For practical purposes, employees can round their time worked to the nearest 15 minutes. If employers round down, then they must also round up from time to time so that their employees are fairly treated.
The following are the basic records that an employer is required to maintain:
- Employee’s full name and social security number
- Address
- Birthdate, if younger than 19
- Sex and occupation
- Time and day of the week when employee’s working week begins, hours worked each day, and total hours worked each week
- Basis on which employee’s wages are paid
- Regular hourly pay rate
- Total daily or weekly straight-time earnings
- Total overtime earnings for the workweek
- All additions to or deductions from the employee’s wages
- Total wages paid each pay period
- Date of payment and the pay period covered by the payment
Since there are no clear rules on how working hours should be kept, employee’ hours can be tracked, for example, on handwritten time cards or time sheets, by physically clocking in and out at work, or by using online time tracking software – as long as the total number of hours is set out in the work contract. However, as you might have guessed, land mines abound in everything from meal breaks to overtime, and privacy.
For example, whilst employees who work more than 6 hours a day must be given a 20-minute rest break, the way employers document this time is up to them. Some businesses require precise time tracking by clocking in and out, whilst others automatically deduct meal breaks from the daily working hours.
Rounding time is another tricky area. Because many employers round time up or down to the nearest quarter or half-hour, it can obscure time spent working. Therefore, employees may not be paid correctly.
As already touched upon, privacy is a major concern among the UK workforce. Digital technology has created many grey areas, like the limits of tracking employees’ web or email activities, when they’re not working, or when they are on the road. In the US in 2015, the company Intermex was sued by an ex-employee after she was fired for uninstalling an app on a company work phone that tracked her movements 24 hours a day every day of the week. European privacy limits are much stricter, but CCTV, for example, does enable employers to monitor staff regularly.
Lastly, overtime is another hot topic in the UK. In the past decade, the number of overtime lawsuits have significantly increased, and will probably keep rising. In 2019, the UK Court of Appeal ruled in favour of a group of ambulance drivers who worked overtime, but their boss only paid the contractual holiday leave. Now, voluntary overtime must contribute to holiday pay.
Under UK regulations, employers do not need to pay overtime as long as total pay for hours worked doesn’t fall below the minimum wage. Laws are in place that restrict UK employees from working more than 48 hours per week. However, a large majority of UK employers are now getting around this by adding contractual clauses that void the 48-hour rule.