Defining measurement periods

After you have created your measurement group, define your measurement periods. These periods are the time frames during which you want to track your employees’ service and leave time to accurately calculate their average service hours. The Affordable Care Act does not require that organizations define static lengths for measurement periods. An organization can have a measurement period of 12 months followed by a measurement period of 6 months. As long as each defined period duration falls within the acceptable 3-12 month window that is mentioned in the act, organizations can change the duration from period to period.

To help facilitate these changes, Workforce Management measurement periods are effective-dated (similar to the way job rates are effective-dated). A measurement period is defined by a start date and ends at the start of the next defined period. If the “next period” has not been defined, the current measurement period is considered to continue for an indefinite period of time, until a next period has been defined.