annual hours

annual hours

the contractual requirement that employees work a number of hours over the year rather than a standard number of hours each week. This means that the length of the working day can be varied day by day to fit in with production requirements (‘flexible rostering’). Alternatively, at certain times of the year employees work very short days whilst at other times they work long days. This can be advantageous to employers when product demand is seasonal in nature and storage of the product is either difficult or impossible (for example where a service is provided). Thus annual hours facilitate the synchronization of labour utilization with production requirements, thereby potentially improving labour productivity. A common feature of annual hours contracts is that the right to determine daily working hours is largely reserved to the employer (compare with FLEXITIME system).