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Attendance Patterns in Service Management - Day and Break Length

Service Management patterns are built within Work Force Manager and have start and finish times that are on the hour or on quarter hours.

• 4 Day Week patterns: Four day lengths of nine working hours in a week plus meal break length selected.
• 4/5 Day Week patterns: Nine day lengths of eight working hours in a two-week period plus meal break length selected.
• 4/5/5 Day Week patterns: 11 x 7hr 45 minute day lengths and three x eight hour day lengths in a three-week period plus meal break length selected. The pattern repeats four times to cover the first 12 weeks and then a fourth four-day week of 31 hours completes the 13 week cycle. As the thirteenth week is a four-day week of 31 hours this balances the weekly average hours worked to 36 hours over the period of the 13 week pattern.
• 5 Day Week pattern: Three x seven hour day lengths and two x 7hr 30 minute day lengths in a week plus meal break length selected.

Meal Breaks

Service Management is able to offer in the preference exercise a choice of meal break length between 30 minutes, 45 minutes or 60 minutes.

Pattern Lengths

Agents will be able to select in the areas where the Customer and Business rationale requires late finishes to have the late finishes in blocks (where a whole week of late attendances are worked) or as days spread across their pattern where no more than one late is worked in any week.

The patterns built into WFM are 13 weeks in duration as cycles. Where three Saturday attendances is required in the transition phase for the non CSIP A or B people the agents can choose to work either; a full day and a half day in each 13 week pattern, or a full day in one 13 week pattern and 2 in the other.

Work Area Customer Business Rationale Agreed Patterns

The agreement reached in terms of the number of Saturday and Lates that will be worked during the transition phase. This position has been reached following the sharing of business rationale during our meetings over the past few weeks.

It needs to be stated that the number of Saturdays and lates are based on the current position and these will change as customer demands change and new products are introduced. The agreed Framework provides the mechanism for us to review, amend and agree between us any changes to the current position. This is a point that should have been emphasized in any management communications and within team huddles.

It is also important to note that following the transition phase, the number of Saturday's and lates may increase or decrease, as well as the latest times for late working. Such changes will be subject to business and customer needs and the subject of further discussion with the CWU.

Saturday and Weekday Overtime

The working of overtime will be managed and made available via a bid process for agents to volunteer. Agents will have advanced calendar visibility of morning, afternoon, evening and Saturday overtime slots that match their skill set within specific criteria. This will be required to meet gaps between scheduled attendance and Customer and Business demands and Service Performance at certain times on the day.

In circumstances where pre-planned overtime or on the day identified overtime is required to deal with unforeseen events e.g. MBORC, Site Isolation, System down time, Abnormal Capacity shortfalls, Weather etc, volunteers will be sought first. Clearly this will be more practical where overtime can be pre-planned. Openreach will consult with the CWU where there are insufficient volunteers and there is a need to consider the contractual overtime provisions contained within the Agreement.

Sunday Working

Openreach shared with us the current demand and resource levels for Sunday working which clearly indicate the ongoing requirements to maintain this level of Sunday working. The following was agreed as the means by which the level of required Sunday attendance can be achieved.

• Discussions will take place with each of those currently working Sundays (who are not on the Shiftworking or Nightworking Framework) to confirm if they wish to continue with an attendance pattern that includes Sunday working. Scheduled Sunday working would be paid in accordance with NewGRID with additional basic hourly rate for each hour worked.
• Arrangements will be made for those existing employees who are scheduled to work Sundays to complete the preference exercise to establish their preferred start/finish times and lunch breaks.
• Subject to their confirmation to agree to continue with scheduled Sunday working they would be committed to this attendance pattern and future changes to the pattern would be in accordance with the provisions in the Framework Agreement for ongoing changes and NewGRID.
• If there is a need to extend the level of Sunday working, Openreach would intend to resource this through voluntary overtime as well as considering requests from others who may also wish to work scheduled Sundays.
• If the above arrangements do not meet the resource requirements to cover Sunday demand, Openreach will conduct discussions with CWU to consider alternative ways forward which would mean that customer demand would be met.

Preference Exercise

It has been clarified and has been added to the notes of the Preference Exercise that make clear that for part-timers, their number of days attendance will remain unchanged and where, it is relevant, they will be expected to work Saturdays and Lates on a pro-rata basis. Clearly Openreach have agreed that they would also recognise individual's personal and domestic circumstances using the P&D / Swaps process.

The following principles will be used to allocate preferences where there is an imbalance or surplus of team members when modelled against business need and resource requirements:

• Stage 1: By Service function, where possible selection will be against the following criteria:
  • Choice closest to existing current pattern - i.e. those currently early start prioritised early start option etc
  • Skills
  • Specific Geographic requirement.
• Stage 2: Output of Stage 1 where an individual's preferences are not able to be offered this will be shared for discussion at joint meeting between the Service and CWU negotiating teams.
• Stage 3: Allocation and notification of final options
• Ultimately, and as a last resort, it may be necessary to draw names if no other appropriate factors can be considered.