Predictability Pay
What triggers it, how much it is, and the accounting that makes it visible as a cost of poor planning rather than an invisible leak.
Legal · Reference
General orientation, not legal advice; amounts and triggers differ substantially by jurisdiction.
Predictability pay is a premium owed when the employer changes a published schedule inside the notice window.
What typically triggers it
Adding hours to a published shift.
Cutting or cancelling a shift.
Moving a shift to a different time or date.
Calling someone in on a day they were not scheduled.
And in some places, working a shift without the required rest after a closing shift.
What does not
Worker-initiated changes: swaps, requested time off, someone volunteering for extra hours.
Which is why the record of who initiated a change matters, and why an informal swap that was never recorded can look like an employer change afterwards.
Certain emergencies, narrowly defined — usually utility failure, natural disaster or similar, not a busy Saturday.
The amounts
Commonly one hour at the regular rate per change, in Oregon and most city ordinances.
Seattle owes half the scheduled hours for changes within the window, which is substantially more.
New York City fast food uses a fixed schedule of set dollar amounts depending on the type and timing of the change.
Cancellations frequently attract more than additions, sometimes a proportion of the lost shift.
The accounting that makes it useful
Book it to the site that caused it, not to a central compliance line.
Per change, with the reason.
Then it becomes visible as what it is: the price of a planning failure, paid weekly, by the site that made it.
Most operations bury it in payroll adjustments, where nobody connects it to the rota.
What the pattern tells you
Many small cuts: scheduling to the forecast exactly, with no buffer.
Many additions: under-staffing the forecast, or a standby list that is not working.
Concentrated at one site: a manager building rotas late and adjusting after.
Rising over a season: the forecast model has drifted.
All four are findings about planning, and all four are cheaper to fix than to pay.
The comparison worth running
Total predictability pay for a quarter.
Against the cost of a one-person buffer on the uncertain shifts for the same quarter.
In most operations that have run this, the buffer is cheaper — and it also removes the disruption the premium was compensating for.
Book it to the site that caused it
Not to a central compliance line.
Per change, with the reason.
Then it is visible as what it is — the price of a planning failure, paid weekly, by the site that made it.
Buried in payroll adjustments, nobody connects it to the rota, and the behaviour that generates it continues indefinitely.
A practical implementation prompt
During configuration, use review the data-flow example to prompt questions about fields, ownership and output. Keep the written scheduling purpose in control and document every assumption.