Break costs for employees
When it comes to time and attendance systems, employers love the fact that absence can be tracked – whether holiday, sickness, lateness or other. But something that’s often overlooked is employee breaks.
Do you know how much breaks are costing you?
Although employers can choose to pay for breaks or not, it’s the extra time that can rack up the cost – as well as the cost to the productivity of your business.
If employees take an average of four minutes to make a cup of tea, you need to add an extra few minutes for the setting-up and restarting of machines, computers and of course employee concentration.
If employees have multiple cups a day, this can quickly add up.
Breaks can be taken for a host of reasons by employees including;
- Lunch
- Toilet
- Tea/coffee
- Smoking
- Phone calls/personal time
- Social time with colleagues
- and more.
How you choose to track or deal with these breaks is up to you, however tracking the amount of time taken a day is advisable so that you can see trends in workforce productivity and labour costs.
Tracking time off
Remember, employees have the right to one uninterrupted 20-minute rest break during their working day if they work more than 6 hours a day.
The others should be outlined in your employment contract. If you decide to allow a certain amount of breaks, enabling employees to clock in and out for them helps you track their absence.
This is particularly important for lunch breaks. The majority of lunch breaks in the UK last one hour. If employees take longer than this hour, your business is left paying for it.
Whether you have a clocking terminal or clocking app, you can set up your employees to track breaks quickly and easily.
The uAttend time and attendance system enable your employees to clock breaks easily, and for management to run automatic reports on the absence.