What Are Work Schedule Agreements?
A work schedule agreement is a legally binding contract that outlines the expectations of both the employer and employee in terms of working hours, breaks, and other relevant information. It serves as a roadmap that both parties can refer to in case of any disputes or disagreements about the scheduling or structure of work hours.
For employers, a work schedule agreement can provide a clear framework for workforce planning and employee management. It helps employers ensure they have the right number of employees scheduled to meet business needs, and can also help provide clarity in terms of overtime eligibility and compensation requirements.
From an employee perspective , a work schedule agreement can provide reassurance and protection in terms of work-life balance, as well as compensation. An agreement lays out expectations, helping to eliminate miscommunication or misunderstandings about when they are required to work and their eligibility for overtime.
Either work schedule agreements are optional and supply an additional layer of benefit for both the employer and employee, or they are legally required by state and/or federal law. Either way, a basic understanding of what a work schedule agreement is, how they work, and who they apply to, can be beneficial for all parties.
Elements of Work Schedule Agreement
When drafting a work schedule agreement, it’s important to ensure that you cover all the bases. There are several key elements that should form part of your schedule agreement template so that you can be certain you’ve thought of everything. A lot of this information will be standard across different businesses, as employment standards legislation across Canada is very similar from province to province. However, state laws may be different so make sure to watch out for inconsistencies across jurisdictions if your business is transnational. The following are the key elements to include in your work schedule agreement template:
Hours of Work
Stipulating an employee’s scheduled hours of work is key in giving your employees the certainty they need to plan their schedule. This includes an employee’s start and end time, their lunch and break periods, and how overtime will be treated for the purpose of scheduling overtime. You should also specify if these hours will change from week to week so that the employee is aware that he/she may be required to work additional shifts.
Shifts
Your schedule agreement template should also include information on your shift work regime. For instance, you may want to specify whether the employee will be working weekdays or weekends, as well as the time of day your employee’s shifts will typically fall within. It is likely that your employees do not want to be given shifts outside of their regular working hours, so specifying the type of shifts your employees will be expected to work will be advantageous.
Breaks
Because breaks are essential to keeping your staff happy, not to mention ensuring that they are productive (did you know that employees are more productive within the first two hours of showing up at work for the day?), you should outline your rest period and meal period protocol in your schedule agreement template. It is common practice to give employees a long enough rest period in which to receive a quick snack, and a meal period of 30 minutes or longer – and having a consistent protocol is essential to creating a happy workplace.
Compliance With Employment Standards
In Canada, federal and provincial employment standards legislation regulates an employees’ minimum rights in the workplace. Thus, your work schedule agreement template must be written in compliance with these laws. A general breakdown of the minimum standards laws are:
Hours of Work – An employer should provide reasonable hours of work, keeping in mind that this is subject to work schedules and operational requirements. The maximum number of hours of work an employer may require or allow in a workweek is 48 hours, which may be averaged over two or more workweeks.
Rest Periods – Employees must be given at least 24 consecutive hours of rest in each workweek or 48 consecutive hours of rest in every period of two consecutive workweeks. If an employee has been granted less than 32 consecutive hours of rest in a workweek or 60 consecutive hours of rest in a period of two workweeks, he or she must be given a rest period of at least eight consecutive hours during which he or she is not required or permitted to carry out activities related to his or her employment.
Overtime – An employer may require or permit an employee to work overtime, which is hours of work in excess of the hours established by the employer. For instance, in British Columbia, any hours of work that exceeds eight hours per day are considered overtime, or those in excess of 40 hours per week. It’s important to note that any overtime worked must be paid at a rate of at least 1.5 times the employee’s regular wage rate.
Advantages of Work Schedule Agreement Template
The creation of a standardized work schedule agreement template can do wonders for your business. Perhaps the most important one is the fact that it can help prevent misunderstandings between you and your workers about what their obligations actually are.
Ask yourself: how many times have you sketched out a work schedule, then forgotten key parts about it while just having a general idea of the shifts your employees were supposed to work? If you have used a standard template, it would have been easy to pull it up and see precisely what the previously-agreed upon shift schedules were for each employee and plan accordingly.
