Nobody likes overtime. But in the early years sector, where ratios need to be maintained and children taken care of no matter what comes up, sometimes it’s necessary. One way of making up overtime for employees, while avoiding unsustainable costs, is to use Time Off In Lieu, or TOIL.
In April, we released a major TOIL update to eypeople. You can find a breakdown of what’s been changed and updated through our April Release Notes, but in essence, it allows you to do two things:
- Practitioners and managers log overtime on either the web system or eyemployee app.
- Practitioners use the TOIL from overtime to book absences.
What is Time Off In Lieu?
Time Off In Lieu, or TOIL for short, is one way a company may choose to deal with overtime. Rather than paying for time spent working outside of contracted hours, companies instead provide extra time off to an employee equivalent to their overtime.
Should my company use TOIL?
For some early years settings, where it’s not financially viable to pay for overtime, you may still want to compensate your practitioners for dedicating extra hours to the nursery. In such a case, TOIL can be used as an alternative, by converting overtime into holiday entitlement. It allows employees to be more flexible with their hours and helps to improve work-life balance.
However, it’s understandable to have concerns. Giving employees Time Off In Lieu could lead to staff shortages or, alternatively, essential practitioners may accrue a large amount of TOIL without the chance to use it. There are also employees who would prefer to be paid for their overtime rather than be given time off, which may turn some people away.
Ultimately, whether your company should use TOIL depends on what you need, and what you value the most. That’s why we’ve kept it as an option that you can enable or disable as it suits your circumstances.
How will eypeople help with managing TOIL?
Without a good system for managing it, TOIL can feel overwhelming. It can seem like just another thing to keep track of. Who has taken overtime and for long? How much TOIL entitlement do they have? What absences are they booking using TOIL?
eypeople reduces the potential for confusion by:
- Making it easy to record overtime – Practitioners and managers are able to add overtime events through the eyemployee app and staff web portal, which automatically creates a record on the system. Because all overtime events are listed on one screen, it’s easy for a manager to review them.
- Using an online absence booking system – With eypeople, all absence requests can be made through the system. A practitioner is not able to book an absence if they don’t have enough remaining entitlement, including TOIL. All entitlement is easily viewed through their staff profile. This removes ambiguity about how much TOIL each employee has remaining, and how it’s being used.
- Clarifying the process of using TOIL – The potential confusion of using TOIL can be alleviated through prompt and regular communication. eypeople achieves this by notifying managers and practitioners every time an overtime request is made, approved, or declined.
TOIL for managers
How do I enable TOIL for my company?
People management is handled by our eypeople software, and this includes TOIL. An admin on eypeople is able to change how TOIL functions by going to Global or System Settings > HR. Under TOIL Entitlement, you’re able to turn TOIL on and off, and edit the expiry policy.
Expiry policy refers to how long it takes for TOIL Entitlement to reset. You may choose to let the entitlement go on indefinitely, or have it reset with the entitlement year, or even customise how long you want TOIL entitlement to last after each overtime instance.
How do I manage overtime and TOIL?
Overtime can be reported either by you, the manager, or by the practitioner who worked the overtime. We’ve added a section to eypeople called Overtime Hours (TOIL), where you can see a list of reported overtime events. By clicking on one, you’re able to decline or approve the overtime. If approved, the number of overtime hours is then added to the practitioner’s TOIL entitlement.
As a manager, you’re also able to change the overtime details that a practitioner has submitted, including the expiry date for an individual overtime event. So if you disagree with a practitioner over the overtime date or hours, you’re able to edit the details accordingly before approving it.
TOIL for practitioners
How do I get Time Off In Lieu?
After you’ve done overtime, or even if you know you’ll have to do overtime in the future, you can report it through your staff web portal, or the eyemployee app.
On the Contract/Entitlement screen, you’re able to add an overtime event, in which you can detail which day you did overtime and the number of overtime hours you worked. Once you submit the instance, it will be sent to your manager, who can choose to edit the details of the overtime instance (e.g. change the date, adjust the hours) and either approve or decline. Once approved, the overtime hours will be converted into TOIL entitlement, which you can use to book time off.
How do I book absences with TOIL?
Once you have accrued some TOIL entitlement, it will be displayed on the Contracts/Entitlement screen. You can use it in the same way you use your other entitlement. All you need to do is select Time Off In Lieu (TOIL) as the Absence Reason when booking an absence. This will automatically make it so that, if the absence is approved, the hours will be taken from your TOIL entitlement.
Find out more
Our Help Centre is constantly being updated with new guides, release notes, and videos as new features are released on the system. If you ever get stuck, take a look at the articles listed for each product, or use the search bar to narrow down what you’re looking for.
We’ve recently published a series of articles that go into depth about how to use TOIL, which you can find here:
