Flexible working time

What it means

Flexible working time is an arrangement in which the Labour Code splits the day into core time, when the employee must be at work, and optional time, when they choose their own start and finish. The full operating time still has to be worked within the flexible working period the employer sets: a working day, a week, four weeks or another period.

It is neither home working nor an open schedule. The employer introduces it by collective agreement or by agreement with the employee representatives, and may decide on it alone where no representatives operate. It differs from a working time account in that the employee picks the schedule within the set limits, not the employer.

The arrangement suits only operations that can accommodate it. In shift production, or at a workplace that must be staffed at precise times, flexitime is introduced for certain groups at most, such as administration, while everyone else keeps a fixed working-time schedule by shift.

How it works in practice

Under flexible time, obstacles at work on the employee’s side count as work with wage compensation only to the extent they fall inside core time. A doctor’s appointment in optional time is an excused absence that the employee makes up later.

Hours are totalled only at the end of the flexible working period: that is when it becomes clear whether overtime arose or the employee is short of hours. Attendance therefore has to be recorded day by day, and payroll needs a closed period rather than a running estimate.

When flexitime is introduced, we help the client set up attendance records that log arrivals and departures, separate core from flexible time and compare hours worked with the required total at the end of the period. Pay is then calculated from a closed balance, not a manual recount.

What to watch out for

The expensive mistake is paying wage compensation for a whole doctor’s appointment that fell in optional time. The employer pays for those hours twice, once as compensation and again as wages for the time the employee still has to work, and the gap surfaces when attendance is reconciled.

When employment ends partway through a flexitime period, the hours balance must be closed as at the leaving date. If that is forgotten, the employee is either not paid for extra hours worked or is paid for time never worked, and correcting it after the final payslip drags on.