Flexible work schedules let employees personalize their workdays and hours, making it easier to balance personal and professional needs. This is especially useful for part-time employees, working students, or anyone with different availability, as it gives them the flexibility to organize their work based on their priorities.

In Personio, flexible schedules ensure employees meet a required number of workdays and hours but allow them to choose when they work. Employees can submit their preferred schedules directly through the system. The system uses the workdays and hours to calculate overtime, attendance, and time off durations. 

These requests are usually sent to supervisors for review and approval. If changes are needed, employees can revise and resubmit. This cooperative process promotes work-life balance while keeping attendance tracking and company policies intact.  

Note:
We're transitioning to our new attendance policies system. Some steps, navigation paths, or settings may not match what you see in your account. For more information on the new Attendance policies, read this article.

Before you start

• Ensure you know the difference between the three types of work schedule available.
• To successfully set up flexible time schedules, we recommend you are an Administrator.
• The schedule has a fixed number of working days. This is necessary to ensure correct time off entitlement proration. This means that:
  • This type of schedule is not suitable if your employees work a different number of days every week.
  • If the number of working days changes for a specific employee, assign them a new schedule.
• You can only create one workflow for the approval of flexible schedules.
• You cannot:
  • Edit the number of days in the work schedule after creating it.
  • Assign a flexible schedule retroactively.
• Employees can always suggest schedule updates for future dates.
• Employees cannot suggest a work schedule with a past effective date, with some exceptions:
  • When you first assign a schedule to them.
  • When their suggested work schedule is rejected.
  • If the employee’s weekly work hours are changing. 

Create a flexible work schedule

The first step is to create the work schedule you’re going to assign to your employees. Follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings. 
2. In the Time off & attendance section, click Attendance.
3. Click Add to open the creation window.
4. In Name, enter a self-descriptive name for the schedule. For example: "Flexible; 3 days per week with time tracking".
5. Set the number of working days.
6. Fill out all the working schedule settings, described in detail in our dedicated article.
7. Save the changes to create the work schedule. 

Create a flexible schedule approval workflow

After creating the schedule, you can set up a workflow to review the flexible work schedules submitted by employees. If you don’t, the system automatically approves all the employees' submissions. Follow these steps:

1. Go to Automations > Create workflow.
2. Click Attendance > Approval for working schedules.
3. With the prefilled template:
   • When employees submit working days and times, the schedule is sent for approval to their supervisor.
   • As soon as this happens, the supervisor receives an email and an inbox notification.
   • When the supervisor either approves or rejects the work schedule, employees receive an inbox notification. If the schedule was rejected, they can edit and resubmit it.
4. If you’re happy with this workflow, click Save and activate.
5. If you want to personalize the workflow before activating it, edit the workflow components before saving it. For example: to send a rejection or approval email to employees in addition to an inbox item, add an email action after the review. We recommend setting up additional email notifications if employees do not log into Personio regularly.

Give the necessary permissions to employees and reviewers

After setting up an approval workflow, make sure your employees and supervisors have the necessary permissions to submit and review the flexible working schedule.

Employees

To submit a flexible working schedule, employees need the following permissions:

• Attendance > Propose permission to their own data.
• Personal data > View permission to their own section containing the Weekly hours attribute.
  • To find out the section the attribute is in, go to your own Personal info tab, look for “Weekly hours”, and make a note of the name of the section.

Follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings. 
2. In the Organization section, click Roles & permissions.
3. Select the All employees role.
4. Click Permissions > Attendance data.
5. Under Propose, ensure the Own option is selected.
6. Click Personal data and scroll down to the section that includes the Weekly hours attribute.
7. Under View, ensure the Own option is selected.

Reviewers

To review submissions, the employees’ supervisor (or whoever you designated as a reviewer in the approval workflow) needs:

• At least Attendance > View permissions for the employees whose working schedules they are reviewing.
• Personal data > View permission to the employees’ section containing the Weekly hours attribute.

Follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings. 
2. In the Organization section, click Roles & permissions.
3. Select the role of the reviewer.
4. Click Permissions > Attendance data.
5. Under View, ensure the access area covers the employees whose working schedules they are reviewing.
6. Click Personal data and scroll down to the section that includes the Weekly hours attribute.
7. Under View, ensure the access area covers the employees whose working schedules they are reviewing.