Understanding Time and Labor

This chapter discusses:

• Scheduling.

• Time reporting methods.

• Time administration.

• Time management features.

• User preferences.

• Configurable manager views (manager search options).

• Delivered data archive templates.

Scheduling

There are three scheduling environments that an organization is likely to encounter – fixed, rotating and dynamic. In a fixed schedule environment, employees are assigned a work pattern on hire or on a change in role or situation. The planned work pattern is static and is changed only in special situations. In a rotating schedule environment, schedule rosters are established in advance and assigned to groups of employees on hire or when a new project or period begins. In a dynamic environment, an employee does not have a set schedule; a new schedule is established every period, and updates are made frequently based on a variety of factors.

In each environment, it is important for schedules to be created and maintained systematically to communicate work expectations, track adherence, and reconcile with actual work completed. Time and Labor provides capabilities to support each schedule environment.

For fixed schedule environments, a company may support centralized standard schedule definitions and ad hoc manager-specified work patterns. All schedule building blocks, including shifts, workdays, and schedule definitions, are optional. For example, an organization may want to establish only standard shifts and allow these to be assigned directly to employees.

For rotating schedule environments, a set of rotations, with relative start days, may be defined on a schedule. For example, Crew A may start its rotation on day one of the pattern and Crew B may start on day seven. Schedule patterns are not associated with specific dates until an employee is assigned to the pattern, allowing flexibility and reusability. The scheduler may choose a sample date, however, and view the resulting rotation pattern. Split shifts on one day, and off shifts that are greater or less than 24 hours can be created also. These features are particularly useful for organizations that operate on a 24-hour schedule and must rotate individuals between day shifts and night shifts.

Dynamic scheduling environments require frequent schedule changes and intelligent scheduling arrangements. Today, the schedule override capabilities are intended for infrequent ad hoc use. In Time and Labor, a generic interface to the open scheduling architecture loads optimized work schedules or data from other systems, including training data from PeopleSoft Enterprise Learning Management. Managers have a graphical interface to view schedules for their employees. In addition to viewing coverage, assigned shifts, and total work hours, managers can identify individuals with planned absences or training. If updates need to be made to the schedule, managers can find replacements, swap shifts, copy schedules, and make short- and long-term schedule changes.

Employees can view their monthly schedule, including work and shift information, planned absences, holidays, and training.

See Also

Understanding Work Schedules

Assigning Schedules to a Group

Using Manager Self-Service for Scheduling Components

Time Reporting Methods

There are a variety of ways in which time can be reported:

• Timesheet entry.

  Both punch time and elapsed time are reported using the Timesheet page.

• Web clock.

  Enables employees to enter a single punch and provide time and task detail when entering punches.

• Mass time.

  Enables the employee or the manager to report time in several ways. They can report time according to their (or their employee’s) schedule for a specified date or date range. They can also specify a lump sum amount to be distributed according to their schedule.

• Rapid time.

  Use rapid reporting templates to design time entry pages for fast reporting.

• TCD interface.

  The TCD Interface uses the PeopleSoft Publish and Subscribe communications methodology in PeopleTools to send and receive data from the TCD system. Data in Time and Labor and the TCD system are synchronized by either a full data replication or an incremental approach (changes only).

• Mobile Time Management.

  PeopleSoft Mobile Time and Labor provides time reporting and viewing capabilities for Pocket PC and laptop computer users while disconnected from the organization's network. This enables users to manage time reporting while working remotely and to submit reported time periodically through synchronization with the server.

• Integration with PeopleSoft Enterprise Absence Management.

  Absence Management time-off management activities and processes integrate with Time and Labor.

See Also

Entering, Viewing, or Changing Employee's Time

Using Mass Time

Understanding Rapid Time Reporting

Understanding Time Collection Devices

Mobile Time Management

Retrieving Absence Data

Time Administration

The foundation of Time and Labor is the Time Administration rules processing feature, which enables you to create rules for processing time. You can apply these rules online and as part of the Time Administration batch process.

Time administration provides these tools for creating rules:

• Templates for rule calculations.

• Actions and conditions for rules that are too complex to be defined within a template structure.

• SQL objects for complex rules.

• User exits for constructs that cannot be handled through templates or other tools.

See Also

Creating Rules in Time Administration

Time Management Features

Time management features include:

• Time management alerts.

  The Time Management Alerts pagelet displays occurrences of overtime limit reached, overtime approval required, payable time approval required, exceptions to review, or absence approval required if any occurrences exist and provides a link to a page for each type of occurrence.

• Workforce availability.

  The Workforce Availability pagelet displays a count of employees who are currently logged in, no shows for current shifts, scheduled for current shifts, reported absent for today, reported in training for today, and links to the daily and weekly manager calendar view pages.

• Time calendar views.

  The time calendar view pages all a manager to view reported time, scheduled time, payable time, exceptions and other information about his/her employee’s time.

• Manage exceptions.

  Exceptions are configurable for Time Reporting and the Time Administration process. The Time Administration process will reprocess pending time reporting exceptions and resolve exceptions, minimizing the need for manual intervention.

• Approve reported and payable time, adjust paid time, view payable time and view forecasted payable time.

See Also

Using Manager Self-Service Components for Time Management and Reporting

User Preferences

The User Preferences page is used by employees to view and update their schedule and time related preferences, such as preferred shifts and times.

A manager self service version of this page allows managers to view the employees’ schedule preferences, to be taken into account for future schedule creation and changes. The manager views only the schedule preferences of the employee; time reporting preferences are not viewable in manager self service.

See Also

Setting Up User Preferences

Configurable Manager Views

Managers can configure the Default Search Options page to select default criteria and options. Fields and field values can be selected to be used as search criteria, default values, or viewed in a list. This is used on the various manager self service pages to expediently select employees to view and update.

See Also

Setting Up Manager Search Options

Delivered Data Archive Templates

The following table illustrates the data archive templates delivered with Time and Labor.

See Also

Enterprise PeopleTools PeopleBook: Data Management, Using PeopleSoft Data Archive Manager