These documents help you maintain consistent scheduling for your employees throughout your company. When all employees are being given the same terms, it’s easier for you to avoid consistent scheduling conflicts in the future.
Submitting work schedule agreement templates to your local labor board or commission can help you avoid potential legal risk. As just one example, if you’ve agreed on a flexible work schedule and find yourself in a disagreement with an employee over whether or not they were supposed to work on a holiday, you can submit a copy of the template discussed at the beginning of your relationship with the employee as evidence. Or imagine this: You refuse to pay the employee for a particular work week because they didn’t complete their 40-hour requirement due to illness. If only the terms of employment and requirements had been put down in writing, this dispute could have been avoided.
Making a Customizable Work Schedule Agreement Template
During the initial phase of employment, it typically requires a specific set of practices and criteria to maintain day-to-day business operations. While this can be a relatively simple process for small organizations, it can be a complex undertaking for larger organizations that require staffing for numerous shifts, departments, and other facets. For these businesses, making the most of scheduling essential employees is vital. Failing to make the best use of available human resources results in lost revenue, lower productivity, and low employee morale. Establishing a standard and repeatable process for the deployment of schedules and the employees who fill them can be a highly effective means of ensuring a strong ROI on precious employ resources.
A customizable work schedule agreement template should be easy to use and adaptable to the needs of the business in which it is being used. It shouldn’t be overloaded with extraneous information, and it should be accurate in its portrayal of facts, such as employee schedules, the dates these schedules occur, and the associated pay rates. Creation of any work schedule agreement template begins with a review of the specific needs of the business or organization. Gathering information about its needs does not need to be a difficult process, but it is important to serve all interested parties, from payroll providers to ownership to line supervisors and managers. With a clear overview of the employee schedule needs of the organization, it is time to build the skeleton of the customizable work schedule agreement template. Each of the components of the schedule should be clearly labeled for simplicity. This includes things like the date of each shift, the hours that each shift takes place, and how much the employee will be paid for each shift. In most cases, schedules are organized by month and then broken down by week. This allows for maximum clarity and understanding by all interested parties. Each week should designate shifts by day and how many employees are scheduled to work each shift. This usually includes an employee’s name, employee number, department, classification of work, and so on. Finally, the customizable work schedule agreement template must be reviewed. There are several different parties that should be involved in this process, including managers who are responsible for managing shifts, payroll and HR managers who ensure a smooth and timely payment process, and supervision to guarantee that it can be understood by all.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Crafting a comprehensive and enforceable work schedule agreement can be an essential part of running your business smoothly and fairly. These agreements should clearly state the rules and policies of your business, while laying out clear guidelines on how you’ll work with your employees to ensure that there’s no room for misunderstanding.
In the past few years, attorneys have started using these documents, but it’s important to understand that there isn’t a lot of case law out there as to what exactly should be considered optional and what is required. In fact, because there are so many different state, local and even city laws that govern the hiring of employees (for example, Chicago has its own laws governing criminal records, while Evanston won’t allow you to ask for a potential employee’s credit history) that using a work schedule template agreement can help ensure that you’re following all the appropriate legal requirements, both at the local and state level, all while giving you the flexibility to ask for any additional information that your company may require to operate efficiently.
While these documents can be vital, you should also be careful to avoid these common mistakes:
- Unclear language. When you use vague terminology in the work schedule agreement , it can cause you to run into potential legal challenges that could have been avoided had you been clear. In addition to outlining any positions or types of work available, you should also list or describe what information employees will be asked to provide, any existing restrictions on background checks or inquiring about criminal records, the type of testing they will be asked to undergo, how overtime will be approved, what your policy is on lunch breaks and when shift schedules will be posted.
- Generalized language. Every business is different and will have different needs. Try not to copy from other companies’ work schedule agreements, since your needs may be totally different. When drafting this agreement for your own business, keep your unique needs in mind as you write.
- Confusion about who’s actually working for you. Some of your employees may work for outside agencies, be contracted workers or hired on a temporary basis, and you may not be able to treat these individuals in the same manner as your regular employees. It’s important to note right in your work schedule agreement that you will not be held liable for any breach of any agreement with these outside agencies or for any injuries or damages caused by them.
