Working Time Regulations…

A Working Time Regulation feature was incorporated into timeware? 5 in the late 1990’s and has remained part of the application throughout the product’s development for over twenty years.

Why do we have Working Time Regulations?

This legislation was introduced to help employees maintain a healthy work- life balance by limiting the hours that they had to work each week and ensuring that adequate breaks are taken on a daily and weekly basis.

The health and safety benefits to both the employee and employer are obvious: A healthy workforce is more productive and less likely to take days off sick.

Remember that some categories of work or job role are exempt from the regulations, including the police, armed forces, emergency services staff when dealing with an emergency and sometimes senior managers and people employed by family members.

The 48-hour working week

In the UK, unlike other EU Member states, we allow workers to opt out of the 48 hour working week limit. Quite often than not, the employer and or employees think that opting out means they are opting out of the whole regulation.

This is not the case they are only opting out of the total hours limit which is currently set at 48 hours. The Working Time Regulations apply to the majority of employees in almost every business in the UK and it was this fact that encouraged us to re- develop the WTR into a core feature in timeware Professional 2020.

The launch of the dashboard feature in timeware Professional 2021 means that managers now benefit from a real-time visual indicator of potential issues, before the issues become rule breaches.

For more information about timeware Professional 2021, the Working Time Regulations or the latest Dashboard features, please call timeware customer care on +44 (0)1706 658222 or email [email protected].

Simon Birchall