Washington (WA) State Rest and Meal Breaks Compliance

Note: This business process is an extension model that is developed outside the normal release schedule to meet specific customer needs. To request one of these models, you must submit a Salesforce Service Request to UKG. After the model is delivered to your tenant, you can edit it to meet your needs.

The Washington (WA) State Rest and Meal Breaks Compliance extension delivers a mechanism for employees, who work in healthcare organizations within Washington State, to report missed meal and rest breaks.

Accumulated attestation data gathered by the workflow provides employers with the ability to comply with quarterly reporting requirements stipulated by Washington Department of Labor and Industries regulations. This reporting requirement ensures that hospitals meet certain compliance thresholds (KPI %) that compare required and missed break periods.

An additional benefit of this extension is that employers now have insight into potential problem areas within the organization where breaks are frequently missed.

How it works

When the employee punches out at the end of the day, this workflow calculates the worked shift length and then prompts the employee with a series of questions. In response, the employee attests to the number of rest or meal breaks that were missed, and the premium zone in which the missed breaks occurred.

The attestation data, gathered in accordance with defined configurations, is utilized to calculate the compliance rate.

Thresholds

Thresholds, which are configured in Attestation settings to define when rest and meal breaks must be taken, provide the workflow with appropriate credit and penalty values that are added to the Timecard.

Default threshold values are included in a gold template provided with this extension.

Default threshold values
Time worked Rest breaks Meal breaks
>= 03:00 One 15-minute break -
>= 05:30 Two 15-minute breaks One 30-minute break
>=10:30 Three 15-minute breaks Two 30-minute breaks
>=15:30 Four 15-minute breaks Three 30-minute breaks
>=20:30 Five 15-minute breaks Four 30-minute breaks

Credit and penalties

After the employee attests that they missed a rest or meal break, the full duration of the missed break is credited to the Timecard.

For cases when the missed break is the first or only meal, the workflow cancels the deduction that is configured in the work rule. An optional credit is inserted in the Timecard.

Employees receive penalty pay as additional compensation for each missed rest and meal break. Penalty pay is enabled by default in the gold template provided with the extension; however, you can disable this option in accordance with policies that exist in your organization.

Meal break waiver

Some employees opt to voluntarily waive their right to a second meal break. You must configure and assign a different Attestation profile that includes a reduced number of breaks to these employees.

Compliance Rate

The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries requires healthcare facilities to submit the compliance rate percentage on a quarterly basis to determine if the state standards are met by the entire facility. This single rate, which represents the facility’s compliance, is measured using the following formula:

Compliance Rate KPI (%) = 100 –(Missed Rests + Missed Breaks * 100)/(Required Rests + Required Meals)

For example, assume that a registered nurse (RN) works 70 shifts during the previous quarter. The total length of the worked shifts entitles the RN to a total of 70 meal breaks and 140 rest breaks.

Over the course of the quarter, the RN attests that one meal break and two rest breaks were missed.

Compliance Rate KPI (%) = 100 – ((1 + 2) * 100) / (70 + 140) = 98.57%

The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries requires that the compliance rate be reported for the entire facility; however, the Dataview can provide details at various levels of the organization, even at the employee level.

Tracking functionality

Standard Attestation only captures the number of missed rest or meal breaks, as reported by the employee. However, to calculate the compliance rate, the system must determine the number of breaks to which the employee is entitled based on their working shift length.

This logic is incorporated into the workflow and requires four tracking paycodes that must be configured in UKG Pro Workforce Management (UKG Pro WFM). Additionally, for reporting purposes, the workflow records the number of worked shifts with a fifth tracking paycode.

  • Tracking Required Rests

  • Tracking Required Meals

  • Tracking Missed Rests

  • Tracking Missed Meals

  • Tracking Worked Shifts

This workflow is designed to utilize money-based paycodes for tracking, and each of the five noted tracking paycodes must be configured as money-based. The primary reason for this configuration is that money-based paycodes are best suited to represent the occurrence metric in the Compliance KPI Dataview and Charts.

Caution: The five tracking paycodes do not represent any monetary value, and are used only in the backend to calculate the Compliance KPI. We recommend that you configure these paycodes as hidden.

