Working time records: what the law requires of an employer

What the law requires

The Working Hours Act requires the employer to record the hours worked and the compensation paid for them, per employee. The records must be retained and produced on request to the occupational safety authority and at the request of an employee or their representative. Failure to comply can be penalised. The exact provisions and retention periods are worth checking in the Act in force, because the details have changed over the years.

What goes into the records

In practice the records must show the hours worked and when they fell, additional and overtime hours separately, and the increments paid for them. Sunday work and on-call duty are also separated out where they occur. The entry must be per employee and reliable: a slip filled in afterwards from memory is a poor starting point if the matter is ever examined.

Why a paper slip is a risk

Time records on paper suffer from three problems. They are often filled in afterwards, so the figures are estimates. They get lost or soaked. And they have to be transferred to payroll by hand, which creates a fresh chance of error. Electronic entry removes all three, as long as the entry is made alongside the work and not at the end of the month.

Overtime visible immediately

Overtime must be recorded separately and requires the employee's consent. When hours are entered daily and overtime stands out in a column of its own, the accumulation is visible all the time rather than only at the end of the pay period, when nothing can be done about it.

Who may see the records

An employee has the right to be informed of their own entries. In practice this means the system must show the employee their own hours. On the employer's side, only those whose duties require it handle the data.