UK PAYE - how to prevent tax refunds in periods where there is no pay

Summary:

The business wants to prevent tax refunds for hourly paid workers in periods where there is no pay. These are relief staff and do not work every period.

Content (required):

When an employee has no earnings in a period, is there a way to still process them through payroll (because we need retro to work), but to suspend tax refunds?

The only reference I can see in the HCM docs is to a payroll status of "Active - process when earning", but this says it stops the assignment being processed, so does that stop them being included in payroll at all? There is no description of the implications of using that or whether it is applicable for UK.