TES compliance in shift scheduling — what you need to know
Lue suomeksi →The TES (collective bargaining agreement) for the amusement and theme park industry defines precise rules for shift scheduling. Overtime pay, evening and night premiums, Sunday premiums, rest periods, working time limits — each of these affects how a roster is built.
Yet many shift planners still work in Excel or on paper, without automatic TES compliance checks. Errors are caught after the fact — in payroll, or worse, through an employee complaint.
This article covers the key TES rules for the amusement and theme park industry from a shift planner’s perspective.
Overtime: when does an hour become overtime?
Overtime is one of the most involved areas of the TES. The essentials to understand:
Daily overtime occurs when daily working hours exceed the threshold defined in the TES. Overtime is compensated at an increased rate — with the first overtime hours at a different multiplier than subsequent ones.
Weekly overtime occurs when the total weekly hours exceed the agreed threshold, even if no single day exceeded the daily limit.
Equilibration periods can change how overtime is calculated. When an equilibration period is in use, weekly hour overages are assessed at the end of the period — not on a week-by-week basis.
Common mistakes:
- Daily and weekly overtime are not distinguished from each other
- The effect of the equilibration period is not accounted for
- The overtime multiplier is calculated incorrectly
Evening, night, and Sunday premiums
In the amusement and theme park industry, a significant share of shifts fall during evening hours, weekends, and public holidays. The TES defines a separate premium for each:
- Evening premium — for hours worked after a defined time of day
- Night premium — for hours worked during nighttime
- Sunday premium — for hours worked on Sundays and public holidays
Premiums are calculated from actual hours worked, not from planned shifts. This means payroll must be based on actual hours — not on the roster.
Common mistakes:
- The time windows for premium calculation are incorrect
- Sunday premium is not applied to public holidays that fall on weekdays
- Premiums are calculated from planned rather than actual hours
Rest periods
The TES requires adequate rest periods between shifts. In practice, this means:
- Daily rest period — a minimum rest period between consecutive shifts
- Weekly rest period — an unbroken weekly rest period
Violating rest period rules is one of the most common TES errors in shift scheduling. It happens especially when a morning shift is scheduled the day after an evening shift.
This is not visible automatically in Excel. The planner has to check every gap between shifts manually — or trust that they remember the rules.
Working time limits
The TES and the Working Hours Act set an upper limit on how much an employee may work within a given period. The limits apply to daily, weekly, and longer-period total working time.
Monitoring these limits is especially challenging during peak season, when hours increase and staffing is difficult to maintain. The temptation to exceed limits is significant — but the consequences can be substantial.
Why manual checking is not enough
Any single TES rule is not difficult on its own. The difficulty arises because there are many rules and they interact with each other.
A planner building a roster in Excel has to simultaneously account for:
- Daily and weekly overtime thresholds
- Premium calculations across different time windows
- Rest periods at every gap between shifts
- Total working time limits per period
- Individual employees’ contracted hours
Add time pressure, sick absences, shift swaps, and seasonal variation — and errors become inevitable. Not from carelessness, but because a manual process does not scale with the complexity of the TES.
What this means in practice
TES-compliant shift scheduling is not an extra feature. It is a baseline requirement.
When TES rules are checked automatically during scheduling — not after the fact in payroll — errors are caught before they materialise. The planner sees immediately if a roster violates a rest period, exceeds a working time limit, or produces unexpected overtime.
This does not remove the planner’s responsibility. It gives them a tool that keeps up with the complexity of the TES.
See how automatic TES interpretation enforces the rules from planning to pay.