December 2008 - The Working Time Directive

The Working Time Directive
2002 financial penalties amount to euro 600,000 for employers who failed to comply

Respondents to a recent Softworks' online survey, which posed the question: "Would your company pass a Working Time Directive Audit?" revealed that over 50% of Ireland's leading employers would not pass. The survey, representing 200 organisations examined working time across industry wide sectors ranging in size from 100 to 10,000 employees. Half of those surveyed view the provisions of the directive as a bureaucratic nightmare and have chosen to ignore many of the regulations under the Act. They do so at their peril.

"A company found guilty of breaking directive rules may face fines up to euro1900, not to mention bad publicity," according to Andrew Ferguson, MD of Softworks Computing. "Employers are obliged to have a mechanism in place to record all employee details including hours worked, hours of leave and payment made in respect of that leave," he adds.

"Non-compliance with the Organisation of Working Time, is already resulting in serious penalties for employers, especially if there is an investigation following an incident in the workplace," says Pat Delaney, Director of the Small Firms Association. "Record keeping has become a fact of life. But when you set it against what an employee can claim from a company whose health and safety procedures have been compromised, the extra administration costs and effort are well worth it," Delaney says.

All records of employee working hours must be kept in a way that allows them to be retrieved quickly and easily in case of government inspection. The most cost effective method is to install some means of recording hours automatically.