Workday registration software is created to comply with the legal regulations described in the Workers’ Statute regarding work hours tracking. This law requires companies to maintain daily time records for each employee, including start and end times, breaks, and pauses, and to keep these records for four years.
The objective of this time registration law is to ensure that employees work the hours specified in their contracts, prevent fraud, and ensure fair compensation for overtime.
Companies can choose how to conduct work time registration: manually or digitally. With teleworking becoming the preferred mode of work, companies are opting for digital time-tracking systems that automatically provide objective data and facilitate time registration for employees.
The digital market is expanding, offering numerous solutions for time tracking, including software, time-tracking apps, fingerprint systems, and GPS control software. The options are endless, but what is the best solution? Before deciding, a company must ensure that the chosen alternative respects and guarantees workers’ fundamental rights, especially their right to privacy and the right to disconnect, while also streamlining labor management with easily accessible and accurate data.
Two Fundamental Rights to Ensure During Workday Registration
As mentioned earlier, the software for workday registration or the chosen solution must ensure fundamental digital rights that are “appropriate, necessary, and proportionate.” Two rights, in particular, can easily be violated if an inadequate time-tracking alternative is chosen.
Right to Disconnect
Maintaining a time record during the workday can prevent overwork. However, during teleworking, the line between rest and work responsibilities blurs, leading to endless workdays. This affects workers’ performance and digital health. The right to disconnect is a direct consequence of time control, and companies are obliged to respect and guarantee it.
Right to Privacy in the Use of Digital Devices
The company must ensure privacy protection during the use of provided digital systems. Access to employee content can only occur for work activity monitoring, with prior agreement and in the presence of both parties.
Systems for workday registration that capture employees’ screens to monitor their work activities undoubtedly violate the right to privacy and border on excessive control, pushing the limits of legality.
Furthermore, the company must establish criteria for using digital devices that respect minimum privacy standards and data protection as recognized by workers’ constitutional and legal rights. These criteria should be established through collective agreements and with the participation of worker representatives to keep all staff members informed.
Relevant Aspects for Complying with Time Registration Regulations
There are several fundamental aspects worth highlighting about the regulations governing time registration and employee attendance control. Understanding these will be useful when deciding on the best solution and management guidelines.
Part-Time Workers
The company must have a monthly report on the total ordinary and extraordinary hours worked by part-time employees. A copy of the summary must be provided to the employee along with their payslip.
Extraordinary hours for part-time workers are only allowed in cases of force majeure.
Full-Time Workers
The aforementioned royal decree law requires companies to maintain time records for full-time employees.
The time registration must be done without prejudice to work schedule flexibility. Additionally, a report of the last four years must be kept updated and made available to workers, unions, and labor inspectors.
Complementary Hours
Unlike overtime, complementary hours are those worked in addition to the ordinary hours agreed in writing between the worker and the company, evident in the work contract. These hours are not paid as ordinary hours and cannot exceed 30% of the contract’s ordinary hours.
More Than a Workday Registration Software
One of the most comprehensive solutions is WorkMeter‘s workday registration software, designed for companies whose employees use technological devices, computers, and smartphones. It records the time an employee starts and ends their work activity on their work device, including breaks, allowing exact control of worked hours, breaks, and overtime in a simple and effective manner.
It includes a mobile app for effective clocking and a web environment that not only registers employees’ workdays but also stores and controls data related to each employee’s schedule and activities, as well as the organization in general.
The solution is a fully SaaS application, requiring no costly investments in infrastructure, installations, or special equipment. It generates reports in Excel, PDF, and CSV formats, offering data security and information backup guarantees.
Information is structured by schedule, activity, employee, and device. These features make it a very useful tool for analyzing and evaluating the work team. It also provides an effective vacation and absence manager and a highly visual work calendar, within which different types of days can be organized according to the company’s established work agreements.
Ensures the Right to Disconnect
It ensures the right to disconnect by having alert systems and configurations dedicated to digital health, notifying the employee through a pop-up when the workday is over, recommending disconnection. Depending on the system administrator’s settings, the pop-up can ask the employee to continue working overtime, which must then be approved by the department head, or automatically stop the workday registration.
Employees can access their personal data to optimize their time management and increase their work productivity. Managers have access to data related to employees’ work activities and schedules to control and balance work hours and manage overtime compensation.
The tool is a 100% automatic workday registration system, eliminating time lost on manual reports, preventing errors, and incomplete information.
