Annualised hours exploitation?

[paperdragons]

Hey guys,

I'm currently working for an IT helpdesk. I work an annualised hours contract. The hours I need to work in one year is calculated by taking 40 x 52 (My contracted weekly hours times by weeks in a a year) and then taking off 30 x 8 (which is the total hours of holiday I'm entitled to) That results in a figure of 1840 hours in total I have to work in one year.

The rota is organised into quarters, and we are asked to enter hours for the shifts we would like to work over the quarter. There's 12 of us in our team, but the rota has certain limits to how many people can be working at the same time. For example at 4pm on a Tuesday there needs to be 7 people working on the desk.

My first issue with this system is the fact that because of us having such a small team, and there being such a wide range of opening hours for the desk, (we open 7am-9pm mon to wed 7am-10pm thurs & fri, 7am-8pm sat and 9am-7pm sun) the concept of "business need" severely restricts the hours we can choose to put on the annualised hours rota. Our management aggressively remove any hours that have been entered on the rota that would put the desk over allocated for that hour. For example: between 9am and 6pm on a Tuesday, the rota requires 7 people to be working. If more than 7 people choose to work those hours, management would remove a person's hours from the schedule, and expect them to re-enter them elsewhere on the rota. Similarly, if the rota is short of people, they will force someone to work the hours, and they have done this in the past with virtually no notice and no room for negotiation.

Secondly, because of the strictness of the rota, and the fact the rota is worked out after removing our holiday hours, we all find it incredibly hard to work a 40 hour week and protect our holiday hours. In essence the holiday hours have already been incorporated into our weekly hours, reducing our weekly hours to 35.3 hours a week, with the 5.7 hours a week being spent as holiday hours.

Does anyone know if this is this legal?

Cheers, Gareth

 

[saxondale]

is your gripe that the managers are actually managing something?

 

[Employment Law Clinic]

For example: between 9am and 6pm on a Tuesday, the rota requires 7 people to be working. If more than 7 people choose to work those hours, management would remove a person's hours from the schedule, and expect them to re-enter them elsewhere on the rota. Similarly, if the rota is short of people, they will force someone to work the hours, and they have done this in the past with virtually no notice and no room for negotiation.

Does anyone know if this is this legal?

Yep.


If 7 people have already chosen to work a shift, why is another person then putting their hours in? It appears that management have given your team the opportunity to manage the workload themselves, but they are failing in this simply task! Can you not try to negotiate among yourself, rather than negotiate with management about why their business needs (and the customers that drive that) don't sit comfortably with your preferences on working hours?

In essence the holiday hours have already been incorporated into our weekly hours, reducing our weekly hours to 35.3 hours a week, with the 5.7 hours a week being spent as holiday hours.

Does anyone know if this is this legal?

:| I have no idea what you are on about with this point! All full-time employees are legally entitled to 28 days paid leave a year. Are you not claiming this leave (in which case you can lose it, which is legal)?





Karl Limpert

 

[kulture]

Secondly, because of the strictness of the rota, and the fact the rota is worked out after removing our holiday hours, we all find it incredibly hard to work a 40 hour week and protect our holiday hours. In essence the holiday hours have already been incorporated into our weekly hours, reducing our weekly hours to 35.3 hours a week, with the 5.7 hours a week being spent as holiday hours.

Does anyone know if this is this legal?

Cheers, Gareth

If you are saying that the rota system effectively requires you to work a 35.3 hour week and thus take a 5.7 hour a week holiday then it does sound a bit unfair and certainly against the intent of the holiday regulations, but you would have to check with a solicitor whether it is illegal.

 

[ORDERED WEB]

Hey guys,

I'm currently working for an IT helpdesk. I work an annualised hours contract. The hours I need to work in one year is calculated by taking 40 x 52 (My contracted weekly hours times by weeks in a a year) and then taking off 30 x 8 (which is the total hours of holiday I'm entitled to) That results in a figure of 1840 hours in total I have to work in one year.

The rota is organised into quarters, and we are asked to enter hours for the shifts we would like to work over the quarter. There's 12 of us in our team, but the rota has certain limits to how many people can be working at the same time. For example at 4pm on a Tuesday there needs to be 7 people working on the desk.

