on-call shifts shared more evenly across eligible employees. A shift type-based fairness rule helps distribute on-call assignments more consistently over the schedule period.
Coverage during peak demand: A manager selects the minimize understaffing option when covering demand during busy periods is more important, even if the schedule includes extra hours.
Control of extra scheduled hours: A manager selects the minimize overstaffing option when controlling extra scheduled hours is more important than fully covering every time slot.

Help schedule managers balance equitable shift distribution, coverage needs, and extra scheduled hours. Administrators can model fairness policies in scheduling rule sets, while managers can choose the coverage priority that best matches business needs when demand can’t be perfectly matched.

Steps to enable and configure

To configure fairness rules:

Create or update a Workforce Management rule set for scheduling.
Add one or more fairness rules.
For each fairness rule, select the shift classification and period that determine which shift occurrences should be distributed equitably.
Save the rule set.

Fairness Rule on Night Shifts over the Week

Tips and considerations

Fairness is a soft rule. Hard scheduling rules and workload coverage take priority over fairness.
Manual fixations are counted as occurrences when schedule generation evaluates fairness.
Fairness in this release is based on shift occurrences.

Key resources

For more information about generating and validating workforce schedules, see these What's New features:

For more information about scheduling rules and workforce management rule sets, see these What's New features:

Access requirements

Users need these privileges to use workforce labor optimization features and manage scheduling rule sets.

Privilege name	Code	Description
Use Workforce Labor Optimization	HTS_USE_WORKFORCE_LABOR_OPTIMIZATION	Allows use of workforce labor optimization features.
Manage Scheduling Rule Sets	HTS_MANAGE_SCHEDULING_RULE_SETS	Allows users to manage scheduling-type rule sets for workforce scheduling.

Administrators also need access to the setup task for managing Workforce Management rule sets to configure fairness rules.