Guaranteed hours

Open this screen in Saral/hr/workers?tab=compliance&sub=guaranteed_hours

Prepares for the Employment Rights Act 2025 duty to offer zero-hours and low-hours workers a contract that guarantees the hours they regularly work — the regulations that fix the figures are not yet in force, so every one of them is a setting with the Government's draft preference as its default, and the section is off until HR → Settings → Guaranteed hours switches it on. One row per worker in scope: the hours worked over their current reference period from the attendance register, the regular pattern, whether an offer is due and by when, and any offer made. A person drafts the letter, sends it, records the answer or issues it as a contract variation; nothing here changes an hour, a check-in or pay.

You enter

The settings — reference period, low-hours threshold, regularity test, mean or median, rounding, the offer and response windows, the notice periods, the duty start date — on HR → Settings → Guaranteed hours.
Each employee's contract type (zero hours, casual, part time) and contracted weekly hours on their record: that is what puts them in scope.
The decisions: draft the offer letter (and optionally polish it with AI), edit it, mark it sent, record accepted / declined / no answer, withdraw it, or issue it through the contract-variation flow.
Shift changes made at short notice, by hand, until the rota records them itself.

Saral fills in

Each worker's reference period — consecutive periods from their start date (or the duty's start date once set), moving on when an offer is answered — and the hours worked in it week by week, from the attendance register through the same fold as the Working Time check. Leave weeks are taken out of the average, not counted as zero.
Whether an offer is due: in scope (zero hours, casual, or contracted at or below the threshold), enough weeks with work, and — for a low-hours worker — an average above the contracted hours. The hours the offer would guarantee, rounded by the setting, and the regular pattern (days, usual times).
The deadline to make the offer and the date the worker's answer is due, the letter worded from the figures, and the Monday HR digest line when something is due, overdue or unanswered.
On the shift-notice log, the notice given for each change measured to the shift's start in UK time, against the short-notice, very-short-notice and presumed-reasonable settings.

It produces

An Excel workbook of the board with the average, deadline and days-to-deadline as live formulas.
A draft offer letter per worker and period, kept on file with the answer; issued as a contract variation it is sent for signature from the worker's profile (Saral Sign) and the record's weekly hours follow when signed.
The worker's own view of the same period, average and offer on their portal home.

What the law asks, and what is still open

The Employment Rights Act 2025 requires an employer to offer a qualifying worker guaranteed hours reflecting the hours they regularly worked over a reference period; the worker may decline and stay as they are. In scope is anyone on a zero-hours basis or on a contract guaranteeing hours below an hours threshold. The reference period length, the threshold, the regularity test, the calculation, the time allowed to make the offer and to answer it, what notice of a shift is presumed reasonable and what counts as short notice are all left to regulations. The Government consulted on them between June and August 2026 (its preferences: a 12-week initial period, a threshold of 8–20 hours a week, mean or median, short notice of at most 7 days) and the roadmap puts commencement in 2027. Saral carries those preferences as defaults and its own planning defaults where none was stated; every one is a setting, and the screen says so on every view.

How a period and an offer are worked out

Reference periods run back to back from the worker's start date, or from the duty's start date once a commencement order names it and the setting carries it. The latest complete period is assessed: the attendance register's hours are folded into days (several sites on a day are one day; a full or half mark is priced at the worker's standard day) and then into the period's weeks. A week of approved leave or sickness with no work is excluded from the average rather than counted as zero. A worker qualifies when they worked in enough of the counted weeks (the regularity setting, scaled to the period) and, if contracted for some hours, when the average is above them. The offer is the mean (or median) of the counted weeks, rounded to the setting; the pattern is the weekdays worked in at least half the weeks and the median start and finish where times were recorded. When an offer is answered, the next period starts the day after the one it covered.

Drafting, sending, issuing

Draft the letter from the figures — the rules word it; AI may polish the wording, and every number and date is checked back in afterwards. Read it, edit it, and either mark it sent (the response clock starts) or issue it as a contract variation: a draft "Variation to your contract" letter carrying the new weekly hours (and part-time type for a zero-hours worker) appears on the worker's profile, is sent for signature there through Saral Sign, and the record's contracted hours follow when it is signed. Record the answer — accepted, declined or no answer by the date — and the worker sees the same on their portal.

The shift-notice log

The Act also gives these workers a right to reasonable notice of shifts and to a payment when a shift is cancelled, moved or cut at short notice. Saral records the facts and nothing more: each employer-initiated change, the notice measured to the shift's start in UK time, and whether it fell inside the short-notice, very-short-notice and presumed-reasonable windows the settings define. The rota will record a change to a published shift here when it is built to; until then the office records one by hand. No payment is calculated — a later claim reads these facts.

Settings, retention and the digest

Every figure is on HR → Settings → Guaranteed hours, off by default. Offers and the log are kept six years after the worker leaves (a contract-term claim window), the letter text and notes then blanked and the log rows deleted; both sections are in the worker's subject-access export, and erasure blanks the letters and removes the log. On Mondays the HR digest lists offers due, overdue or unanswered for any group that has switched the section on.

Next screen: /hr/workers

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