Advice needed - company wants to introduce shifts

avs0020

Hi folks. Does anyone know anything about changing from a 5 day week to a 6 day week (without increasing hours worked).

A friend asked me if it was legal for a company that employed 4 staff (in this particular dept/100 staff in total) from Monday to Friday, to introduce shifts where one of them (at the moment) would work from Tues to Saturday taking off Sun and Mon instead of Sat and Sun?

The company apparently wants to increase the efficiency of this department by having access to it 6 days a week instead of 5 days a week, and the 1st employee they are targetting (my friend) is the single guy with no family (His wife is in Poland) because its felt that it would have more of a negative impact on those who spent their Saturdays with family.

To me it sounds reasonable and I think my friend is being overly suspicious but then I work a bit in a payrole dept and that probably affects my thinking. Bottom line is that he's working the same hours and they have made provisions for alternate days so that bank holidays are not affected.

I dont want to downplay his concerns or remind him he's lucky to have a job. His fear is real to him and I wish I could give him a factual answer.

Is he entitled to any shift allowance or extra money. He'd still be working 08h00 to 17h00 with time off for lunch and tea.

Thanks so much for any wise words.

Take care

Suzyq

Sounds reasonable enough to me - tell him to count his blessings!

Serafijn

Working hours are a significant change to your friend's contract and they can't change just them without his agreement. Having said that it does sound like they have done their research, they have a decent business case for the increased efficiency of the department and the request is not unreasonable.

However the fact that he was singled out to do this new shift due to his family circumstances is discrimination. The new shift should be offered to all the people on the team - maybe one of the people with kids would rather do it and save a day's childcare costs!

Your friend should talk to his manager, tell him he is happy to consider the new working arrangement but explain that he does feel like he's being discriminated against by being singled out this way. If the manager has any sense the alarm bells will go off once the D word is on the table and he will re-think the strategy for introducing the new shift.

Hope this helps.

ALFIET

Serafijn wrote: »

Working hours are a significant change to your friend's contract and they can't change just them without his agreement. Having said that it does sound like they have done their research, they have a decent business case for the increased efficiency of the department and the request is not unreasonable.

However the fact that he was singled out to do this new shift due to his family circumstances is discrimination. The new shift should be offered to all the people on the team - maybe one of the people with kids would rather do it and save a day's childcare costs!

Your friend should talk to his manager, tell him he is happy to consider the new working arrangement but explain that he does feel like he's being discriminated against by being singled out this way. If the manager has any sense the alarm bells will go off once the D word is on the table and he will re-think the strategy for introducing the new shift.

Hope this helps.

As a HR Manager I totally agree that the shift concept should be introduced to all employees across the board and see who wants what and can it be facilitated.

There is no real work life balance effect with this type of shift and as such no shift premium. His rest breaks are still the same. Shift would really only occur as a payment where there is an increase in hours or anti social hours introduced such as night shift or late evening shift...

To be honest this request seems reasonable apart from the fact that it is only being targetted at one member of the team..

Whiskey Devil

Unless he has signed a contract to say otherwise he doesn't really have a case. He could go down the discrimination route but it usually doesn't go down very well with management or co-workers. He could go with for a while and then ask that they get a rotation system in place where he does 2 in 4 or something a little fairer.

thebman

He could just say he doesn't want to do it and he'd rather if it was offered to others in the department first to see if any of them want to do it.

Then say if nobody else wants to do it that he'd be willing to consider it for the benefit of the department.

kiwikid

Serafijn wrote: »

However the fact that he was singled out to do this new shift due to his family circumstances is discrimination. The new shift should be offered to all the people on the team - maybe one of the people with kids would rather do it and save a day's childcare costs!

agreed