My first issue with this system is the fact that because of us having such a small team, and there being such a wide range of opening hours for the desk, (we open 7am-9pm mon to wed 7am-10pm thurs & fri, 7am-8pm sat and 9am-7pm sun) the concept of "business need" severely restricts the hours we can choose to put on the annualised hours rota. Our management aggressively remove any hours that have been entered on the rota that would put the desk over allocated for that hour. For example: between 9am and 6pm on a Tuesday, the rota requires 7 people to be working. If more than 7 people choose to work those hours, management would remove a person's hours from the schedule, and expect them to re-enter them elsewhere on the rota. Similarly, if the rota is short of people, they will force someone to work the hours, and they have done this in the past with virtually no notice and no room for negotiation.

Secondly, because of the strictness of the rota, and the fact the rota is worked out after removing our holiday hours, we all find it incredibly hard to work a 40 hour week and protect our holiday hours. In essence the holiday hours have already been incorporated into our weekly hours, reducing our weekly hours to 35.3 hours a week, with the 5.7 hours a week being spent as holiday hours.

Does anyone know if this is this legal?

Cheers, Gareth

PCW / Capita?

 

[paperdragons]

Maybe I didn't explain it well enough. Essentially, the way the annualised rota is set out, we don't have holidays. We have hours that we work and hours that we do not work. The hours we work have been reduced at the point of the yearly total being calculated, so instead of us having to work 2080 hours in a year, I have to work 240 holiday hours (I get 2 extra days for length of service) a year less than that. (1840 hours or on average of 35.3 hours a week) The thing is, is that I am now unable to ring fence any time as holiday. If my manager wants me to come in, I cannot say I'm on holiday because holidays have been incorporated into the time I have off. So, if I work 38 hours in a week rather than 40, I lose 2 hours holiday. Essentially, I should be entitled to work a 40 hour week, week in week out and choose the time I want to take off as holiday. But the rota doesn't allow for this. For example, if I wanted to to work all of my hours (520 in one quarter), the rest of the desk would have to take a lot more time off to stop the rota from being over scheduled. My manager would prefer us all to work an average of 35.3 hours a week and spend the last 4.7 hours per week as holiday. It obviously doesn't work out exactly like that, but currently I have only been able to enter something like 468 hours in the first quarter of the rota, simply because there aren't enough hours to go around!

 

[Employment Law Clinic]

My manager would prefer us all to work an average of 35.3 hours a week and spend the last 4.7 hours per week as holiday.

That is unlawful – it doesn’t comply with the Working Time Regulations, based on which you are entitled to 28 paid days off a year.

If your management are declining any requests for leave, they are leaving themselves seriously exposed to unlawful deductions from wages claims (and this would go back in time). If instead you haven’t requested paid leave, you lose out.


Karl Limpert

 

[paperdragons]

Their answer to that is that we do get our full holiday requirements, as the 240 hours or 224 hours (if you've only got the basic 28 days) has been removed from the hours we need to work. In theory, if you want to take the holiday time off, you can do. In practice however, it means that the majority of holiday hours are lost in the cracks between shifts. The way our rota is set means that at most, all we are able to take is lots of very little holidays, such as an extra half day on to our weekends etc. and not actually be able to protect any proper length of time taken off if we really did want to take a holiday.

You see the rota is calculated using the hours totals *after* holidays are removed, thus it assumes everyone is going to take 7- 7.5 days holiday per quarter. (for me that is 1840/4 = 460 hours (or 80 hours less than the full 520 hours I should be able to work without any problems) If you want to work more hours than the 460 hours, you need to make other people take more time off in that quarter.

I'm not complaining about taking a week off every three months if I was able to do that, but instead what I'm actually having to do is take many 3 day off shifts and two and a half day off shifts, and find by the end of the quarter I've used up my 7.5 days worth of holiday hours up without actually having 7 days off!

 

[ORDERED WEB]

There are 3 larger issues

1. Employees also have a life outside of work, and usually have partners who also have employers, who have demands on them. When both employers are demanding or imposing changing work patterns, then often one or the other needs to find another job. I was once in one of these schemes, And ended up in it after a "TUPE" consultation, and then a "3 month consultation" so not everyone working annualised hours actually really chose to work them
2. When you leave, you can actually "owe hours" this can create huge pressure, as its normally at the time when you are working the maximum amount of hours a week in the rotation. Employers often use annualised hours when they have a "Peak" in the work load through the year
3. Often employers asking this stance also take an equally awkward stance when booking a holiday - where the employee needs to "apply" and the holiday is measured only against the business need - see point 1. If the employer is awkward about booking holiday slots, then what the OP said about holidays dissapearing ion the gaps tends to happen

Annualised hours wasn't really designed for this sort of work, it was introduced to cover people who worked away from home on assignments - i.e. camera men, sound recordists - who would work abroad on a 3 month project