Flexible work schedules are becoming more and more popular as companies strive to provide a better work-life balance for their employees. A flexible work schedule is an arrangement between an employer and an employee that allows the employee to vary their start and end times, as well as take breaks during the day, as needed.
There are many benefits of flexible work schedules for both employees and employers. Employees who have a flexible work schedule often find that they are able to better balance their work and personal lives. This can lead to increased productivity and satisfaction at work, as well as decreased stress levels. Employers who offer flexible work schedules often find that their employees are more engaged and committed to their jobs.
If you're considering implementing a flexible work schedule at your company, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, it's important to clearly communicate the expectations and rules of the arrangement to all employees. Second, you'll need to be flexible yourself in order to accommodate employees' needs. Finally, be sure to evaluate the arrangement regularly to ensure that it's meeting the needs of both employees and the company.
Oraroo can organize the flexible work schedules of your team in a way that rewarding for the employee as well as well understood and accepted by everybody in the company.
Work Schedule
There is no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to what type of work schedule is best. The best work schedule for you depends on your individual needs and preferences, and Oraroo supports most of them.
Here are four common types of work schedules to consider, along with their pros and cons.
1. Full-time. A full-time work schedule typically entails working 40 hours per week. The benefits of full-time work include a regular paycheck, access to employee benefits, and the opportunity to advance in your career. The downside is that full-time work can be demanding and leave little time for anything else.
2. Part-time. A part-time work schedule entails working fewer hours than a full-time schedule. The benefits of part-time work include a flexible schedule, the ability to work around other commitments, and reduced stress levels. The downside is that part-time work often pays less than full-time work and can be harder to find.
3. Flexible. A flexible work schedule allows you to vary the start and end time you work in each day of the week. The benefits of a flexible work schedule include the ability to work around other commitments and the ability to take advantage of down-time. The downside is that a flexible work schedule can be less stable than a regular work schedule and may be seen as not offering the same opportunities for career advancement.
4. Specialized industries require other types of work schedules, such as working 12 hours with 24 or 48 hours break, working in flexible shifts, etc.
Most companies have a standardized work schedule. At the same time, and more and more frequently, companies want to offer their employees more flexibility in defining their work schedule, both from the point of view of the start/end time and the number of hours worked in certain days.
This can be a big headache for HR teams or managers, but such situations are very easy to handle with Oraroo.
In addition to the normal full-time schedule, in Oraroo you can also have employees with:
- part-time program,
- flexible start/finish,
- uneven schedule.
Therefore, you no longer have to spend a lot of effort to deal with situations like this.
Absences
When it comes to employee vacations, there are a few things to keep in mind to ensure a smooth workflow.
First, HR must be able to define different types of absences for different purposes: from well-deserved holidays, to dealing with illness and newborn care, to taking time off for some special events in employee's life as well as requested by law to allow attending some public duty.
Then, It's important to have a clear policy in place regarding available vacation. This will help to avoid any confusion or frustration on the part of employees and managers. In Oraroo employees can view the remaining days of vacation, either from current or past years, depending on labor law.
Finally, it's important to have a flexible and simple workflow. Oraroo implements an absence workflow that allows employees communicate their unavailability very quickly to their manager and teams, while providing eventual justification documents later on.
By using Oraroo for managing absence requests, you can ensure a smooth and stress-free vacation process for everyone involved.
Oraroo is the first step when your employees plan their vacation. In their own calendar, they select the period in which they will be absent, and the request immediately goes on the approval flow.
If they need to be absent for something else than holiday, they will have to select the type of absence, according to the rules defined by HR. If these rules also require the attachment of supporting documents, this can be done immediately or later, when they are available. Also, the employees can specify their replacement during the absence period, who is immediately notified about this.
Immediately after the request is initiated, the absence is visible in the team's calendar screen, so all colleagues can immediately know that the team is not complete on that day, in order to quickly organize themselves.
As with any workflow in Oraroo, the direct manager will receive the request in their task list, where they can decide to approve it, ask for approval from another colleague or clarification from the initiator.
With Oraroo you can manage legally required vacation and your specific absence policies.
In addition to legal holidays or the minimum right of paid holiday according to law, you can offer your team additional days of absence for various reasons.
You can even create quickly your own vacation types, which can be activated only for a limited period of time, with a limit of days per year or even hours.
Oraroo will automatically update the vacation time available each year for employees, taking also in consideration your policies that increase available vacation with their loyalty.
Your team wants to know at any time how much days of vacation they still have available.
With Oraroo, your employees do not have to calculate this by themselves and, at the same time, they do not take the time of their HR colleague to do it.
With Oraroo it's so simple: Each employee can check a section in the platform where all available and used days of vacation is already calculated, on each category of absence.
At the same time, managers and HR team can view the up to date available vacation for the entire team. As such, they are able to better plan their projects to ensure their success while preserving the work-life balance of their employees.
