Fairness and Decision-making in Collaborative Shift Scheduling Systems

Abstract

The strains associated with shift work decrease healthcare workers' well-being. However, shift schedules adapted to their individual needs can partially mitigate these problems. From a computing perspective, shift scheduling was so far mainly treated as an optimization problem with little attention given to the preferences, thoughts, and feelings of the healthcare workers involved. In the present study, we explore fairness as a central, human-oriented attribute of shift schedules as well as the scheduling process. Three in-depth qualitative interviews and a validating vignette study revealed that while on an abstract level healthcare workers agree on equality as the guiding norm for a fair schedule, specific scheduling conflicts should foremost be resolved by negotiating the importance of individual needs. We discuss elements of organizational fairness, including transparency and team spirit. Finally, we present a sketch for fair scheduling systems, summarizing key findings for designers in a readily usable way.

Design and Appropriation of Computer-supported Self-scheduling Practices in Healthcare Shift Work

“…Concerning cooperative shift planning, Uhde et al [74] compared different fairness concepts during shift-related conflict resolution. Healthcare workers valued "equality" for critical scheduling parameters in general, for example that everyone has the same number of free weekends.…”

“…Self-scheduling is a concept of high worker control [3,50,77] and therefore promising to reduce the negative effects of shift work on healthcare workers. However, existing studies of technical support for self-scheduling remain abstract (e.g., [60,74]), indicating the need for more contextualized, in-depth research. Thus, we conducted a worker-centered design process of a self-scheduling system and present it in detail below.…”

“…This contrasted the paper notebook used in the previous system. In doing so, we followed the recommendation by Uhde et al [74] to support face-to-face interactions during conflict resolution, which allows for a need-based process and helps overcome the dilemma of privacy and procedural fairness [12,13]. In shift scheduling, when a wish for a free shift cannot be granted, the reasons are often private (e.g., a co-worker has a doctor's appointment).…”

"Look! It's a Computer Program! It's an Algorithm! It's AI!": Does Terminology Affect Human Perceptions and Evaluations of Algorithmic Decision-Making Systems?

“…They also asked for participants' evaluations of the fairness of the AI technology's decision. In a work scheduling setting, Uhde et al [51] told participants that a "system" decides who gets vacation and asked them to report how they perceive and evaluate system-based decisions for scheduling. Even in single papers presenting multiple studies, terminology to refer to intelligent systems might vary.…”

Game of Roster – GamOR

“…Es zeigte sich, dass Pflegekräfte generell eine Gleichbehandlung in der Planung bevorzugen. Im konkreten Problemfall sollen jedoch individuelle Bedürfnisse als Entscheidungsgrundlage dienen[11,13]. Unter Berücksichtigung dieser Ergebnisse entwickelten wir mithilfe des wohlbefindensorientierten Ansatz zur Gestaltung von Technik[4,5] und Methoden aus dem kollaborativen UX Design[12] eine Vision davon, wie Dienstplanung den Anforderungen von Arbeits-und Privatleben stärker gerecht werden kann.…”