Worker Monitoring Rules, Part 2: No Break Taken For

Continuing on a previous post about Meal Enforcement Rules, we are going to cover today how to add Meal and Break reminders.

These rules can be used to notify employees that they are eligible to take a break or a lunch and also keep track if they have gone over a specified amount of time in which they were meant to take a Meal Period, so that the application can keep track of each time employees incur a meal period violation.

To set these up, go to the Administration tab and select "Rules, Action and Fences", then clock on "Worker Monitoring":

Once inside that section, click the "Add New Worker Monitor" button:

Adding these rules has three steps: policies, rules and actions.

Please refer to Part 1 of this series to go over how to create both the policy (naming the rule and assigning employees) and the action (email and notification alerts), since those steps will always be the same regardless of the rule you are creating, the only difference is what you are putting in the notifications, which of course depends on the context of that same rule.

For the rule we are covering on this post, you need to have created your own break types in the "Manage Break Types" section found in the Administration tab. On this example, we are using the most commonly used "Meal Period" and "Rest Break". This is very important since rules can be setup in a sequence within their own break types so the system can determine the correct notification to send to the employee depending on the sequence specified for the breaks.

To understand the previous point better, let's have an example. Let's say we have our first break set at 2 hours and our second one at 6 hours. The middle point between the two breaks is at 4 hours. If an employee doesn't take the break at 2 hours, he/she will get a reminder. If that person takes the break anytime between those 2 and 4 hours, it will be counted as the first break, so another alert can be expected at the sixth hour in case that new break is not taken, either. On the other hand, if the employee takes the break between the fourth and sixth hour, then the system will recognize that the first break was missed and it will be counted as the second break, so once the sixth hour is reached, no alert will be shown since that break has already been taken.

The point where we are at right now is once we click on the "Create New" button to add our new rule:

We will be taken to the "rules" section. Make sure to name the rule appropriately and select the trigger "No Break Taken For". This will add the following fields for you to fill out:

• Minutes: the amount of worked minutes the app will wait until the notification is sent. If for example, the meal period is set to be deducted, then that time will not be counted.
• Trigger Premium Pay: this is used when you are adding a rule for a meal, if the employee doesn't take a meal after the specified time and you enable this, it will trigger a Premium Pay flag so you can check in case there has been a meal period violation. This will also appear on any of the Premium Pay related reports.
• Applicable Break Type: in our example is the Rest Break, but it could also be the Meal Period or whatever you add in the Manage Break Type section.
• Break Sequence Id: this is where you set the sequence that was explained above, in our case Rest Breaks and Meal Periods will have their own sequence, the first break expected at 2 hours would be "SEQ1", the second one at 6 hours is "SEQ2" and so on (at least one rule per break or meal). Same thing for the Meal Periods, the first meal at the fifth hour is "SEQ1" and the second meal at the tenth hour would be "SEQ2".

The fields below correspond to the time range, setting it to "Always" means that the rules apply whenever the employees are clocked in (this is the recommended setting), but you can also set it to Business Hours or specify a time frame.

Once you complete adding the rule, you can click on "Create New Action" to proceed with adding the messages for the alerts and/or notifications.

(Click on image to enlarge)

That's it for this post! In Part 3 we will go over adding rules when a meal period or rest break has exceeded a certain amount of time, or if it was shorter than expected.

Until next time!

--Econz Team