Staff Guidelines
These guidelines have been produced to enable common systems and practices to be followed across all teams within the Division. They will be formally reviewed every July and published in September, although earlier revision will occur if necessary. Any suggestions for additional items to be included should be sent to the Directorate Mailbox by the end of May each year.

Hours of Work
The office hours are 09:00 – 17:30 (Mon-Thurs) and 09:00 – 17:00 (Fri), although some staff will be working slightly different hours which have previously been approved. Where this is the case, the details should be recorded and retained on the individual's personal file.

As this is a service unit, it is important that offices are staffed throughout the day. Please observe this when taking lunch breaks. It also means that we may need to help another team in times of staff shortage so that our service to the organisation is maintained.

There will be occasions when an urgent job arises which will require extra time to be worked. Wherever possible this should be approved in advance by your line manager but, if this is not possible, you must advise him/her as soon as possible after the event.

Holidays
Holiday requests should be submitted to and agreed by the line manager, where possible giving at least one week's notice for one to four days of leave and three weeks' notice for one week or more. If the period of notice is shorter, the request should be discussed as soon as possible with the line manager. Wherever possible, holiday requests will be approved but operational needs will be the overriding criterion, and there may be occasions when requests cannot be approved. Any requests for holiday exceeding fifteen working days must be approved by a member of the Leadership Team.

Holidays are important breaks in our working life and staff are expected and encouraged to take all their holiday within the leave year, but it is acknowledged that planned holidays can be affected by unexpected situations and the flexibility many staff demonstrate is appreciated. In accordance with organisational policy, staff are not allowed to carry more than ten days forward to the new holiday year for personal reasons, and any carry over is expected to be taken by the end of the calendar year.