Overtime
Overtime is often seen as a necessary evil in the workplace. It can be a source of extra income for employees, but it can also lead to fatigue and burnout.
When it comes to managing overtime, the key is to strike a balance. Employees should not be expected to work excessive hours, but at the same time, overtime should not be used as a crutch to avoid hiring additional staff.
There are a few things employers can do to manage overtime in a way that is fair to both employees and the business:
1. Make sure employees are aware of overtime policies before they start working.
2. Establish clear guidelines for when and how overtime can be worked.
3. Avoid last-minute requests for overtime. If possible, plan ahead and give employees as much notice as possible.
4. Offer alternatives to overtime, such as flexible working hours or working from home.
5. Encourage employees to take breaks during extended periods of overtime.
6. Limit the amount of overtime employees can work in a given period.
7. Provide additional compensation for employees who regularly work overtime.
8.Monitor employees’ workloads to ensure they are not being overloaded.
9. Be understanding when employees need to take time off to recuperate from working excessive hours.
10. Have a plan in place for dealing with unexpected spikes in workloads.
In order to prevent being abused by employers, overtime is a highly regulated aspect of work. Because there is so much paperwork involved. many businesses prefer to avoid it as much as possible or just simply ignore the fact that staff have to work long hours in order to achieve their goals.
Oraroo can change that. By being compliant with labor laws as well as making this process as easy as possible, Oraroo turns overtime into a valuable tool for businesses, who can use it in a way that brings also value to employees and does not affect their key work-life balance.
Unforeseen situations in projects or in day-to-day activity may lead to overtime. The request for overtime has to be issued quickly by the manager but also needs to be formalized according to the law.
In Oraroo, each manager can quickly request overtime for their team members. These requests will reach the employees immediately, and they will be able to confirm the requests just as quickly, having also the option to refuse them.
Approved and worked overtime will appear on each employee's personal calendar for compensation with time off, within the period specified by law.
Afterwards, the payroll export will properly reflect both the overtime worked by the employees, as well as compensations with free time or other methods allowed by law.
Managing overtime recovery is generally a time-consuming process.
It assumes:
- Operational record of hours to recover and recovery period
- Maintenance of records of recoveries/compensations, with impact on payroll
In Oraroo both HR teams and managers have at their disposal a clear situation of overtime:
- The legal term until which overtime can be recovered by employees
- How much of overtime was compensated with free time, but also those that could not be recovered, for various reasons.
All this situation is also highlighted in the payroll report, making it is easy to calculate salary compensation for situations in which overtime cannot be recovered within the specified legal term.
Work Schedule Operations
Work schedule operations are critical to the successful running of any business. Having well-organized work schedules can help businesses achieve their goals and improve their bottom line. Here are some tips on work schedule operations:
1. Keep track of employee hours. Knowing how many hours your employees work each week is crucial to ensuring that your business is running smoothly. You can use time tracking software to keep track of employee hours, or you can have employees clock in and out each day.
2. Make sure employees time is properly scheduled. Once you know how many hours your employees work, you can start to schedule them accordingly, so that they can get the proper amount of rest and so that your business can run smoothly.
3. Communicate with employees. Once you have a work schedule in place, it’s important to communicate with your employees about it. Let them know when have to come to work, what their duties are, and anything else they need to know. Good communication will help ensure that your employees are able to do their jobs properly.
4. Be flexible. Things change and your work schedule should be able to change with them. If you need to make changes to your schedule, be sure to communicate this to your employees. Flexibility also means allowing employees to take care of any personal issues and make up lost schedule hours later.
5. Have a backup plan. Things will inevitably go wrong, so it’s important to have a backup plan in place. If an employee can’t make it to their schedule, you should have someone who can cover for them. This will help keep your business running smoothly even when things go wrong.
It can be exported in Excel format directly from the platform, depending on the selected month and company.
The exported document contains information about: time worked according to the work schedule and daily work rate, time interval worked, types of holidays taken.
Because the document often represents a way of transmitting information to the payroll services partner, a series of additional information is also exported:
- days of leave left available or taken in advance;
- business trips that took place;
- the positions, departments and cost centers to which employees are assigned;
- information necessary for payment (e.g. accounts) as well as the electronic transmission of paychecks (e.g. email addresses);
- overtime hours, depending on their type (regular schedule hours, night hours, legal holiday hours, weekend hours) and their compensation
Closing the month is a process of "freezing" data related to attendance, to ensure a stable basis for salary calculations.
In fact, after the end of the month, the records relating to the working schedule or holidays cannot be changed. The export of the payroll can then be carried out without being able to undergo further changes.
Based on employee actions on buttons, Oraroo maintains an attendance log.
Alternatively, it can be filled out automatically based on the established work schedule.
Based on the log, the platform generates the content of the Collective Attendance Report. In this way, the effort made by the person responsible for the administration of the attendance within the organization is reduced.
The Collective Attendance Report obtained contains:
- start and end time of the program;
- time spent during the break;
- how many hours were actually