Get In Touch

0161 720 50 50

enquiries@workingtime-solutions.com

Prysmian

Annual Hours at Prysmian Cables

Prysmian, (previously Pirelli Cables), produces energy and telecommunications cables. It employs a total of 1,200 people in the UK, with 150 employees based at the Aberdare plant in South Wales. This plant manufactures electrical wire cable, and since May 2005, 115 shop floor workers have been employed on annual hours contracts.

The need for change

The Aberdare plant was experiencing difficulties in fully crewing its machines because of its flexible, or 'free choice', holiday arrangements, and was struggling to match production with demand. Too few employees were opting to work overtime to cover their colleagues' holidays, and an absence rate of between six and seven per cent was putting a further strain on staffing.

Prysmian illustrated the rostering problem in terms of its effect on the plant's manufacturing capacity:

Loss of manufacturing capacity due to free choice holidays	13%
Loss of manufacturing capacity due to sickness	6%
Gain in manufacturing capacity due to overtime working	3%

⇒ Net loss in capacity: 13% + 6% - 3% = 16%

Major reform was needed, and consultation with the GMB, (the recognised trade union), began in April 2004 to agree the objectives for 'the way forward':

• No loss of earnings for employees
• Guaranteed holiday cover
• Access to quality downtime for employees
• A solution that would be cost neutral.

The Way Forward

The main challenge to building greater flexibility into the current working arrangements was how to cover the employees' holidays. The solution lay in quantifying the business need: the plant needed to be continuously crewed for 356 days, (365 days minus the Christmas shutdown), which equated to 8,544 annual hours and 1898 annual hours per employee. From this, the most cost effective team structure to crew the plant was calculated to be almost exactly 4½.

The 4½ team system, based on a 40¼ hour week rotated over a nine-week cycle, with fixed holidays, fulfilled the objectives of 'the way forward'. Its shift pattern included an extra 15 per cent of working time to cover annual leave, thereby eliminating the need for overtime here, and at the same time, protected current earning levels. In addition, it meant that eight of the nine new teams required could be created from the existing 4-team structure and skills mix, with the ninth team created from other employees.

Consulting with the Trade Union

Three versions of 4½ team option were tabled with the union to form the basis of the ongoing consultation.

The trade union was concerned that the proposal would mean a loss of flexibility within the annual holiday entitlement of its membership, and to assist in the final decision, both company management and the union agreed to the involvement of ACAS. The consultation process proved extremely fruitful, and although the original proposal was significantly adapted to reduce its rigidity, changes were agreed without compromising the solution as a whole.

The Flexible Solution

Under the new shift pattern, each employee has 26 days holiday and eight bank holidays included in their gross working year. Every nine weeks, employees are entitled to ten days off, which can be augmented by four 'banked' days. Employees can accumulate up to four shifts in credit, (a maximum of 48 banked hours), or be in debit, and have up to four shifts off over the nine-week shift cycle. The banking arrangement was one of the key outputs of the consultation process between management and the Trade Union and helped ease the perceived rigidity of the shift pattern.

Annual leave is rostered into the working year, but further flexibility is created in the system through the 'buddy' scheme: workers can swap shifts with colleagues who have the same skills and return the swap at another time. This arrangement, although overseen by the company, is effectively run by the employees themselves.

Retaining Flexibility

The new shift pattern also contains a 'fallback position', whereby if business falls off, the workforce can revert to a five-team pattern working an average 36¼ hour week. Although this results in a 10 per cent drop in employees earnings, to align costs with volume, the headcount, and therefore employment levels, remain unchanged.

Overtime is no longer required to cover annual leave, but it still has an important role in managing absence and ensuring that the staffing implications of minor volume changes and revisions to the product mix can be met.

Results and Business Benefits

The introduction of annual hours arrangements at the Aberdare plant has meant that Prysmian can now plan ahead more confidently to meet its customer requirements here, since its skills and labour availability, and to a large extent its costs, are known. The plant no longer has to rely on overtime working for holiday cover, and for employees, the flexibility around earnings means that employment levels are largely protected. The company hopes that the new arrangements will help to secure the long-term future of the Aberdare plant.

To find out more about the many services available from Working Time Solutions – including consultancy, software and Lean-ER itself – then please don’t hesitate to contact us or submit an information request and we shall be happy to find out how we can help. All our solutions start with talking and listening: we look forward to beginning the conversation soon.