Configure Shift Incentives

The AI-powered Intelligent Shift Incentives solution provides an automated and cost-effective way to solve your organization's staffing challenges. It can predict hard-to-fill open shifts and give managers real-time and dynamically priced incentive recommendations to eligible workers to pick up the shifts.

When an open shift is created or edited, the AI machine-learning model predicts the probability of the shift remaining unfilled. The AI model is automatically and regularly trained. It analyzes historical data of past open shifts with similar characteristics, such as job, location, time of day, day of week, shift length, number of segments, and so on.Each open shift is assigned a "hard-to-fill" prediction score from 0% to 100%, with 100% denoting that the open shift has a 100% probability of remaining unfilled by the time it needs to be worked.

System administrators can configure shift incentives by following these steps:

Set the Location Category Type

The AI prediction model is trained for each organization node of the business structure whose Type is marked as Location Category = Site. All children nodes of a Site type parent location will automatically be trained.

  1. Navigate to Main Menu > Administration > Application Setup > Business Structure Setup > Jobs and Business Structure.
  2. In Jobs and Business Structure, select Manage > Types on the action bar.
  3. Select a business structure node and select Update.
  4. In the Edit Type slider, in Location Category, select Site.
  5. Select Save.

Define the Incentive Money Pay Code

To capture the incentive amount applied for incentivized open shifts, a new money pay code definition must be created. You can then include this incentive pay code in the manager's paycode data access profile.
  1. Navigate to Main Menu > Administration > Application Setup > Pay Policies > Pay Codes > Pay Code Definition.
  2. In Pay Code Definition, select New.
  3. In New Pay Code Definition:
    1. In Name, enter a descriptive name for the pay code, such as Bonus.
    2. In Unit, select Money.
    3. Specify other options as needed.
  4. Select Save & Return.
  5. Navigate to Main Menu > Administration > Application Setup > Data Access Profiles > Pay Codes.
  6. Select the manager's pay code data access profile to which you want to add the incentive pay code. This data access profile is assigned to their manager role in the Paycodes "Edit" Profile or Paycodes "View" Profile field in Main Menu > Maintenance > People Information > Timekeeping > Manager Role – General.
  7. In Edit Pay Code Data Access Profile:
    1. In Available Pay Codes, select the incentive pay code.
    2. Select the Add arrow to move the pay code into the Selected Pay Codes list.
    3. Select Save & Return.

Configure the Function Access Control Point

To enable managers to use the shift incentivization functionality in the Schedule Planner, the Incentive Management Functional Access Control Point (FACP) must be configured. When Incentive Management is set to Allowed, the Incentives icon is displayed on the Schedule Planner action bar, from which managers can perform various shift incentivization tasks. The Incentive Management > AI recommended FACP can also be explicitly set to allow or disallow managers to add or delete incentive recommendations.

  1. Navigate to Main Menu > Administration > Application Setup > Access Profiles > Function Access Profiles.
  2. In Function Access Profiles, select the manager profile.
  3. Select the Manager – Department Manager Function Access Profile.
  4. Expand Scheduling.
  5. Navigate to the Incentive Management FACP and set it to Allowed.
  6. Expand Incentive Management.
  7. In AI recommended, set Add and Delete to Allowed to give managers the ability to add and delete incentives. If Add access is set to Disallowed, the AI Recommendation action is hidden in the Schedule Planner If Delete access is set to Disallowed, the Remove Incentive action is hidden in the Schedule Planner
  8. In Notify, set to Allowed to enable managers to send notifications to employees for incentivized open shifts. If Notify is set to Disallowed, the Notify Open Shifts action is hidden in the Schedule Planner.
  9. Select Save.

Configure the System Setting

System administrators can specify a default threshold value that determines the predicted probability score above which an open shift is considered hard to fill. This threshold value triggers the automatic incentivization of all eligible open shifts when managers select the AI Recommendation option in the Schedule Planner. The incentive recommender will incentivize all shifts that have a hard-to-fill prediction higher than the defined threshold. Shifts with a lower prediction score will not be incentivized, and based on their score will be classified as either easy to fill or moderate to fill, in equal segmentations.

This probability threshold value applies to every organization.

  1. Navigate to Main Menu > Administration > Application Setup > System Configuration > System Settings.
  2. In System Settings, select the Scheduling tab.
  3. Locate the site.scheduling.incentive.probability.prediction.default.threshold setting.
  4. Enter the default threshold percentage. The default value is 80%.
    For example, suppose you specify the threshold value as 80%. Open shifts with a probability of remaining unfilled of 80% or higher are categorized as hard to fill. Open shifts with a probability ranging from 40% to 79% are considered to have a moderate-to-fill risk and open shifts with a probability ranging from 0% to 39% are considered as easy to fill.
  5. Select Save.

Configure Incentive Definitions

System administrators can define the incentive attributes that determine how managers or AI can incentivize shifts. An unlimited number of incentive definitions can be defined.

  1. Navigate to Main Menu > Administration > Application Setup > Scheduler Setup > Incentive Scheduling > Incentive Definition.
  2. Select Create.
  3. In Name, enter a name for the incentive definition.
  4. (Optional) In Description, enter a description for the incentive definition.
  5. In Paycode, select the money paycode used to capture the incentive bonus amount. This is the incentive paycode specified in the manager's Paycodes "Edit" Profile or Paycodes "View" Profile.
  6. In Default Amount, enter the default money amount for the incentive. This value must be less than or equal to the Maximum Amount, if specified.
    Note: The incentive amounts are currency-agnostic. Incentives are denominated in the currency of the employee who picks up the open shift, as defined in the employee's Locale Policy.
  7. In Maximum Amount, enter the maximum money amount allowed for this incentive.
  8. In Type, select whether the incentive is Money fixed amount (lump sum) or Money amount per hour (hourly rate).
  9. Select Use Totalized Hours to have the hourly incentive computed based on effective time (taking into account automatic break deductions).
  10. (Optional) Set up dynamic pricing to specify options that govern the daily repricing of an open shift incentive:
    Note: If dynamic pricing is not configured, the applied shift incentives remain constant and do not fluctuate.
    1. Select Enable Dynamic Pricing to specify that the incentive amount can either increase or decrease, based on the time horizon left before the shift is scheduled to be worked and on fluctuating coverage. For example, a higher incentive can be applied to shifts that are the farthest out and the amount decreases with each day that passes. The repricing model supports both increasing or decreasing the incentive amount with each passing day that the shift is not taken.
    2. To take coverage into consideration, select Use Staffing Level, then enter a Staffing Threshold (%).
      The Staffing Threshold (%) value is used as a trigger to adjust the initial incentive derived by the AI model. For example, set the Staffing Threshold (%) to 80 to incentivize shifts when the coverage is below 80%. If coverage is above that threshold, shifts will not get incentivized. When coverage is below that threshold, the incentive amount is adjusted based on:
      • Time horizon: The incentive amount can be set to increase or decrease as the shift date approaches.
      • Coverage: The daily incentive adjustment is pro-rated by coverage level.
    3. In Daily Adjustment, select whether the incentive amount will Increase or Decrease from one day to the next. Select None to neither increase nor decrease the incentive amount.
    4. If you select either Increase or Decrease, enter the Adjustment Amount. This is the amount of money that the incentive will be increased or decreased, respectively, per day, until the shift is filled. This field does not display if Daily Adjustment is set to None.
  11. Select Save.