Workforce management glossary

Working definitions for the terms used across Owlly product, industry and resource pages.

Actual hours: The time recorded through attendance or approved adjustments.
Attendance exception: A difference or missing record that requires review, such as a late clock-in, early clock-out or missing clock event.
Casual workforce: Workers engaged flexibly or for specific shifts, including internal casual pools and external agency workers depending on the organisation.
Deskless worker: An employee whose work is primarily carried out away from a desk, such as a hotel, restaurant, retail, care, event or facilities employee.
Employee scheduling: The process of assigning employees to shifts, roles, locations and times.
Frontline workforce: Employees directly delivering an organisation's service or operations, often through shift-based work.
HRIS: Human Resource Information System: software used to organise employee records and HR workflows.
Labour demand forecasting: Estimating the workforce needed from expected operating demand such as occupancy, covers, reservations, footfall or events.
Payroll readiness: The state in which hours, overtime, allowances and relevant exceptions have been reviewed and prepared for downstream payroll processing.
Roster: A schedule showing which employees are assigned to work by date, time, role or location.
Scheduled hours: The time an employee was planned to work.
Shift swap: A structured request for one employee to exchange or transfer a scheduled shift according to organisation rules.
Time and attendance: The process of recording when employees start, finish and take relevant breaks.
Timesheet: A reviewed record of worked time used for approval, payroll preparation or reporting.
Workforce management: The processes and software used to plan, schedule, track and manage employees and labour activity.
Workforce Operating System: A connected platform that links scheduling, attendance, employee records, leave, timesheets, mobile self-service and payroll workflows.