How to manage annualised hours contracts

By Rob Davies, Squire Patton Boggs
Brightmine editor: Susie Munro

Under an annualised hours contract, the employee’s working hours are expressed as a total number of hours to be worked over the year. Annualised hours arrangements allow for flexible working patterns during the year, to help employers meet peaks in demand for their products or services and maintain continuity of production.

As the rationale for adopting an annualised hours scheme is typically production- or service-driven, annualised hours will usually be agreed (often with trade union involvement) across an entire workforce (or sections of it) at a particular site or sites rather than on an individual employee basis.

Although there may be periods during the annualised hours year when the affected employees will not be working, their continuity of service will not be broken as the annualised hours contract remains ongoing. Contractual benefits such as pension entitlement will continue to accrue throughout the annualised hours contract period.

In this guide, learn about:

• Advantages to employers
• Advantages to employees
• The annualised hours calculation
• Core and non-core hours
• Written statement of terms and conditions
• The call-in process
• Disciplinary action for refusing call-in requests
• Managing non-core hours
• Pay
• Overtime
• Keeping in touch
• Annual leave
• Sickness absence
• Working hours

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