Annual hours working in Britain
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00483480710774052 |
| Pages | 800-814 |
| Published date | 14 August 2007 |
| Date | 14 August 2007 |
| Author | Gregor Gall,David Allsop |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Annual hours working in Britain
Gregor Gall and David Allsop
Business School, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK
Abstract
Purpose – This paper seeks to investigate the extent of the implementation of annual hours working
in Britain and its impact upon employers, organisations and employees.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper deploys secondary data and sources to establish an
overview of the salient issues.
Findings – Although there has been a growth in the extent of annual hours worked in the last
decade, the rate of growth has slowed. This is related to the reduction in extant organisations that may
consider introducing annual hours in tandem with the problems associated with annual hours worked.
Research limitations/implications – Issues of working time remain a key area of contestation
between employers and employees, particularly as in recent years coercive competitive pressures on
organisations have increased whilst a discourse about ‘family-friendly’ working time polices has also
emerged.
Practical implications – The plaudits of management consultants and policy groups concerning
annual hours worked are revealed to be rather one-sided, with considerable problems emerging for
employers and employees alike.
Originality/value – Brings together an array of data to build up an analysis of annual hours
worked.
Keywords Hours of work, Managementtechniques, Employee involvement,United Kingdom
Paper type General review
Introduction
The emergence of annual hours working has been viewed by some commentators as
one of the most notable recent developments in temporal flexibility in Britain (see, for
example, IDS, 2004). From relative obscurity in the early 1980s, “annual hours” is now
a relatively well-known technique of organising working time in Britain. A leading
management consultant has argued:
Anyone who has ever tried it knows how difficult it is to match staff deployment to the
fluctuating needs of a business – and to produce rosters that don’t contain some degree of
over- or under-staffing. As a result, many enterprises operate regimes that have poor
productivity, inflexibility and costly overtime payments at their core. Annual Hours ...has
already helped hundreds of enterprises to eliminate these wasteful practices by transforming
the way they think and operate (Smart Human Logistics, 2004).
Meanwhile, the DTI (2005) in association with the CBI and TUC, and the CIPD (see, for
example, Stredwick and Ellis, 2005) as well as a number of newspaper commentators
(see, for example, Daily Telegraph, 11 April, 2005; Newquest Regional Press, 15
February, 2005; Observer, 18 April, 2004) have put forward annual hours (AH) as an
antidote to both the long working hours culture in Britain and as a means to meet
public demands for “work-life balance” and “family-friendly” working arrangements
whilst maintaining economic productivity.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
PR
36,5
800
Received January 2006
Revised July 2006
Accepted September 2006
Personnel Review
Vol. 36 No. 5, 2007
pp. 800-814
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/00483480710774052
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