Amending and Renewing the Agreement
Work schedule agreements should be reviewed and updated with a degree of frequency that is commensurate with the speed at which the workplace evolves. There is no "one size fits all" since workplace dynamics will not only vary from one business to another, but will vary from one work group to another within the same business, and may also vary over time within the same work group.
For example, if the work schedule agreement is being used for employees in a call centre in which shifts are run on a schedule that is fairly static, a review and update of the agreement every 12 to 18 months may suffice. On the other hand, where the work schedule agreement has been established for a workplace where the shifts are dynamically scheduled based on weekly shifts or other factors that are constantly changing, it may be prudent to review the work schedule agreement every three to four months.
Once the need for an update has been identified, a process for making the change should be undertaken. Changes that are unilaterally imposed on the employees of a company without their input are bound to create resentment and undermining of the employer’s authority. It is in the employer’s best interest to involve the employees in address any required changes in the work schedule agreement.
Some of the issues that may require a change in a work schedule agreement include: The extent to which the workplace needs to evolve on each occasion will depend on the extent to which change has occurred. In the case of some of the examples above, it may be sufficient to simply obtain the employees’ agreement to the proposed changes to the work schedule agreement. In contrast, in the case of other examples, only those employees who will now be subject to the new work requirements would be expected to agree to the amendments to the work schedule agreement.
In the event that agreement cannot be reached with the employees that allows the work schedule agreement to be updated in accordance with the foregoing scenario, the employer may choose to proceed unilaterally as though an agreement had been reached by supplementing the work schedule agreement with a change notice. In such a case, the employer should ensure that the following elements are present: Depending on the amendments, an employee may or may not resort to an application to be exempted from a change in the work schedule agreement.
The process for amending a work schedule agreement should be followed to minimize the risk associated with a unilaterally implemented change to the work schedule agreement.
Legal Issues in Work Schedule Agreements
The legal considerations when drafting a work schedule agreement vary greatly depending on the country, the type of work being performed and the particular circumstances of each case. As a matter of course, any such agreement should be drafted with the appropriate local regulations in mind.
For example, in Europe, the Working Time Directive is also important to consider. In general terms, Europe as a whole has quite detailed working time regulations addressing things like rest breaks and mandatory rest times. For example, within the European Union, workers have the right to at least 4 weeks of paid annual leave every year. For some EU countries, you may have to consider 2 years instead of 1 year.
Things are similar in the U.K., but it is worth noting that the United Kingdom generally has even more flexibility in this area than some continental European countries do. The idea is that the U.K.’s NHS provides health care that is funded through taxation. Therefore, many employees spend a lot of their time providing free health care services. Within a given year, the NHS covers all of the costs that it needs to cover, leaving people with enough money for their basic needs above and beyond that.
Europe also has regulations regarding layovers and overtime periods. These matters are a little less important the further you get away from the U.K. and the more working days and hours you offer within the agreement. More important are the constraints on work hours and on any changes in those work hours that you might like to impose. Keep in mind that the laws are stricter within the European Union , because the provisions are meant to protect employees from excess.
In Canada and the U.S., things are a little simpler, but you still want to be familiar with the law on your side of the border. For example, in the U.S., the Fair Labor Standards Act regulates things like overtime and minimum wage, and there’s been a lot of media coverage lately about overtime. However, individual state laws in the U.S. may be stricter and more detailed than even the federal law, so be sure to investigate what other laws and regulations apply (i.e., relaxation of anti-discrimination provisions, etc.). Be aware that U.S. regulations about minors working often require parental consent before a contract can be enforced.
Meanwhile, in Canada, many different employment standards acts apply — Ontario’s provincial law is not the same as B.C.’s, for example. The Workplace Standards and pay in Manitoba is different from Saskatchewan and Alberta, for instance. In Quebec, employees are subject to the Act Respecting Labour Standards.
That being said, a lot of the issues discussed above will be largely irrelevant to you. While there are differences between the U.S. and Canada, the differences hinge more on the overall concepts than sole states or provinces. Therefore, as is the case in most job contract templates, the biggest concern is to be aware of the regulations where you do business.
However, a solid, well-written contract should have you covered on any and all necessary bases. When in doubt, it never hurts to consult a legal professional.