Recording overtime hours is not only a legal obligation for companies but also a necessity. It ensures fair compensation and helps understand workload excesses.
Although overtime is uncommon, it can sometimes be unavoidable. However, solutions exist to reduce or eliminate it.
The main issue is that overtime can burn out and demotivate employees, adding extra costs for companies.
With the new working hours law, organizations must keep a daily record of employees’ entry and exit times as well as overtime hours.
Overtime can be compensated financially or with paid time off but must always be reported to Social Security.
Overtime recording: What does the law say?
The Ministry of Labor and Economy defines overtime as any work done beyond the maximum duration of the regular workday.
While usually voluntary, some cases involve mandatory overtime under individual or collective agreements with proper compensation.
The Ministry of Labor outlines guidelines to ensure overtime does not harm workers’ well-being:
- Overtime cannot be performed during nighttime except in special extended shifts regulated by law or to prevent and repair extraordinary and urgent damages.Overtime is prohibited for employees under 18 years old.
- A daily record of hours must be kept, using time tracking software or other valid methods to document overtime hours.
- An overtime report must be generated and attached to the employee’s payroll receipt to confirm corresponding compensation.
- Worker representatives have the right to be informed monthly about the overtime worked by employees, receiving copies of the time records.
- Overtime can be compensated financially or with time off.
- The pay for overtime must be equal to or greater than regular hourly wages.
- Compensated time off must be equivalent to the overtime worked and within four months.
- The maximum number of overtime hours is 80 per year unless performed to prevent or repair extraordinary and urgent damages, which must be paid accordingly.
Managing overtime and preventing excess
Overtime occurs due to a temporary increase in business activity or poor time management. Here are some tips to avoid unnecessary overtime in your organization:
Understand why employees work extra hours
Are the same people always working overtime? If so, it might be due to an unbalanced task distribution within the department.
It could also result from the employee’s work skills, which can be addressed with dedicated counseling or training.
Another possibility, perhaps the most likely, is poor time management and work dynamics. To understand why there is an excess of overtime, time tracking tools are necessary.
These tools, in addition to providing the required time logs, help measure the time spent on each project or task.
WorkMeter’s time tracking software, automatically and objectively collects labor activity data for each worker. It records entry and exit times, and measures working time through the following indicators:
- Entry and exit times
- Actual activity (effective working time) of individuals
- Time spent on projects and tasks, both aggregated and detailed by employees
- Project costs and profitability
Only with objective data can you understand how your employees manage their time, helping to optimize it and reduce overtime in your company.
Guaranteeing digital disconnection
The right to digital disconnection is increasingly difficult to guarantee.
However, various business management software, including WorkMeter’s time tracking software, now have dedicated configurations that protect employee well-being through daily pop-up alerts, reminding them to end their workday and disconnect to safeguard their mental health.
These digital disconnection rules not only guarantee a fundamental right for workers but also prevent the development and logging of overtime by encouraging employees to finish their workday at the appropriate time.
Maintaining a 100% objective hourly record
Traditional time tracking systems, such as punch sheets or Excel templates, often contain modified information and time discrepancies.
To avoid manual records, which are often subjective, it is essential to implement an automatic time tracking system.
WorkMeter’s time tracking software, being fully automatic time tracking software, also ensures completely objective information, avoiding unjustified data modifications, discrepancies, or errors. This system generates a report that calculates, day by day, the difference between the actual activity or effective work of the employee and the expected activity.
Thanks to this report, it is possible to know the exact number of overtime hours performed. Additionally, it can be exported in various formats for local storage.
Eliminating the need to log overtime might depend more on optimal time management than on balancing workloads.
This leads to a continuous learning process that undoubtedly not only avoids excess hours but also improves company productivity levels, as long as the appropriate management tools are in place.
