Employee Work Pattern

The Work Pattern setting on employees is used for leave calculations throughout PayHero, so it's important to get it right.

A well defined Work Pattern will be used to determine relevant daily pay, annual leave balances, how much leave to deduct when employees take time off, and which days the employee usually works. 

Setting a Work Pattern

We recommend setting the most specific work pattern possible, as long as it's an accurate representation of the hours reflected in their employment agreement. If your employees' hours change over time and no longer reflect what's specified in the employment agreement, make sure you keep PayHero updated with these changes, and ideally get them in writing. 

To set a work pattern, click the tickbox to the left of the option that applies, then fill out the corresponding hours/days fields.

The options for work patterns are as follows:

Regular Week - Select this if your employee works a relatively constant pattern of hours and days each week. Enter the pattern of hours on the relevant days of the week. 

Regular Days and Hours - Select this if your employee works fixed Hours per Day and Days per Week, but not necessarily the exact same days each week. Both fields (Days per Week and Hours per Day) must be specified. 

No Regular Hours - Select this if your employee works the same number of days each week, but their hours fluctuate from day to day. This option isn't available for salaried employees, as PayHero requires hours per week to process salary payments.

No Regular Days - Select this if your employee has an expected total hours per week, but their days per week change each week. Enter your employee's total normal hours per week. Employees with this option selected will have leave requests and payments processed in hours rather than days. 

No Regular Week - Use this for an employee who works completely different hours and days each week. PayHero will instead use the company's Review Period for leave and public holiday calculations - see below for more detail. This option isn't available for salaried employees.

Relevant Daily Pay

Regular Week / Regular Days and Hours - These work patterns specify how many hours per day an employee works, so their hours per day at their normal pay rate will be used as their Relevant Daily Pay when taking Sick, Bereavement, Public Holiday, Family Violence, or Alternative Leave.

No Regular Hours / No Regular Days / No Regular Week - No hours per day are known, so the employee's Average Daily Pay will be used instead. 

Learn more about these pay rates here: Other Leave Rates

Annual Leave Balances

Annual Leave balances in PayHero are stored in weeks, and PayHero will then use the employee's Work Pattern settings to determine what a week looks like in terms of days or hours.

Learn how each of the work patterns affects the calculation of leave from weeks into days or hours here: Calculating Annual Leave in Weeks

You can see how an employee's balances are being converted by clicking the blue info icon on their Leave tab - for example, Samuel has a detailed work pattern of 7.5 hours Mon-Friday entered, so PayHero knows he works 5 days per week and his balances are converted from weeks to days and hours accordingly:

Deducting Leave

Once leave is included in a pay run, PayHero will determine what portion of a week to deduct from their balance based on their work pattern. You can learn more about paying leave here: Processing Leave

Employees like Samuel will have their leave deducted based on their days per week. As he works 5 days per week, when he takes one day of annual leave, 1/5th (or 0.2) of a week will be deducted from his leave balance. You can view these calculations by clicking the blue info icon on the leave pay line in their pay:

For employees like John who have No Regular Days set, their hours per week will be used instead. When John takes 10 hours of leave, he would have 1/4th (or 0.25) of a week deducted from his balance, as he works 40 hours per week:

Employees who don't have sufficient details set in their work pattern will have their days per week dynamically calculated based on their Pay History and your company Review Period. See below for more info on the Review Period. 

Learn how each of the work patterns affects the calculation of leave from weeks into days or hours here: Calculating Annual Leave in Weeks

Otherwise Working Days

Otherwise Working Days (OWDs) are used when processing leave requests and public holidays, to work out whether the employee is entitled to payment for that day. When determining an OWD for an employee, the first place PayHero looks is their Work Pattern.

For employees with Regular Week set as their Work Pattern, PayHero will know exactly what days your employee works and will use those as the employee's OWDs.

For any other Work Patterns, PayHero won't have sufficient information to determine which days the employee usually works and will attempt to determine their work pattern from the employee's Timesheet history instead, based on your company Review Period - see below for more info on the Review Period.

To learn more about OWDs, see this article: Otherwise Working Days

Work Pattern Review Period

Employees who don't have sufficient details in their Work Pattern for determining what a week looks like for leave, or which days are OWDs, will have their pay and timesheet history assessed to calculate their leave balances and OWDs.

How many weeks of pay and timesheet history will be assessed is determined from Review Period setting in your company Payroll Settings.

You can learn more about the company Work Pattern settings here: Company Work Pattern