Shift trading policies control which employees can make shift trades, swaps, bids, or retrades, and whether they require supervisor approval to do so. You can create as many shift trading policies as needed in Schedule Setup > Shift Trading Policy.
| Action | Description |
|---|---|
| Shift Trading | Employees can pick up shifts that have been posted by another employee or manager. This is considered a shift trade. An employee can then pick up the shift if it doesn't overlap with an existing shift. |
| Posting Shifts | Employees can post a scheduled shift so that another qualified employee can pick it up. You can configure a shift trading policy so that employees can post the shift to everyone or to a specific coworker. |
| Swapping Shifts | Employees can swap shifts with another employee. Unlike posting shifts, after a swap each employee is scheduled to the same number of shifts as before. |
| Re-Trading Shifts | Employees can retrade a shift. If they pick up a shift that has been posted or swapped with them, they can still post or swap the shift. |
Each shift trading policy can allow or deny different combinations of these actions. For example, if you need to configure Dayforce so that part-time employees can only swap shifts and full-time employees can swap and post shifts, create two policies: one with swapping shifts enabled, and the other with swapping and posting shifts enabled.
Dayforce also examines the scheduling rules that apply to an employee when they make shift trades and when their supervisor approves them. For example, scheduling rules can define the maximum number of hours an employee can be scheduled to daily or weekly. Which rules are applied and the severity of violating them is controlled by the employee's scheduling policy. See Schedule Rule Policies.
After an employee’s scheduling policy is configured, Dayforce checks if any shift trade or shift bid would violate a scheduling rule with a severity of either “error” or “critical.” If the trade would violate a rule with one of these severities, the trade is blocked. Dayforce performs this check whenever employees initiate a shift trade, post a shift, or bid for a shift.
If shift trading is configured to require supervisor approval, it also performs the check when supervisors approve the shift trade or shift bid. For example, if an employee must work a minimum of 15 hours a week, and the Weekly Hours Rule is configured with a severity of either error or critical, an employee scheduled to work two eight-hour shifts can’t post either of their shifts, because giving up either shift would reduce their scheduled hours below the 15-hour minimum.
A variety of scheduling rules exist and can help to define how employees can be scheduled. See Schedule Rules Library.