Part-Time and Variable Hours

Almost every entitlement dispute in a small business involves someone who does not work the same five days every week.

Part-time, fixed days

Pro-rate by days worked per week. Three days out of five gives three fifths of the full-time allowance.

Public holidays are the trap. Someone who never works Mondays misses most public holidays by accident; someone who works only Mondays gets them all.

The usual fix: give everyone a total allowance that includes public holidays, pro-rated, and let people book those days as leave. Everyone gets the same proportion and the arithmetic stays simple.

Say which approach you use, in writing, and apply it to everyone.

Part-time, variable days

Pro-rate by hours rather than days, and hold the balance in hours.

Because a "day" is meaningless when one week is two long shifts and the next is four short ones.

When leave is taken, deduct the hours that person would have worked that day.

Show the running balance so nobody is surprised at year end.

Fully variable hours

Entitlement accrues with hours worked, so it cannot be a fixed number at the start of the year.

Track hours worked and accrue entitlement as a proportion.

The percentage shortcut that many employers apply has been the subject of significant legal change in several jurisdictions. Check the current rule rather than copying an old employer's practice.

Pay leave at an average rate over a defined reference period, where the law specifies one, rather than at the rate of the week it is taken.

Term-time and seasonal staff

Entitlement still accrues, including for weeks not worked in some arrangements.

This is a recognised area of error and one where small employers frequently underpay without intending to.

Worth checking specifically rather than assuming the general rule covers it.

Making it manageable

Hold balances in hours for anyone not on fixed full-time days. One unit for everyone who is variable, whatever their pattern.

Recalculate annually from scratch, not by rolling forward.

Publish balances so people can check them.

Keep the working, so the same question does not need answering twice.

The check

Take your three most unusual working patterns and calculate each from first principles.

If you cannot, or two people get different answers, the policy is not written clearly enough — and that is a policy problem rather than a spreadsheet problem.

Hold variable balances in hours

One unit for everyone whose pattern is not fixed.

A "day" means nothing when one shift is four hours and the next is ten.

Accrue in hours, deduct in hours, based on the hours that person would have worked that day.

Show the running total.

It is slightly more arithmetic and it removes the entire category of end-of-year dispute that days-based tracking produces for these people.

Connect policy to configuration

The practical choices behind this note can be compared with this resource-planning case. Keep the written purpose in control of the setup, enable only data needed for that purpose and review the result with affected employees.