Overstaffing and understaffing

The goal of Auto-Assignment in LFSO is to create a schedule that provides as close as possible to 100% coverage of the workload requirements of a department. Covering 100% of the workload is not possible in many scheduling scenarios. This can be due to a lack of available employees, changes in workload requirements across schedule intervals, or the configuration of break and schedule rules. To create the best possible schedule, a minimal amount of understaffing and overstaffing is tolerated by Auto-Assignment.

An overstaffing margin is used to determine whether to add shifts to the schedule or to accept understaffing. Shifts are assigned to available employees when 50% or more of the shift time covers workload requirements. If over 50% of a potential shift would contribute to overstaffing, Auto-Assignment does not create the shift. For example, a department requires a minimum four employees from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM and has a minimum shift length of four hours. Auto-Assignment would attempt to assign an additional employee if a fifth employee is needed from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM. If the fifth employee is only needed from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM, the one-hour period of understaffing is kept because 75% of the shortest possible shift would contribute to overstaffing.

The schedule rule configuration can cause Auto-Assignment to assign shifts in excess of the overstaffing margin. Minimum rules can create scenarios where the total number or hours that are required to satisfy the minimums for every employee is higher than the interval requirements of the department. Overstaffing scenarios can also occur when employees have existing shifts during the schedule period or when using the Place Employee on Fixed Shifts rule to generate shifts based on employee shift patterns.