Compressed Hours: How to Request Them

What compressed hours means

You work your usual total hours across fewer days. Your pay and holiday entitlement are normally unchanged in principle, though holiday is often recalculated in hours rather than days because your working day is longer. Your employer's payroll and HR teams will confirm how they handle it.

Common patterns

• • Five days' hours worked across four, with one fixed non-working day.
• • Nine days across a fortnight, with a set day off every other week.
• • Longer days Monday to Thursday with an early Friday finish rather than a full day off.
• • A rotating non-working day where teams need cover across the week.

Which day to propose

Say which day you want and why it works operationally — for example Friday if that is your team's quietest day, or Wednesday to avoid two long gaps. Offering flexibility on the day, or agreeing to move it in busy weeks, usually makes the request easier to accept.

Address the obvious objections in the request

• • Cover on your non-working day: who handles urgent items, and how they will know what is outstanding.
• • Meetings and clients that fall on that day.
• • Whether the longer days affect breaks or working-time arrangements.
• • How you will handle handovers at the end of the working week.
• • Whether the longer day affects anything safety-related in your role.

Example wording

"I would like to request a change to compressed hours from 5 January, working my current 37.5 hours across Monday to Thursday, 8am to 6pm, with Friday as a non-working day. Urgent items on Fridays would be covered by the shared inbox rota, and I would circulate a handover note each Thursday afternoon. I am happy to trial this for three months and review it with you." Adapt this to your own hours and arrangements — do not describe a policy your employer does not have.

No request has to be accepted

Employers deal with statutory requests in the way set out in current GOV.UK and Acas guidance, and can refuse for specified business reasons. If yours is refused, ask for the reason in writing, and consider whether a trial period or a partial version might be agreed instead.