Variable working patterns are used for employees whose working days vary and are not fixed in advance.
For example, if an employee could work any three days out of seven but these are not scheduled, you should create a variable working pattern using the steps below.
🤓 Tip: When entering an absence for an employee on a variable working pattern, the standard workflow asks for the number of hours the employee is off on each day.
Create a variable working pattern
To set up a variable working pattern, you can follow the steps below.
In the Employee zone, click Lookups.
Click Pattern, then Working Patterns.
Click New to create a new working pattern.
Enter the details of the working pattern, fields as follows:
Name: The name of the working pattern.
Type: This is the pattern type; this would be the notional full-time hours per day (hours a full-time employee would work), the hours employees on this pattern would work per year.
Start Date: This would be the date the working pattern will start and be valid from. This must be Sunday.
Expiry Date: The date the pattern will expire.
Hours per Week: Number of hours per week the employee would work. If the employee has more than one week in the schedule, then this field should be an average of hours worked per week.
Weeks per Year: This is the number of weeks the employee is set to work per year.
FTE: This should be automatically populated, but can be overwritten and should show the full-time equivalent. Employees who work full time have an FTE of 1.
FTE Holiday: Shows the full-time equivalent of employee’s holiday. This may be different for employees who, for example, work every day (M-F) but only half days (4 hours per day)
Standard Pattern: Should be 'true', if this is the main working pattern for employees.
Non-Work Date Set: Use the drop-down list to select a set.
Days: Select all the days that the employee qualifies for SSP.
Use Public Holidays: This should be 'true', if employees on the pattern do NOT work on public holidays.
Once all the information is entered, click Save. More tabs will appear.
Select the Non-Work & SSP tab. Notice the Non-Work and SSP information entered into the previous form.
Select the Days tab. Enter any potential days that the employee could work as a Variable Work Day. Enter as many weeks as needed for the pattern.
Select the People tab. This displays a list of all current people on the working pattern, if any.
Select the Statistics tab. This displays the statistics for the working pattern, i.e. day/hours summary.
Select the Timesheet Defaults tab.
Default Outside Hours Pay Type: Shows the default pay type used for timesheets.
Rounding at Timesheet Entry: Used to specify whether the rounding in the timesheet should be done per individual timesheet or at the total in the timesheet. This should be true, if the rounding is done for individual timesheets.
Rounding in Minutes: The total number of minutes to round by.
Rounding Type: Used to specify whether the amounts should be rounded up, down or to the nearest minute.
🤓 Tip: Employees on variable working patterns will be prompted to enter the number of hours they wish to take off on each day.
Variable hours webinar
There is also available a helpful webinar on this subject ran by a product expert.
Click Previous events.
Click your SelectHR product.
On the thumbnail for setting up working patterns in SelectHR, click the play button.