Compressed Hours

The system has built-in support for staff members who want to work compressed hours. What this means is that a staff member would be able to work a ‘full week’ in fewer days by working more hours each day that they are working.

To use this feature, you must first ensure that you have set up in your contract the ‘normal’ or default hours for full-time workers. To do this, you will first need to go to manage contracts and edit the contract that will be used. Under the working pattern, select the number of days and hours that would be considered your Standard Working days or ‘full time’, i.e. Monday to Friday, 7 hours a day.

(When setting this up, ensure that you are working on the correct contract and that the staff member you want to implement compressed hours for has been assigned to the contract you are editing.)

Then, to set up compressed hours for a particular staff member, click 'Edit Details' in the actions bar under a staff member's profile. Select ‘Manage Contract’ in the drop-down.

Once on the contracts page, click to edit your current active contract.

The key point here is to ensure that under the ‘Less than Full Time?’ option, you have selected the ‘as per their contracted hours’ option, as this means they will not be miscalculated as part-time workers.

Then select the standard working days that the staff member works(i.e. Monday & Tuesday).

Once this is input, this will then automatically flag the staff member as working compressed hours, as can be seen when viewing their contact details on their profile or going to manage a staff member’s contract.

Compressed hours are used when working days are slightly different, but a staff member still works the full number of contracted hours. For example, instead of a staff member working 30 hours over five days, an employee might work 10 hours a day, 3 days a week.

To understand our options for staff members who work fewer hours and the options we have for part-time contracts, check out our article on part-time workers.