Understanding working patterns
A working pattern shows how your contractual hours are split across the days of your working week. The standard working week for a full-time member of staff is 36.5 hours: Monday to Thursday, 9.00 am to 5.20 pm and Friday, 9.00 am to 5.10 pm. iTrent has been configured to divide the 36.5 hours equally across the five days.
Anything other than the standard working week can be accommodated in iTrent, and the same principles apply.
Why it's important to have the correct working pattern
iTrent uses the working pattern to allocate your bank holidays and discretionary days and add them to your overall leave entitlement. If the working pattern is incorrect, it may affect these calculations.
Full-time and part-time staff have the same entitlement to bank and discretionary days, for example 0.5 FTE has exactly half the total annual leave entitlement.
If a bank holiday or discretionary day falls on a day when you would ordinarily be working (based upon your working pattern in iTrent), the hours you would have worked will be deducted from your entitlement.
The majority of bank holidays fall at the first part of the week, which may mean people who work part-time on these days have more of their holiday automatically allocated.
Part-time staff who choose to work an alternative day to a bank holiday can discuss this with their manager. Further guidance for managers is available on iTrent.
How to check your working pattern is correct
Log into iTrent Employee Self Service (ESS), click on the Employment tab at the top of the page (underneath where it says My profile) and click on your current position in the My employment field.
Here you will see the hours you are contracted to work. Each day of the week has the associated hours and minutes to be worked on that day.
Examples of a working pattern
A full-time member of staff, working 36.5 hours a week, Monday to Friday will show as:
- 36.5 M 7:18 T 7:18 W 7:18 T 7:18 F 7:18 S 0:00 S 0:00
A part-time member of staff, working 21.9 hours a week, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday will show as:
- 21.9 M 7:18 T 7:18 W 7:18 T 0:00 F 0:00 S 0:00 S 0:00
Non-standard working patterns
Zero patterns
Some working arrangements are so irregular that they are best managed through specific arrangements within the department. Individuals with such arrangements will only be required to record sickness absences via iTrent.
Bought out
In specific instances annual leave is bought out, so we assume you take annual leave outside of working periods. Individuals with such arrangements will only be required to record sickness absences via iTrent.
Shiftworking
iTrent will assign you a default pattern based upon your contractual hours. This will need to be overridden by your manager on the days when you are absent from the workplace through holiday.
Term-time only
Most term-time only contracts assume that leave is taken outside of term-time. However, some individuals are on term-time contracts and use iTrent for recording their holiday. In this instance, a default pattern will be assigned to you that reflects your most common working pattern. This will need to be over-ridden by your manager on the days when you are absent from the workplace through holiday.