As an employer, you should know that there is a maximum legal amount of time your employees can work for you across the week unless they choose otherwise. Your employees' working hours are a health and safety requirement enforced by the Health and Safety Executive. This article will explain the rules on working times, the maximum amount your employees can work per week, exceptions and your recordkeeping requirements.
What is the Maximum Time a Person Can Work in a Week?
There are legal limits on the number of hours a person can work within a week, known as the 'working time directive' or 'working time regulations'. The legal limit over one week is 48 hours, usually averaged over 17 weeks. The daily limit is an average of 8 hours. Notably, it does not matter if your employee has another job besides your business. The 48-hour average weekly limit applies across both positions.
The weekly legal limit for your staff who are under the age of 18 is 8 hours per day. Over a week, they cannot work for more than 40 hours. Your employees who are under the age of 18 cannot have their weekly hours averaged out over a reference period.
What Are Working Hours?
To know whether your employees are working within the legal limit of 48 hours on average per week, you need to understand what counts as their working hours.
The following count as working hours:
- training for their job;
- travelling when carrying out their job, such as between clients;
- working from home;
- taking a working lunch;
- working overseas;
- when employees are on call to work and have to carry out tasks you have requested of them;
- overtime work regardless of whether or not you pay for it, provided you request the unpaid overtime and your employee agrees to it; and
- anything which their contract states is 'working time'.
The following do not count as working hours:
- breaks during the working day where no work occurs;
- travelling which you do not ask them to do and does not occur within their usual hours of work;
- travel to and from work unless your employee does not have a set place of work (peripatetic workers);
- unpaid overtime where your employee offers to do without you requesting it; and
- any holiday.
What Are the Exceptions to the Weekly Working Hours Limit?
There are two main exceptions to the legal maximum weekly working hours. One is where your staff 'opt out' of the legal working week limit. The second exception concerns the job the employee carries out.
Where your employee decides they wish to opt-out, they must sign an 'opt-out agreement' with you which is separate from their employment contract. You are not legally obliged to offer a higher rate of pay for the hours worked over the legal limit since your employee has asked to opt out.
Notably, an opt-out agreement can be cancelled with the relevant notice stated in their employment contract. You cannot require them to give more than three months' notice, and if you have not specified the notice, the legal requirement is seven days.
Regarding the second exception, jobs, where the 48-hour working week does not apply, involve the following roles:
- 24-hour staffing;
- working in the emergency services or the army;
- working as a seafarer or sea-fisherperson or on vessels on inland waterways;
- security or surveillance;
- being a private household domestic servant; or
- where the time they work is not calculated, for example, where they decide when they work.
Record Keeping
Furthermore, you must keep a record of the hours your employees work where they have not opted out of the 48-hour average weekly requirement. This is so you can prove that you comply with the legal requirements.
Additionally, you need to keep a record for two years where an employee opts out of the 48-hour average working week from the date they decided to opt out.
Key Takeaways
There are rules about how many hours your employees can work per week, and unless they opt out of this, you must comply. However, there are some job types where you can require your employees to work more than the weekly legal limit regardless of whether or not they have opted out of it. For example, where you require 24-hour staffing or your business concerns security or surveillance. In addition, you must keep records about your employees' weekly working hours to prove that you are complying with the law, and records when employees have opted out.
We operate a free-to-view policy, asking only that you register in order to read all of our content. Please login or register to view the rest of this article.