Calculation for the Otherwise Working Day

An otherwise working day (OWD) is a day that an employee would typically be scheduled to work if it wasn’t a public holiday or leave day. You can configure Dayforce to calculate an average otherwise working day based on conditions of your choosing, such as a specific lookback period and calculation method. This also involves configuring your time off policy to use the otherwise working day average to calculate time away from work (TAFW), which is covered in the previous section. See Time Calculation Settings.

Role feature access:

Time Away From Work > Time Off Policy > Days Calculation
Time Away From Work > Time Off Policy > Otherwise Working Day
Time Away From Work > Time Off Policy > Weeks Calculation

In the Otherwise Working Day section, you configure how Dayforce calculates a normalized, average working day through which it can derive TAFW hours.

This section appears only after you select Otherwise Working Day in one of the calculation lists in the Weeks or Days sections.

Otherwise Working Day settings
Setting	Description
Number of periods to look back	The number of periods the calculation engine evaluates when determining the average otherwise working day.
Period Type	The period type that the calculation engine evaluates. Dayforce uses this period type when evaluating the lookback period you configured using the Number of periods to look back field. For example, if you select Weeks and you entered `8` in the Number of periods to look back field, Dayforce uses an eight-week lookback period to calculate the average otherwise working day. The option is: Weeks.
Ranking Strategy	The method that drives how Dayforce calculates and ranks average working days when determining the otherwise working day. The options are: OWD %: The otherwise working day percentage, which represents how often a specific weekday contained a worked shift during the lookback period. Dayforce uses the following formula to calculate the OWD %: `(Number of times a specific workday was worked in the lookback period) / (Number of weeks in the lookback period) * 100` For example, if an employee worked on 8 out of 12 Mondays, the OWD % for Monday in the 12 week period is 67% ([8 / 12] * 100). Dayforce applies this formula to each day of the week to determine different percentages for each day. OWD Average Hours: The otherwise working day average hours, which is the average number of hours worked for a workday that’s included in the lookback period. Dayforce uses the following formula to calculate the OWD average hours: `(Total number of hours worked for a specific day in the lookback period) / (Number of times that day was worked in the lookback period)` For example, if an employee’s total worked hours on Mondays during the lookback period is 54 and they worked 8 Mondays, the OWD average hours for Monday in the lookback period is 6.75. Dayforce applies this formula to each day of the week to determine different average hours for each day.
Equal Day Proportion	Determines whether each of the ranked days in the normalized week have the same week proportion.
Pay Codes Eligible Pay Codes Ineligible	The eligible and ineligible pay codes for inclusion in the otherwise working day calculation.
Pay Categories Eligible Pay Categories Ineligible	The eligible and ineligible pay categories for inclusion in the otherwise working day calculation.
Exclude Unworked Weeks	Determines if unworked weeks are included or excluded when calculating the otherwise working day average.