Public holidays in employee scheduling
Public holidays often require extra attention when creating an employee schedule. Employees may want time off, while some public holidays can actually be among the busiest days of the year. At the same time, different pay premiums may apply when employees work on a public holiday.
With effective employee scheduling, you can make sure public holidays are taken into account in advance, enough employees remain available and any applicable public holiday premiums are processed correctly.
What are public holidays in employee scheduling?
Public holidays are special days that can be included in your employee schedule. These can include national public holidays, regional holidays or days that are particularly important to your business.
In Tiemdo, you can import national public holidays and add your own custom holidays or events.
These holidays are then displayed directly in the planner, allowing the scheduler to immediately see when a particular date requires extra attention.
Setting national and regional public holidays
Not every public holiday applies to every employee, region or department.
Tiemdo therefore allows you to distinguish between different holidays and determine which departments they apply to.
For example, you can:
Import national public holidays
Set regional public holidays
Add your own holidays
Add events
Display public holidays in the planner
This allows you to tailor your employee scheduling to your organisation.
Automatically calculate public holiday premiums
Employees working on a public holiday may be entitled to additional pay. The applicable premium depends on the agreements within your company, the employee's employment contract or the applicable collective labour agreement.
In Tiemdo, you can set up public holiday premiums.
This allows a premium to be applied automatically when an employee works on a designated public holiday.
You can define factors for:
Salary payments
Time off in lieu
Premiums for irregular working hours
This means that public holiday premiums no longer need to be calculated manually each time.
Block availability on public holidays
A common problem around public holidays is that many employees may indicate that they are unavailable at the same time.
This can become difficult when you actually need more staff on those days.
In Tiemdo, you can therefore block specific dates or times from being marked as unavailable.
For example:
Block 25 December
Employees can no longer automatically mark themselves as unavailable on that day. Anyone who would like the day off will need to discuss this with the scheduler or employer.
This prevents almost the entire team from marking themselves as unavailable at the same time.
The scheduler remains in control and ultimately decides who can have the day off.
Set limits for unavailability
Instead of completely blocking a particular date, you can also set limits on employee unavailability.
This allows you to determine how many employees may be unavailable at the same time.
For example, you can set:
How many months in advance employees can enter their availability
A minimum number of available hours
A maximum number of unavailable days per week
A maximum number of unavailable days per month
A maximum number of unavailable employees per day
Limits per role or department
This helps prevent too many employees from being unavailable at the same time.
Maintain minimum staffing levels per role
Setting only an overall limit is not always enough.
Suppose your restaurant has thirty employees and a maximum of ten employees may be unavailable on any given day. If all ten of those employees happen to be chefs, you still have a serious staffing problem.
That is why Tiemdo also allows you to determine how many employees must remain available for each role.
For example:
You employ ten chefs.
On busy days, you want at least five chefs to remain available.
You can then set the availability limit for the Chef role so that no more than five chefs can be unavailable at the same time.
You can do the same for roles such as:
Waiting staff
Dishwashers
Kitchen staff
Bar staff
Reception staff
Retail staff
This helps ensure that the minimum staffing level for each role is maintained.
Why include public holidays in your employee scheduling?
By setting up public holidays in advance, you can:
See public holidays directly in the planner
Maintain control over employee availability
Prevent too many employees from wanting the same day off
Maintain minimum staffing levels for each role
Automatically process public holiday premiums
Reduce manual calculations
Start creating your schedule earlier
With Tiemdo, you can combine public holidays, employee availability, staffing levels and pay premiums within a single employee scheduling system.