Article Contents
- What is Productivity?
- Productive, Chargeable, and Non-Chargeable Time
- Available Work Hours
- Permanent Employees
- Non-Permanent Employees
- Configuring the Settings Used by Productivity
- Leave, Public Holidays, and Close-Downs
- Time off in Lieu (TIL/TOIL)
- Why Percentages Can Be Above 100%
What is Productivity?
In Hiro, Productivity % shows how much of each person’s available work time is spent on job delivery.
It is a management decision tool. It can help identify which staff are consistently over-allocated, which staff may not be reaching expected delivery targets, and where workload, training, or resourcing decisions may need attention.
Productivity is not an attendance or payroll calculation. It does not try to measure whether someone was “at work” for a full day. Instead, it looks at the time they were meaningfully available to work and shows how that time was allocated.
Productivity % is calculated as:
Productive time ÷ available work hours
Productive, Chargeable, and Non-Chargeable Time
What Counts as Productive Time
Productive time is job delivery time recorded against chargeable Work Schedule tasks or subtasks.
Productive time excludes:
- enquiries
- job 0
- No Charge Work Schedule tasks or subtasks
- disbursements and mileage
What Counts as Chargeable Time
Chargeable time is commercially directed work and is broader than productive time.
It includes:
- chargeable job delivery time
- time spent on enquiries, including rejected enquiries
Rejected enquiry time is included because it represents time spent pursuing potential client work, even if that enquiry does not later become a job.
Chargeable time excludes:
- job 0
- No Charge Work Schedule tasks or subtasks
- disbursements and mileage
Because enquiry time is chargeable but not productive, Chargeable % can be higher than Productivity %.
Chargeable % is calculated as:
Chargeable time ÷ available work hours
What Counts as Non-Chargeable Time
Non-chargeable time is time that is not treated as commercially directed job or enquiry work.
This includes:
- job 0
- No Charge Work Schedule tasks or subtasks
When a timesheet is saved, Hiro stores whether it was non-chargeable at that point in time. This helps historical reporting stay consistent, even if Work Schedule settings change later.
Available Work Hours
Available work hours are the hours Hiro treats as the person’s work-time target for productivity purposes.
For permanent employees, available work hours are usually based on expected ordinary hours.
For non-permanent employees, available work hours are usually based on recorded timesheet labour on normal Monday-Friday business days.
Approved non-working time, such as leave, public holidays, and close-down days, can reduce or remove available work hours. This keeps Productivity % focused on the time the person was actually available to work, so leave or other non-working time does not distort the analysis.
Permanent Employees
For permanent full-time employees, available work hours are based on Monday to Friday ordinary work days.
For permanent part-time employees, available work hours are based on their configured ordinary work days. These can include Saturday or Sunday if those days are part of the person’s normal working pattern.
The ordinary-hours value comes from the organisation’s global FTE ordinary-hours-per-day setting, unless the person has their own Work Hours Per Ordinary Day override.
On an ordinary work day, Hiro uses the expected ordinary hours even if the person records more or fewer hours. This means Productivity % and Chargeable % can be above 100% when extra work is recorded.
Non-Permanent Employees
Non-permanent employees do not have expected ordinary work hours in the same way permanent employees do.
For non-permanent employees, available work hours are based on positive recorded timesheet labour on normal Monday-Friday business days.
Weekends, public holidays for the person’s work location, and close-down days do not create available work hours for non-permanent employees. Time entered on those days may still appear in hour totals, but Hiro does not show a meaningful Productivity % or Chargeable % for those days.
Configuring the Settings Used by Productivity
Productivity uses a combination of organisation-wide payroll settings and each person’s User Account settings to work out their available work hours.
The organisation-wide setting provides the default ordinary-hours value for permanent employees. The person’s User Account then controls how that default applies to them, including their Employment Basis, any individual Work Hours Per Ordinary Day override, and ordinary work days for permanent part-time employees.
The key settings are:
- Start Date and Termination Date
- Employment Basis
- Ordinary Work Days
- Work Hours Per Ordinary Day
Start Date and Termination Date
⚠️ A Start Date must be set on the person’s User Account for productivity reporting to work for that person.
Hiro uses the Start Date and Termination Date to decide whether the person existed during the report period. If the person does not have a Start Date, they will not appear in general productivity reports.
If a Termination Date is set, Hiro only includes the person up to that date.
If someone is missing from a productivity report, check that their User Account has a Start Date. This is required even though the field may appear optional elsewhere in Hiro.
Employment Basis
Employment Basis tells Hiro whether the person is treated as permanent or non-permanent for productivity purposes.
Full Time and Part Time employment bases are treated as permanent. Other employment bases, such as Casual, Contract, or Work Experience, are treated as non-permanent.
Ordinary Work Days
Ordinary Work Days applies to permanent part-time employees. It controls which days of the week are treated as ordinary work days for that person.
For non-permanent employees, Ordinary Work Days and Work Hours Per Ordinary Day do not create an expected ordinary-hours target. Their available work hours are based on recorded labour on normal Monday-Friday business days.
Work Hours Per Ordinary Day
Hiro uses an organisation-wide FTE ordinary-hours-per-day setting as the default expected ordinary hours for permanent employees.
Hiro Global Administrators can review or update the global FTE ordinary-hours-per-day setting from Settings > Payroll Hours & Cycles, under Hours Cycles.
If a permanent employee has different expected ordinary hours, you can set an individual Work Hours Per Ordinary Day value on their User Account.
This per-user value overrides the organisation-wide default for that person when Hiro calculates their available work hours on ordinary work days.
Leave, Public Holidays, and Close-Downs
If a permanent employee is on approved leave, a public holiday for their work location, or a company close-down day, Hiro does not treat the whole ordinary day as available work time.
If no timesheets are recorded, the day does not create available work hours.
If timesheets are recorded, the recorded labour becomes the available work hours for that day. For example, if a person records 2 hours while on sick leave, Hiro uses 2 available work hours for that day, not their full ordinary day.
If 1 of those 2 hours is productive job work, Productivity % for that day is 50%.
👉 Learn more here about how to configure Public Holidays and Close-Down periods
Time off in Lieu (TIL/TOIL)
TIL/TOIL is handled differently from other leave.
Because TIL/TOIL offsets extra time already worked on another day, Hiro keeps the expected ordinary-hours target for the TIL/TOIL day. This balances the earlier extra work instead of removing the later day from the calculation.
Why Percentages Can Be Above 100%
Productivity % and Chargeable % are not capped at 100%.
If someone records more productive or chargeable work than their available work hours, the percentage can go above 100%. This is intentional because it can help highlight extra work, over-target effort, or possible resourcing pressure.
Negative time corrections remain visible in hour totals, but displayed Productivity % and Chargeable % do not show below 0%.