How to coordinate compressed hour weeks

Giving your employees flexible working rights is a powerful way to attract and retain talented people. And for some staff members, the opportunity to shift their start and finish times is sufficient. But what happens when your team requests longer days, so they can work a compressed week?

New research by Velocity Smart Technology has revealed that three quarters of professionals like the idea of compressed hours. As an employer, however, this arrangement can be very difficult to manage without the right staff scheduling tools in place.

Let’s take a closer look.

What are the benefits of compressed hour weeks?

Compressed hours are a technical term to describe the practice of squeezing contracted agreements into a shorter space of time. For most companies, this means working a standard working week (usually 37.5-40 hours) over four days rather than five and taking an extra day off each week.

Many employees like the idea of greater schedule flexibility, but they don't want to take a pay cut. This makes compressed hours the ideal scenario, as they can achieve a better work/life balance without having to make financial sacrifices. Plus, they're saving on fuel or public transport costs if they regularly commute to their place of work.

Many professionals find they can work more productively over a long day, as they don't need to down tools in the middle of a critical task. And rather than burning out through too much overtime, a compressed week gives them longer to recover before the next week (or shift block) begins.

Compressed hours offer advantages to employers, too. In addition to staff productivity, happy and well-adjusted employees are less likely to take time off sick. Moreover, they are keen to stay loyal to an employer whose infrastructure works with their lifestyle, which means better retention rates.

If compressed hours enable a full office shut-down, it can also help to reduce operating costs such as electricity bills and stationery.

Why can compressed hours be difficult to coordinate?

While compressed hours offer clear benefits to both employers and employees, the practical arrangements of moving to longer working days are easier said than done. Particularly in companies running 24/7 operations.

For some businesses, switching to compressed hours is equivalent to moving to a four day week. But instead of doing standard office hours for 80% pay, staff members retain their full salary and work longer hours each day.

Our blog post on the benefits of a 4 day work week provides more information on making a smooth transition. Along with critical questions that companies need to answer – such as whether staff can change the day of the week they take off, or if they should stick to the same working pattern each week.

For organisations that need to operate round the clock, it's not as simple as shutting down for an extra day each week. Employee rosters need to maintain staffing levels despite compressed hours, or additional people must be hired to fill staffing gaps.

To make matters more challenging, many companies are still using basic programmes such as excel spreadsheets to manage scheduling. This makes it difficult to understand how many people are needed per shift in the first place, even before making the shift to compressed hours.

And compressed weeks can affect other areas of HR and business admin. For example, if an employee fulfils their contracted hours, they're still entitled to their total holiday allowance. But should this entitlement be calculated in hours rather than days to match their compressed working agreement? And how can team leaders keep track of what days are 'downtime' between shifts and what days are paid annual leave?

The simplest, most efficient way to gain complete visibility over staffing requirements and manage the impact of compressed hours on employee rosters is to invest in shift planning software. All activities are tracked in one place – accessible to everyone within the business.

How can shift planning software make it easier to manage compressed hours?

Every working day is effectively a shift, even if it starts and finishes at the same time. So compressed hours are simply moving from five 8-hour shifts a week to four 10-hour shifts. Our blog post on why the 9-5 day is dead in the water has more information on this mindset change.

By treating each day as a shift, businesses have the flexibility to tailor their length and frequency for each employee – so long as their total contracted hours add up at the end of each week or month. And by planning these shifts centrally through a scheduling platform, the number of people working at any one time can be mapped out in advance and viewed at a glance.

Bringing instant visibility to staff rostering makes it easier to identify skills gaps and understand scheduling and recruitment challenges. And if the shift planning software includes built-in leave management tools (like WhosOffice does), additional information such as who's booked time off can be integrated into the online schedule.

It's not impossible to operate compressed hours using a spreadsheet or other basic system to track staff movements, but there's a lot greater potential for something to go wrong. Using an online shift planning tool like WhosOffice makes coordinating staff schedules much more straightforward – and it can also help companies integrate HR into the work rota.

This way, employees can enjoy the benefits of a better work/life balance without creating complex admin requirements for their managers and colleagues.

Book your free WhosOffice trial to make compressed hours much easier to manage.