The software you need to manage Working Time Directive

Nov 29, 2022

By choosing a workforce manager solutions you will save time, costs and ensure compliance with the EU’s Working Time Directive (WTD). In this article, we will focus on the details of the WTD. Its background, what it means to your company, and why it’s important to comply with its terms and obligations while benefiting from all its rights at the same time.

What is the Working Time Directive?

The Work Time Directive, introduced in 2003 and revised in 2009, covers rules dictating the minimum daily and weekly rest, breaks, night work, annual leave and maximum weekly working time for your employees. It requires EU countries to provide workers. Your employees must be given at least 11 consecutive hours of daily rest and at least 24 hours of uninterrupted weekly rest every 7 days over a reference period of 2 weeks.

In addition, it stipulates that those under 18’s should not work more than 8 hours per day or 40 hours per week and should be free from night work or dangerous tasks before the age of 15. To comply with these regulations, your workforce manager solution should include tools for scheduling rosters in line with WTD requirements and supporting automated time-off requests, which can take account of rules on maximum daily hours (8) and weekly total hours (48). It should also have features for recording details about unpaid absences, such as sick leave, holiday entitlement etc.

Why its important not to break compliance

The HMRC impose big fines for breaches of the Working Time Directive, so it is essential that your business has a robust system in place to ensure that this doesn’t happen. Workforce management solutions such as ShopWorks can be the perfect solution for any business looking for a way of managing their workforce and maintaining compliance with the Working Time Directive.

What are the benefits?

If you have many staff who work shifts and flexible times, it can be a very complex problem to manage. Such a system can alert a manager to any planned shift or change to the plan if there are any breaches. Companies can use a digital workforce management solution to become more efficient in managing their systems and complying with the directive’s requirements across an estate.

For example, if two shifts are scheduled with an 11-hour gap between them, they are compliant. If the manager of the store asks that person to work overtime on the first day, they will trigger a WTD breach.  This allows management to have more control over staff’s work schedule while keeping schedules in line with the Working Time Directive.

Any rota with more than 5 people in it, this is a complex solution and AI-powered auto-scheduling tools are more accurate than traditional rules-based systems or managers using manual systems.

Working together to get results

With complex and ever changing legislation, finding a workforce manager solution that can help with monitoring and complying with the Working Time Directive’s requirements is increasingly important. Using a workforce management solution like ShopWorks saves fines but is also good for staff retention.

Our intuitive solution simplifies the process and allows managers to create rotas easily, that are fair to staff, and, most importantly, compliant.

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