We are a management consultancy and are looking for a shift schedule and personnel dispatch system on behalf of a client. The dispatching is relatively complex (short-term dispatching of on-call services, variable actual hours, dynamic zero crossing in the time account, factorization of surcharges, etc.).
The client would like to implement demand-oriented flexible working hours for a subgroup of initially around 15 of the total of approximately 300 industrial employees in order to achieve competitive cost structures and improve service quality.
To this end, an IT system is to be implemented that supports duty scheduling, dispatching, employee information, time management, and payroll accounting.
The company is based in Lower Saxony and applies the collective agreement for the public sector (TV-L). The further framework conditions for duty scheduling and the handling of time accounts are regulated in a works agreement.
Procedure and schedule
- Market research by the end of May
- Contact potential system providers, preselection of 3 systems
- System presentation to the customer using sample data
- Provision of sample data at the beginning of June
- System presentation of three prospective systems at the beginning of July
- Implementation
- System decision, implementation plan, commissioning at the beginning of July
- Implementation, testing and data transfer, system acceptance, training by the end of July
- Start of live operation at the beginning of August
Content requirements – duty scheduling
Work is carried out according to an annual duty roster, which specifies the scheduled shifts and scheduled days off for each employee.
The following rules apply to shifts:
- Working hours during shifts are determined by the dispatcher during the shift as required, ranging from 6 to 10 hours; on-call duty may involve shifts of less than 6 hours if necessary.
- During early shifts, employees may request to finish work no later than 2:15 p.m. This does not apply to on-call duty, for which the dispatcher sets a start time of 5:45 a.m.
- While early, late, and night shifts have fixed start times (5:45 a.m., 1:45 p.m., and 9:45 p.m., respectively), the start time for on-call duty is determined by the dispatcher. The reason for this is to enable the backward rolling change of shift patterns (late-early or night-late) even without a day off, in compliance with the provisions of the Working Hours Act. As standard, employees expressly request the forward rolling shift change (early-late-night).
- The dispatch service determines at short notice whether employees are on duty, on call, or have the day off. Due to the short-term nature of staffing requirements, a decision is made by 11:30 a.m. on whether employees will be on duty between 1:45 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. on the same day, on call, or have the day off. Shifts starting between 5:45 a.m. and before 1:45 p.m. must be determined by 11:30 a.m. on the previous day. In the interests of the employees, shifts should be determined as early as possible. The dispatcher usually informs the employee of the shift between 10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m.
- If the duty roster includes on-call weeks, a day off should be scheduled during the on-call weeks if possible. The day off should allow for a change in shift pattern within the on-call week; the provisions of the Working Hours Act must be observed.
- The respective work tasks on duty are determined by the dispatcher and may include, in addition to operating the equipment, its maintenance, deployment in technical service, etc.
Recreational leave should be granted evenly throughout the year. The vacation schedule is shown in the vacation plan.
Content requirements - Working time account
A working time account shall be set up for employees in accordance with § 10 TV-L. The maximum amount of time that may be accumulated on the working time account is 40 hours; the maximum amount of time credit shall not exceed 240 hours.
Overtime pay, time bonuses, and on-call pay may be converted into time (factored) and credited to the working time account in accordance with the provisions of § 8 (1) sentence 4 TV-L. The employee decides in advance for each calendar year which of the times specified in § 8 (1) sentences 1 and 2 are to be credited to the working time account.
Absences (sickness, vacation, time off in lieu, etc.) are each valued at 8 hours.
The short-term revocation (less than 12 hours before the start of work) of already approved time off in lieu by the employer shall be considered as an extra shift; in this case, the special allowance outside the collective agreement (“signing-on bonus,” see below) shall be granted.
To prove compliance with the average weekly working time in accordance with § 6 TV-L, it is sufficient if the working time account has shown a credit balance of less than or equal to zero once within the last 365 days (or 366 days in a leap year). If no credit balance of zero or less has been achieved within this period, the working time account shall be reset to zero by paying out the credit balance existing on the reference date. The reference date must be clearly indicated to the employee.
If the working time account has continuously shown a time debt within the last 365 days (or 366 days in a leap year), this shall expire on the 365th or 366th day (leap year). The working time account shall then start again with a balanced hour account balance.
Further content requirements
Each employee is granted a special allowance (“flexibility allowance”) of ## € for each hour of on-call duty actually worked; any additional payments under collective agreements remain unaffected by this.
