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The European Court of Justice has ruled that employers must have a system in place to record every hour that employees work. And Brexit or not, that applies to UK organisations too.
As a provider of time and attendance (T&A) software, we work with organisations of different sizes – from family-run businesses to international brands with employees based across the globe.
Many are migrating from an ageing or less efficient product; others may require better integration with business-critical software – such as payroll or recruitment systems. Occasionally, we help an organisation move from antiquated processes such as spreadsheets or mechanical clocking-on and sometimes, we provide a T&A package where there has never been one before.
In these cases, the organisation that we are helping to progress is inevitably a small to medium-sized enterprise keen to ensure return on investment against key expenditure. It may be that they had not been inclined to fix ‘what ain’t broke’ or unlike bigger and more hierarchical players, simply have fewer formal processes in place around time management in the workplace.
It would be all too easy to ‘write-off’ the SME as being insignificant to the UK economy – the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. Not all SMEs are sole traders. Many represent key employment opportunities – accounting for a staggering 99 per cent of all private sector business in the UK and employing 16.3 million people, 60 per cent of all private sector employment across the country.
However, it is this segment of business that is likely to fall foul of the new ruling – those that are less process-led will now need to ensure that this box is ticked.
The good news is that T&A software doesn’t need to break the bank. According to Gartner*, Workforce Management one of the few functions of HCM that can provide hard ROI.”
Cloud-based cost-effective solutions, which can be tailor-made to meet the size of your company, can achieve not only new legal requirements but also save time in managing personnel and payroll requirements, freeing up resources to carry-out other essential business.
Measuring your employees’ working hours and their break periods is now the law and those who fail to do so could face a hefty fine or even a criminal conviction
The change in legislation came about when one of Spain’s biggest trade unions argued that Deutsche Bank had a duty to record the actual hours worked each day by full-time employees. The bank believed that its only obligation under Spanish law was to record overtime hours.
The Spanish courts referred the case to the European Court of Justice which supported the trade union’s view. As the UK was still within the European Union when this legislation was passed it is set in statute and is likely to remain so.
Said David Hughes, Head of Marketing for Crown Workforce Management: “This is a significant change to the law which maybe currently under the radar of many small to medium-sized business. However, ignorance of the law will be no defence and we urge organisations to look into establishing suitable processes to accurately record employees working hours.”
For more information on Crown Workforce Management solutions visit: https://www.crownworkforcemanagement.com/
*Source: Gartner Market Guide for Workforce Management Applications, 23 August 2018 ID: G00337672
