Human resource management using working time accounts with expiry of hours

Herein is presented a human resource management system based on a working time account (WTA) in which accumulated hours expire after a certain date, whether those owed by the employee to the company, or vice versa. The condition of hours-expiry limits flexibility but protects workers. The consideration of this feature enables modelling of many current industrial scenarios, at the expense of complicating the use of WTAs and hugely increasing the size of the models. A staff planning problem from the services industry is modelled and solved through mathematical programming, and the approach is shown to be efficient for realistic staff sizes. Lastly, a variety of scenarios are presented, for which the financial benefit generated by WTAs is calculated and possible compensations for workers are explored.