Workers' rights, wrongs, and productivity

No one can be sure what else will have happened by the time this is published!

In the middle of this turmoil, and gone quite unnoticed by many, is The Retained EU Law Bill, due for second reading in the Commons. If the political will is maintained and this is put into legislation, it would automatically scrap many worker protections at the end of the year, unless ministers actively choose to keep them. Many of these rights were brought into law from the EU Working Time Directive and initially put into UK law in the 1998 Working Time Regulations. In theory, these protections could be replaced by watered down versions – putting into question legal requirements for rest breaks, working time limits, holiday and other leave entitlements.

But the question is why is this happening? Whilst most press coverage has heavily covered The Four Day Week and Hybrid Working this possible reduction in rights has widely slipped under the radar. Seemingly, there is a perceived issue that it is the cause of an underlying productivity malaise in the UK, as expressed by some MPs.

However, if we examine data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Office for National Statistics calculations using comparative methodologies, then this perception can rightly be questioned.

Taking the UK’s level as 100, this graph shows that the UK’s output per hour worked is less than France and Germany, both in the EU with similar working time legislation, and also the US, but greater than Italy, again in the EU, Canada and Japan.

We have previously talked about the impact of long hours working, where we discussed research by Nevison (Nevison, John M, "Overtime Hours: The Rule of Fifty") that demonstrated employee productivity will not increase linearly with extended working hours. In fact it shows that, for most, little productive work takes place over and above 50 hours per week. It also examines the cumulative effect showing that productive hours drop as consecutive long work weeks increase.

In the Review of Modern Working Practices, Matthew Taylor concluded that “Working longer hours increases the risk of occupational illness (such as stress and mental health problems)” but also agreed that “the duration of work is an important factor in the indicators of quality of work”. 

So there are not only productivity issues but also risks to employee health from working long hours. The known risks may include:  

• heart and stroke problems
• general fatigue  
• back injuries 
• increased blood pressure 
• an escalation in mental health issues 
• in women, a reduction in birth weights of their children  
• higher alcohol consumption  
• higher suicide rates 

These health problems are not only of great importance to the individual, they also may lead to an increase in absenteeism. If these absences need covering to deliver effective operations, then they may cause additional overtime to be required from others, thereby increasing the number of hours individual team members are working and making the problem self-perpetuating.  

So, based on the available evidence, it is likely that losing these rights will do nothing for improving productivity and may well have a negative impact on worker health. In fact in recent polling 71% of voters supported retaining these EU-derived workers’ rights so it seems like this government may be storing up more problems for itself.

What exactly are these rights?
Without going into great detail, they include, amongst other rights:

Paid annual leave - Workers, who are in employment for a full leave year, are entitled to 5.6 weeks’ statutory leave. Those with irregular or annualised hours are still entitled to 5.6 weeks’ annual leave, but this can be converted into hours.

Rest breaks at work - Employees and workers have the right to a rest break of 20 minutes where the working day is longer than six hours. If workers are under eighteen, they are entitled to a 30-minute break after working four and a half hours. Employers can say when employees take rest breaks during work time as long as:

• the break is taken in one go somewhere in the middle of the work period
• they are allowed to spend it away from where they actually work

This legislative right does not mean an employer must allow smoking breaks or even pay for rest breaks.

Daily rest - Workers have the right to 11 hours rest between working days.

Weekly rest - Workers have the right to either:

• an uninterrupted 24 hours without any work each week
• an uninterrupted 48 hours without any work each fortnight
  
  

Working week - Employees have the right not to work more than 48 hours a week normally averaged over a 17-week period, but this period could be extended by agreement if there are objective or technical reasons concerning the organisation of work. This may be where, for instance, workers are on annualised hours contracts. There is the ability to opt out of this right for a maximum of 48 hours average week.

Crown WFM can help you keep track of working hours

As a good employer, it is obviously important to keep a track of employee working hours, health and well-being, and it’s key that organisations have effective monitoring systems and processes to stay on top of these issues whilst enabling managers to focus on the day job of running the business.

At Crown, we can help organisations manage the complexity of working arrangements, no matter what legislative, contractual terms or rosters are in place. And can facilitate flexible short-term changes along with longer-term agile working practices quickly and simply.

The Crown Workforce Management system can help in all aspects of managing your people, whether that be strategic shift design, day-to-day planning and Time & Attendance through to detailed monitoring, analysis, and reporting of working time. It fully supports all aspects of the Working Time Regulations and other legislative frameworks. It notifies you regarding leave, working time hours limits, in-work breaks, and rest periods. Our system is so configurable that protections can be set up at three levels:

• Statutory, set up to fit legislation and adaptable if it changes
• Collective, for your own organisational rules
• Employee, with each individual being linked to a specific agreement.

Working Time Regulation infringements can be checked for any period, whether looking at the averaging period for 48 hour working, which can remove non applicable periods such as holidays or leave, or night working limits including “special hazards”, if pertinent. If the employee has opted out of the 48 hour working limit then the appropriate protections can be removed from their checks.

As the protections are configurable within the system, they can be set up to apply for the tighter regulations that are applicable for younger workers, and also for mobile or occasionally mobile workers. And, amongst many other automatic processes, actionable reminders can be issued when statutory health assessments are required for night workers.

Automatic processes can trigger reminders when statutory health assessments are required for night workers.

We provide tools for your whole organisation starting with resource planners, being able to plan & confirm resources to match demands for routine operations and any changes and specific scenarios, whilst being mindful of the protections. Moving on to assisting front line management to manage their teams, handle all workflow tasks and approvals, with all the facts at their fingertips. Employees themselves are provided with self-service functionality to manage all aspects of personal time and allowed flexibilities, whilst in and away from the workplace. All with the overview available for executive level management to access a broad overview of resources, using management information and analytics tools.

Our workforce management system helps you to manage your people more intelligently, driving efficiency and growth. With decades of experience, there isn't a business we don't understand.
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