For extra shifts not scheduled in the duty roster and worked on a voluntary basis, a special allowance outside the collective agreement (“start-up allowance”) of ## € on working days and ## € on Sundays and public holidays is granted; any collective agreement supplements pursuant to § 8 TV-L remain unaffected by this.
A quarterly report shall be provided on the decisions made by the dispatcher within the framework of dispatching and on the status of the working time accounts in order to be able to track the equal utilization of all employees (load distribution).
In addition to time management and remuneration-related information, the system to be introduced should also enable an economic evaluation of operations. For this purpose, the actual working time is recorded separately according to different work content, which, however, only becomes apparent in the course of the work. The differentiation is made, for example, according to
- Customer orders subdivided into service types such as plant operation, setup times, waiting times, and
- internal services (e.g., maintenance)
IT requirements
The following options are prioritized:
- Terminal server solution, web-based, without client installation
- Access via Windows user data
- Multi-client capability
- Online communication so that employees can be informed about their assignments via an app on their smartphones, for example, and can also record their time spent on orders and service types if necessary
- Plausibility check of the rules to be observed in accordance with the Working Hours Act, collective agreement, and company agreement within the scope of data entry
Systems used:
- Time management system MTZ business solutions from MIDITEC Datensysteme GmbH
- ERP system LN from Infor (Germany) GmbH
- Excel evaluations
Interface requirements:
Shift planning/scheduling -> MTZ time management
- Master data with MTZ reference
- Parallel maintenance
- Employees with time slots for entry/exit, part-time status/weekly working hours, etc.
- Time types
- Actual movement data
- Employee/personnel number, date, start/end time, billable hours, time type
- Time types such as attendance, vacation, sick, time off in lieu, etc., as well as factorized or factorizable times (whether the factorization of the corresponding times takes place in the duty scheduling/dispatching or in MTZ is still to be clarified)
- Transfer at least daily, preferably continuously
- Planned transaction data (optional)
- Employee/personnel number, current date, billable hours, time type
- Time types such as attendance, leave, vacation, sick, time off in lieu, etc.
- Transfer at least daily, preferably continuously
Time management MTZ -> Shift planning/scheduling
- Actual movement data
- Employee/personnel number, date, start/end time, billable hours, time type
- Time types such as attendance, vacation, sick, time off in lieu, etc., as well as factorized times
- Transfer at least daily, preferably continuously
- Planned movement data
- Employee/personnel number, date, billable hours, time type (only planned absences)
- Time types such as vacation, sick, etc.
- Transfer at least daily, preferably continuously
Time management MTZ Duty scheduling/disposition (actual and planned data)
- In future, vacation requests and approvals for industrial employees should be made in MTZ in the same way as for flexitime employees. Furthermore, absences (actual and planned) for industrial employees are currently recorded manually in MTZ by Human Resources. This data must be made available to scheduling for employee planning and assignment.
- The scheduling department records short-term absences that may not (yet) be available in MTZ directly for its employee planning and assignment.
- In any case, the consistency of the time accounts in both systems (duty scheduling/dispatching and MTZ) must be ensured. In principle, the actual data should be transferred from dispatching in MTZ, but subsequent changes made by Human Resources in MTZ, such as sick leave instead of vacation or factorized times converted in MTZ, can be recorded.
- The handling of data from duty scheduling/dispatching or from MTZ that conflicts with data from the other system must be clarified.
Duty scheduling/dispatching -> ERP system LN
- Master data with LN reference
- Parallel maintenance
- Employee/personnel number
- Wage types
- Remuneration characteristics
- Orders
- Actual movement data
- Employee, date, year/week, hours worked, wage cost type, remuneration characteristic (up to 5 each)
- Wage cost types: Normal hours, overtime, on-call duty, unproductive hours
- Remuneration characteristics (unless factored):
- Remuneration characteristic Description Unit+010 Overtime surcharge 30% hours [std]+030 Overtime pay 100% hours [std]+040 Night work 20% hours [std]+050 Sunday work 25% hours [std]… …+170 On-call duty < 12 hours 12.5% hours [std]+290 Higher-value work In E 1-8 days [day]… …+400 Allowance group IX hours [std]+660 Absence allowance 3-6 hours hours [std]+661 Absence allowance 6-12 hours Hours [std]+680 Flat-rate allowance for difficult work §29MTA Euro [EUR]… …+new1 Flexibility allowance for on-call duty Euro [EUR]+new2 Start of work from free time on working days Euro [EUR]+new3 Start of work from free time on Sundays/public holidays Euro [EUR]
- Handover at least once a week
Shift planning/scheduling -> Excel (data for economic evaluation as above under “Further content requirements”)