A guide to variable hours

Overview

Variable hours (VH) holiday allows users who work irregular or variable hours to use the holiday functions in myhrtoolkit. Users automatically accrue holiday based on a percentage of the hours that they work, as entered by managers.

  • A holiday year can comprise periods of fixed or variable hours. Leave accrued and days taken will be ‘rolled up’ in each period.

  • Only controllers can set employees to variable hours.

Moving in and out of variable hours holidays requires a number of changes to a user’s record, including possible changes to holiday units, as all variable hours entitlements are managed in hours. Changes in holiday unit will also be applied to all previous and future holiday bookings. You will be guided through this via a series of ‘wizards.’


Concepts

  • Variable hours – Where an employee does not have a fixed work pattern and has no fixed hours per week. Their hours can vary widely from week to week.

  • Fixed hours – where an employee has a fixed number of hours per week or a regular work roster. Can be measured in either hours or days.

  • Hours per day – the number of hours for which an employee is paid during a working day.

  • Percentage accrual – the rate at which an employee accrues leave within variable hours.

  • Full Time Holiday Entitlement (FTE) Equivalent – The holiday entitlement that a variable hours employee would receive if they did the same job on a full time basis.

How to change variable hours settings (Controllers)

Go to Config > System > Hours. Variable hours settings are found here, along with settings for which day of the week has been set as your first day of the week, whether variable hours employees accrue holiday only on hours up to the full-time entitlement (FTE) working week, and whether hours worked are entered daily or weekly.

If you want to make any changes, simply toggle the sliders and click the 'Update variable hours' button to confirm.

How to set a user to Variable Hours

Go to Management > Hours status.

Find the employee you would like to setup for variable hours. Input the date change will take effect from and click on the Submit button.

Variable hours settings in myhrtoolkit

Click on the ‘Variable hours’ radio button to configure variable hour settings for the chosen employee.

Variable hour employees cannot accumulate more holidays than full-time equivalent colleagues. Holiday accruals for variable hours employees are therefore capped either by week or by annual accrual. Values entered in the Standard FTE working week (hours) and the Full time holiday entitlement equivalent (hours) are used to enforce this rule.

Settings an employee to variable hours

Calculating variable hour holiday accrual percentage
  1. Convert full time entitlement from days to weeks. For example, an employee entitled to a statutory minimum of 28 days would convert to 5.6 weeks holiday entitlement.

  2. Calculate the number of weeks the employee is likely to work in a year (52 weeks in a year minus 5.6 weeks holiday entitlement equals 46.4 weeks)

  3. Divide holiday entitlement by weeks in work and multiply the result by 100 to get the percentage (5.6/46.4 = 0.1207). Then 0.1207*100 = 12.07%.

Limits on accrual

  • Full Time Equivalent (FTE) holiday entitlement. A user set to variable hours cannot accrue more holidays than would have been available to a full time counterpart.

  • Working week option. When set, all variable hours users only accrue leave on hours up to their FTE working week hours. To set this go to Config > System > Hours. Remember users may have been set with different FTE working week values.

How to manage holiday for variable hours employees

Variable hours users request holiday in the normal way via Myhome > Holidays > Book holiday dates where they will see their YTD holiday accrual.

Holiday managers will approve holiday in the normal way via Management > Holidays > Outstanding holiday requests.

Users can request leave in advance of their YTD accrual. This means that variable hours users may, at certain times, have a negative holiday balance. Where users seek to do this, the system will present warning messages to both users and holiday managers.

In the case of requests in advance of current accrual, a message is displayed advising of this and if they are likely to accrue this difference before the end of the holiday year (based on an average of up to 12 weeks previous hours worked).

If they have not worked at least 6 weeks of variable hours prior to the request, they will just see a message advising that their request is in advance of their current accrual.

The user’s holiday request that the holiday manager reviews has extra information to allow for informed decisions. It includes a similar message advising if they are likely to accrue any difference before the end of the holiday year.

If a request means that the users would receive more holiday than their FTE counterpart, the variable hours system will not allow the request to be made.

These messages should be treated as guidance only, as an individual’s work pattern could change at any time. It remains the holiday manager’s responsibility at all times to manage leave appropriately.

Variable hours employees are subject to the same ‘use it or lose it’ rules regarding holiday at the end of the holiday year. The carry over systems also works in the same way for this group of employees.

How to change a user from Variable Hours to Fixed hours

Go to Management > Hours status.

Select the full time or part time (Fixed Hours) boxes. If part time, input the part time percentage.

You will then be guided through the change process via a wizard. This will require you to enter the hours per day that applies to the new period of Fixed Hours.

You will be asked if you wish to manage the new period of fixed hours in Days or Hours.

  • If you select days, the wizard will convert all previous holiday to Days including, entitlement, previously taken holiday, future bookings and any leave carried forward from the previous year.

  • If you select Hours all fields will remain in hours, as all periods of variable hours are also managed in Hours.

Notes
  • Users set to variable hours still use the same leave year as they did previously, for example January to December – this does not change.
  • If someone ends the year as a variable hours employee, they will continue to use variable hours in the next holiday year with an opening holiday balance of zero.
  • Entering retrospective periods of variable hours – if you wish to create a retrospective period of variable hours for a user, that is one which is in the past, you will first need to ensure that the user’s holiday is being managed in hours. The system will then allow you to create the period of variable hours required.
  • Great care should be taken when managing users during transitions as small errors can create larger differences later on.
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