Flexible yearly periods

opportunity : Flexible Workplace :
Flexible yearly periods

Tips and Tools

Model administrative arrangements: flexi-place

Model administrative arrangements:
flexible working hours

Tips for working at home

1 A flexible yearly period is a working arrangement that allows staff members to:

choose to work on one or more days during the year that are designated public holidays (e.g. Christmas Day or Easter Friday), then
take the “holiday equivalent” period of (paid) leave on other days during the year.

This can be a particularly useful option to help Centers better accommodate religious minorities.

2 The staff member can, for example, add the holiday-equivalent leave described above to her/his annual holiday leave entitlement and take an extended period of holiday leave.

Potential benefits of flexible yearly periods
3 Flexible yearly periods offer a number of potential benefits. For instance, they can:

avoid a situation in which a staff member is obliged to take a religion-based holiday that is irrelevant to her/his personal beliefs;
provide the opportunity for the staff member to take leave for religious observances that are not accommodated by the Center’s official holidays, without having to use her/his personal leave entitlement; or
extend the staff member’s total period of leave for annual holidays.

Possible drawbacks to flexible yearly periods
4 The potential problems of flexible yearly periods include:

the availability of work on public holidays;
problems of access to buildings, security, workplace safety, etc.;
lack of supervision.

5 Administration of payroll, leave and holidays may also become slightly more complicated.

Developing a policy framework for implementing flexible yearly periods
6 Developing detailed practices for implementing a policy for flexible yearly periods would be similar to developing flexible working hours. Thus it would normally be guided by the following basic principles.

Access to flexible yearly periods
7 Unless there are overwhelming reasons to the contrary (e.g. supervision, essential service delivery), all staff should have access to flexible yearly periods.

Focus of flexibility
8 Flexibility ideally should be unlimited. Staff should be able to elect to work on any day that is a designated public holiday.

9 In practice this may not always be feasible because of problems of lack of available work on public holidays, problems of access to buildings, security, workplace safety, etc., or lack of supervision.

10 However if the Center has a flexi-place policy that enables staff to work from home, this option may overcome some of the potential problems.

Operational issues
11 Staff members and their managers should have a clear agreement about the work that is to be undertaken on the holiday/s concerned. This agreement forms the basis on which the manager can assess whether the “work-on-holidays” arrangements are productive and whether the arrangements should continue.