NICS flexitime and working patterns

Normal full-time NICS hours are 42 a week including meal breaks, which is 37 hours excluding them, Monday to Friday. Flexitime is available in most offices, and other patterns include part-time, job-share, term-time and compressed hours. Line managers decide each request, and business need carries a lot of weight.

How flexitime works

Flexitime lets you vary your start and finish times and the length of your lunch break, within limits set by your department. You work the same total hours as colleagues who are not on flexitime, so your pay stays the same. The Department of Finance’s policy (3.10) says every scheme must have:

• a four-week accounting period
• a minimum lunch break of 30 minutes
• carry-over of up to three standard days in credit, which is 22 hours 12 minutes for a normal five-day week
• carry-over of up to two standard days in debit, which is 14 hours 48 minutes
• credit leave of up to three days in any one accounting period, taken as half or full days

Each day has core time, when you should be at work unless you have permission to be away, and flexible bands at either end. Hours are recorded and reconciled at the end of each accounting period. Credit leave and absence within core time must be authorised in the same way as annual leave. Flexi leave is recorded separately from annual leave.

Schemes are agreed with departmental trade union side, so details such as the core hours differ between departments.

Other working patterns

The NICS recruitment site lists patterns in use across departments, with the warning that not all are available everywhere:

• 6 hours or less a day, 5 days a week
• 3 days or 4 days a week
• job-sharing, in several week patterns
• other forms of personalised hours
• shift patterns
• a gradual build-up of hours after long sickness absence

Policy 3.10 defines these as reduced hours (part-time), job-sharing, term-time working, compressed hours, personalised hours and job reshaping (partial retirement, for people drawing their pension). There are no grade restrictions on applying. Compressed hours squeeze the working week into fewer than five days with no reduction in hours, and personalised hours are a temporary arrangement agreed with your line manager. Hybrid working has its own policy, introduced in June 2022, with a staff toolkit.

Term-time working

Anyone can apply, not only parents. Approval depends on business need and lasts one year, running from 1 April to 31 March, so you reapply each year. Basic salary is reduced in line with the weeks you are away and paid in 12 monthly instalments. Annual leave and public and privilege holidays are reduced pro rata for the period, and eligibility for occupational sick pay stops during weeks you are not due to attend. The policy says annual or flexi leave cannot be used to bridge term-time absence.

What changes when your hours change

Policy 3.10 warns that a change of pattern can affect annual leave, privilege holidays, pension and more. Annual leave is calculated in proportion to hours worked, and NICS annual leave and privilege days shows the arithmetic. Part-timers cannot claim overtime until they have worked the full conditioned hours of a full-time officer. Reduced hours also build up pension more slowly, so look at the NICS alpha pension guide before you decide. Sick pay and maternity leave are available to part-timers on the same terms, calculated pro rata.

The right to a pattern attaches to the post you hold. It does not transfer automatically if you move to a different branch or department.

Statutory requests

If you have been employed in the NICS for at least 26 weeks continuously when you apply, you can make a statutory flexible working request under the Employment (Northern Ireland) Order 2002. Managers must consider it seriously but do not have to agree. If the answer is no, you can appeal in writing to the HR service provider within 14 days of the refusal. An accepted request changes your contract and is permanent unless agreed otherwise at the start. The general rules are in flexible working requests, and flexible working in the public sector compares sectors.

What to check

• Whether your department’s flexitime scheme covers your office.
• The core hours and accounting period you would work to.
• How a reduced pattern changes your pay, leave and pension.

Pay on each grade is in NICS pay scales. This is general information and your department’s HR team confirms what applies.