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Hours
Compressed workweek
Compressed workweek is a DOLE-recognized flexible arrangement that packs the week’s hours into fewer days so a day can run longer than eight without daily overtime, if the rules for consent and limits are met.
How it works
This is not ‘we grind 12-hour days.’ Flexible work arrangements have DOLE advisories: written agreement, no diminution of benefits, health considered, usually a cap on daily hours. Night differential still applies inside the window. A U.S. four-tens fad does not auto-port. File it properly or you simply owe OT. For a U.S. company hiring one Filipino teammate, write this into the brief, the employment contract, and the peso payroll file before the start date. Slack habits do not override the Labor Code, BIR, or NPC. If the local employer of record holds the paper, they run the statutory step; you still owe a clean operating definition so the seat does not fail in week three. Put a number on the example when you budget loaded cost, because a nameless allowance always returns as a December surprise or a missed SLA.
Example: agreed 4 × 10 PHT dayside. Hours 9-10 are not automatic OT if the arrangement is valid. Hours 10 p.m.-6 a.m. still take NSD if you placed them there.
How it differs
Flexible work arrangement is the family. Hours of work is the eight-hour default. Overtime is what you pay when the compressed deal is invalid.
Common errors
Imposing 12-hour nights and labeling them compressed after the fact.
In practice
Treat Compressed workweek as a week-one operating object. Write the hours and the next Philippine holiday on the same page as the job brief. If this word would change pay or coverage that week, lock it before the interview. Write an owner - founder, local employer, or worker - and a date you will look at it again: first cutoff, first holiday, or first miss. If nobody can show a contract clause, a payslip line, a calendar block, or a checklist box, you do not have compressed workweek yet. You have a conversation. Convert the conversation before the person starts, while changing the deal still costs a paragraph rather than a resignation. Re-read the worked example above against the actual hire in front of you. If the numbers in that example cannot be swapped for this seat’s pesos, hours, and start date, the brief is still unfinished.