Within the U.S., a class of legislation is gaining momentum around the predictability of schedules, primarily aimed at the retail and food service industries. At issue is the ability for employees to have a work schedule that gives them the ability to plan their lives beyond work, including arranging for child care, managing multiple jobs, and having a predictable wage. The equity afforded under the legislation promises to provide these basic rights to employees, often at the lowest scale of the wage ladder, for whom unexpected scheduling can have a significant impact.
San Francisco (Oct 2015), Seattle (Jul 2017), and New York City (Nov 2017) have all enacted laws. Oregon’s law went into effect on July 1, 2018, making it the first state to pass predictive scheduling legislation. And similar legislation is being considered in an additional 13 states and 4 municipalities. Although likely to be repealed, the province of Ontario in Canada passed a law in Nov 2017 that enacts a subset of predictive scheduling regulations that is applicable across all industries. And a growing number of Collective Bargaining Agreements are including predictive scheduling rules.
Although the legislation to date is largely targeted at the retail, food service and hospitality industries, this session will be valuable to a broad HR audience from businesses where demand is dynamic and therefore results in the need to make schedule changes close to the start of the shift.
Key Topics
- The background and history of the legislation, including the common components of the existing laws that impact both scheduling and pay.
- The costs and benefits of predictive scheduling practices for both the employee and the organization.
- How workforce management automation optimizes the balance between organizational goals, the employee, and compliance with the regulations.
