The rule around time off for workers
Hopefully your employees work hard.
If you’re expecting a seasonal rush, they’ll certainly need to.
Christmas is a particularly busy time for retail, deliveries, and hospitality among other industries.
But you don’t want them suffering from burnout.
(Check out the signs of burnout and how to combat it.)
So breaks form an important part of any schedule.
In fact, employees in the UK have legal entitlements to certain rest periods.
These regulations cover breaks at work as well as rest periods between working days and between week- or fortnight-long working schedules.
What breaks are workers legally entitled to?
Most employees are covered by the main break and rest framework laid out by the government. This gives them certain rights across 3 types of break: rest breaks at work, daily rest, and weekly rest.
Anyone who works a day of 6 hours or longer is entitled to one uninterrupted break of 20 minutes at some point during their working day. Some employers pay employees for this break, but doing so is not a legal requirement.
Next up is the rest period between two consecutive working days. This determines how long an employee must be given between the end of one day’s work and the start of the next. They are allowed 11 hours between the two. This means that if someone finishes work at 9pm one day, they shouldn’t have to start working the following day until 8am.
Thirdly, the regulations set out what weekly rest workers are entitled to. Here, there is a bit more flexibility. They have the right to either an uninterrupted 24-hour break each week, or a 48-hour (two-day) break each fortnight.
While these are rights, they are not always followed. Employees may forgo these rights to work more than this, but they cannot be forced to do so.
What about shift workers?
Shift workers typically don’t have the same rights as other employees, or at least, their right to rest can look different depending on the makeup of their role. Working changing shift times may mean it is not always possible to abide by daily or weekly rest periods.
As such, shift workers are often entitled to what is known as compensatory rest. This rest is the same amount of time as the regulations outlined above. However, it may be taken at different times and often less uniformly than for other workers.
For instance, a shift worker working a night shift and then a day shift might not always have the daily rest period of 11 hours between each shift. That period of time will then be made up later in their working schedule.
Shift workers are not the only ones who make use of compensatory rest. It may also apply to workers who:
- Are engaged in in security, surveillance, or emergency services,
- Help to provide round-the-clock staffing, for instance in hospitals,
- Work away from home,
- Work regularly across multiple locations,
- Have a split up working day with time off in between morning and evening periods.
Certain industries during peak periods are also exempt, so it's worth knowing exactly where your business stands.
Are there other exceptions?
There are other exceptions to these allowances as well. Transport industry workers are classed as mobile workers and usually have the right to take breaks if not doing so would endanger anyone, but may not have the same allowances.
Workers in domestic settings, like childcare providers in private homes, may also go without breaks for safety reasons.
How can you track your employees’ breaks?
Findmyshift makes it easy to add breaks to employees as part of the reporting and payroll process, whether the rules are the same for all of them or not.
You can set up break rules that apply to all employees within your business as part of your rota’s settings. You can also define break allowances by staff member and access these options through the profiles of individuals.
If break times and lengths aren’t always consistent, it’s also easy to add them directly to your schedule. Simply add a comment below any shift, such as “20 min break”. These will be recognised by our payroll calculations and automatically deducted from the hours displayed.
With a well-rested workforce, you’ll be ready for anything that comes the way of your business.