What Skill-Based Rules Do & Why They Matter
Rules are RosterLab’s decision engine — they guide how shifts are built.
They ensure compliance, fairness, and workload balance.
Example: “Employees must work exactly 40 hours a week”
Skill-Based rules ensure rules calculate the correct values for employees based on their FTE, and takes away the effort of manually editing values based on the differing values for employees. FTE buckets define employee workload ranges (e.g., “Part-Time” 0.00-0.60, “Full-Time” 0.80-1.00).
These are used in skill-based rules to apply different values based on an employee's skills and FTE level (e.g. full-time nurses can work more consecutive days than part-time nurses).
How to Create Skill-Based Rules
To set up Skill-Based Rules, you will first need to add FTE Buckets in the settings.
Navigate to Data Configurations in Settings, and click Add Bucket
Can Add New or Multiple if required
Name FTE Bucket and Add Minimum and Maximum FTE values into field.
(e.g., “Part-Time” 0.00-0.60, “Full-Time” 0.80-1.00)
Using FTE Buckets in Skill-Based Rules
Once FTE Buckets have been added, these can enhance how rule values are assigned to an employee. By going into the rule settings, the FTE can be added, for example the rule Employees must work exactly 40 hours per week can be updated to set the value to 40 where staff are full time FTE, and 20 for the part time FTE.
By configuring the FTE buckets against the rule, specific rule values are now auto-updated in the Rules Table based on the employee's expected hours.
Using FTE Buckets in Pattern Rules
FTE Buckets can also be applied to pattern rules, allowing you to create rules that apply to specific employment groups. To add FTE to a pattern rule, create a new rule and then select the relevant FTE Bucket from within the rule settings.