Tesco famously claims "every little helps" – now Britain's biggest private-sector employer is among the first to offer the option of working "slivers of time" to its employees.

A four-hour shift might not appeal to many of us, especially those who spend an hour travelling to work, but the spin is that it is good news for workers with complicated home lives such as carers or those with illnesses, or who simply want to earn more cash. Tesco has been testing "slivers of time" for a year and will today launch what it more mundanely calls its "overtime booking system", enabling staff to pick up extra hours before Christmas.

"A challenge for our business is responding to changing shopping patterns," said Arnie Herrema, head of Tesco's flexibility programme, who deals with the complex demands of juggling checkout queues, the shopfloor and internet orders. "We wanted to simplify the processes that enable our staff to book overtime, whilst allowing for a more efficient way for managers to sign staff up for extra hours."

With nearly 2,500 stores and 340,000 UK staff, Tesco has in effect created an internal labour market that lets shopworkers sign up for extra shifts in their own or other nearby stores. The system allows them to find periods of time when they are free to do extra work. The company said 10,000 employees had already signed up.

It is unclear what the ramifications of this new system will be on the government's proposed happiness index. Many retailers – with the possible exception of employee-owned John Lewis, which has "happiness of partners" as a goal in its constitution – are more concerned with profitability.

At Tesco, the impetus to join in comes from workers rather than bosses. "[Employees] can set parameters for their minimum shift length and minimum period of notice," said Herrema. Signing up for slivers-of-time working had no impact on their regular hours. "We want to achieve the flexibility required in a way that also helps our 340,000 employees … many of them would like extra hours of work that will fit around their family commitments, studying or other activities," he added.

Some are concerned that ultra-flexible working might suit employers more than employees. There is the possibility that the government could harness the idea for the unemployed.

The UK retail sector, which employs close to 3 million people – 11% of the country's workforce – is a low-paid industry with many employees already working part-time or flexi-hours. The recession has had a devastating effect, with high-profile casualties such as Woolworths – which employed 30,000 – and it is estimated that 145,000 jobs have been lost in the last five years.

Many workers have suffered as employers such as Argos, Homebase and Halfords cut their hours to shore up profitability during the downturn. Whether slivers of time turns out to be a blessing or a curse for workers remains to be seen.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010 ... ift-system

It looks like it is as short as 2 hours.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010 ... rs-of-time


I can see the benefit for companies but unless the part timers get pension rights this will be used as a way of reducing costs and effectively subsidising companies pension liabilities. Though with the governments 65% clawback on benefits it could mean people working for less than few pounds per hour.

I can't see there being any benefit to the employer in an employee that only works two hours a week. Even if they work only that shift, you still have to do all the back room accounting, still have to work out their PAYE, still have to pay out employers NI contributions etc. I very much doubt any employee could generate enough profit in two hours to offset that cost.

I can see the value in an employee that has say 16 hours of work split into 8 two hour shifts over 7 days. But I can't imagine an employee that works less than say 6 hours a week is even worth having.

Jon

If I worked there I'd add two "four hour slivers" onto my normal shift twice a week and take an extra day off.
ie, work the same number of ours over four days rather than five.
Three day weekend!!!!

Actually the marginal costs of a regular employee doing only 2 hours a week are minimal. If they had 7 people all doing a different 2 hours over a lunch hour each week on a regular basis the costs will be minimal. It will probably be computerised and is simply a matter of just confirming their hours and pressing a button. Having done PAYE manually and automatically it is more trouble for manual accounting but that is probably an incentive to automate it. Plus there are companies that simply do payroll for others so that will be their problem. Also unless these people will all be paid manually the automation of payments also makes it simple and cheaper.