Attestation logic – Meals

The workflow expects that meal breaks are configured as automatic deductions in the work rules. When the employee attests that they missed a meal break, depending on the number of meal breaks that the employee was entitled to, the workflow takes the following actions:

  1. Employee is entitled to only one meal break:

    1. The deduction rule assigned to the work rule is cancelled using a Timecard API call. This behavior mimics the same way that a meal break is cancelled in the Timecard by way of the punch window.

    2. When penalties are owed to the employee, the workflow adds a Missed Meal Compensation paycode to the Timecard for the missed meal break.

  2. Employee is entitled to multiple meal breaks:

    1. In alignment with UKG Pro WFM functionality, the deduction rule assigned to the work rule is cancelled for only the first missed meal.

    2. For the second and subsequent missed meal breaks, the workflow credits the time by adding Missed Meal Credit paycode edits to the Timecard.

    3. When penalties are owed to the employee, the workflow adds Missed Meal Compensation paycode edits to the Timecard for the missed meal breaks.

    4. Contents in the table summarize the workflow actions taken for multiple missed meal breaks.

Multiple meal breaks actions
Meals missed Cancel deduction Missed Meal Credit Missed Meal Compensation
1 Yes - 0:30
2 Yes 0:30 1:00
3 Yes 1:00 1:30
4 Yes 1:30 2:00

Attestation logic – Rests

Rest breaks are paid and therefore not included in the work rules; as a result, cancel deductions are not applicable.

When the employee attests that a rest break is missed, the missed time and any associated premium time is credited as a Timecard paycode. The workflow adds a Missed Break Compensation paycode, if penalties apply.

During Attestation, the workflow prompts the employee to specify in which premium zone the missed break, or breaks, occurred. If the employee attests that all rest breaks were missed, the workflow automatically determines the premium zones from the configuration.

Premium zones, configurable in the workflow, are provided in a gold template with the following default values:

  • Zone 1 (07:00 AM – 03:00 PM)

  • Zone 2 (03:00 PM – 11:00 PM)

  • Zone 3 (11:00 PM – 07:00 AM)

Depending on the number of missed rest breaks and the zone in which the breaks were missed, the workflow adds paycodes to the Timecard as shown in the table below.

Note: Individual paycodes and corresponding amounts are added to the Timecard. For example, if two rest breaks need to be credited, two 0:15 paycode edits are added that total 0:30.
Missed rest breaks - Timecard paycode edits
Rests missed Missed Rest Credit Missed Rest Credit Premium 1, 2, or 3 Missed Rest Compensation
1 0:15 0:15 0:15
2 0:30 0:30 0:30
3 1:30 1:30 1:30
4 2:00 2:00 2:00
5 2:30 2:30 2:30

Attestation questions – Meal breaks

Depending on the length of the worked shift, the workflow initiates different forms and questions during the Attestation process.

You configure the phrasing and language of the questions in the locale policy decision table referenced by the workflow. A gold template includes the following questions:

Meal breaks - Logic flow
Meals missed Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4
1 Did you take your meal break? - - -
2 Did you take your first meal break? Did you take your second meal break? - -
3 Did you take your first meal break? Did you take your second meal break? Did you take your third meal break? -
4 Did you take your first meal break? Did you take your second meal break? Did you take your third meal break? Did you take your fourth meal break?

Attestation questions – Rest breaks

The logic for rest breaks differs in that the response to the first question takes one of two possible flows in the process.

If the response to the first question is Yes, no further questions are required and the workflow automatically processes the necessary action.

If the response to the first question is No, the employee must provide the number of missed rest breaks.

When only one break is missed, the employee must respond to Question 3 with the corresponding zone.

When more than one break is missed, the employee must respond to Question 3 with the corresponding zone; and then must respond to Question 4 with the zone associated with each subsequent missed break.

The table below shows each of the potential paths that are taken based on the response to the first question.

Rest Breaks - Logic flow
Question 1 Response 1 Question 2 Response 2 Question 3 Question 4
Did you take all your rest breaks? Yes -
No How many breaks did you miss? 1 In which zone did you miss your break? -
2, 3, 4, or 5 In which zone did you miss your first break? In which zone did you miss your next break?