On 1 January 2020, a new Working Time Act will enter into force, reforming more than 20 years of regulation on the organisation of work. The maximum working time and rest period will remain unchanged. The working time limits for managers and information workers will change. The changes to the law signal the case for freer contracting.
You can work up to eight hours a day and 40 hours a week - this is the main rule around which working time regulation has been built for decades. This rule is not about to change with the new Working Time Act. Exceptions to the main rule (e.g. flexible working time) will be made more flexible in the new law to better respond to the challenges, opportunities and attitudes to the meaningful organisation of work and leisure in the 2020s.
I will discuss in this blog the following changes:
- Flexible working hours: Flexible working time allows for longer daily sliding limits and a higher maximum balance.
- Flexible working contract:A completely new type of contract will allow for flexible working, where the worker can independently schedule all or most of his or her working time.
- Working time bank:The working time bank will be made available in all workplaces - previously this was only possible in employment relationships that were covered by a collective agreement.
- Teleworking:All teleworking will be covered by working time monitoring and regulation - previously, employers did not have to monitor working time outside the workplace at all under certain conditions.
- Leaders:More senior employees are subject to working time limits.
Flexible working time - More opportunities to take advantage of flexible working time
A flexible working time contract allows the employee limited freedom to decide the length of the working day and when the working day starts and ends. For example, it can be agreed that work should start between 7 and 10 a.m. and end between 3 and 7 p.m. and that the working day should last between 4 and 12 hours. Flexible working hours are already used in almost all professional jobs where the outcome of the work is not strictly linked to a specific time and place.
The Working Time Act that will enter into force will give employers and employees greater freedom than before to agree on the maximum balance of the shift and the daily shift limits. The maximum sliding balances will increase from 40 to 60 hours over a four-month reference period, and the daily sliding limits will be reduced from three to four hours. The balance can therefore be ”plus” or ”minus” more than before, both in the long and short term. On the other hand, the new law clarifies that the maximum negative balance at the end of a monitoring period is 20 hours.
For employees, flexible working hours offer a range of benefits, such as more flexible leisure time, quiet office peace and avoiding congestion. For the employer, it gives them a better opportunity to resource seasonal work or other busy periods when there is more work available than at other times. In practice, it is also easier to avoid costly overtime.
Flexible working hours - Flexible working contract as a new solution for free IT work
Flexible working is the new Working Time Act's solution for demanding specialist work, where there is little reason to tie work to a specific time or place. In practice, it is a more flexible solution than flexible working time. In flexible working, at least half of the working time must be of a kind that the employee can decide independently on the timing and location of his or her work. The employer and the employee must also agree on, among other things, the days on which work may be carried out, the fixed working hours (if any) and how to ensure sufficient statutory weekly rest.
Flexitime gives the worker the freedom to decide on his or her working hours. For the employer, on the other hand, it allows him to give up certain rigidities that do not necessarily fit in with the job on offer - typically IT work - such as shift rosters and Sunday pay. At its best, it makes work more productive and meaningful for both employer and employee.
Working time bank - Working time bank for all employers
A time bank is a system whereby an employer and employee can agree to save working time, holidays or other monetary benefits. The idea is simple: if an employee works a longer day this week or misses a holiday, the contribution can be saved as paid time off at a later date.
In the Working Time Bank, all working time and related allowances are time-based: for example, annual leave, holiday pay, overtime and Sunday pay can be entered in the bank. The working time bank can also be easily combined with, for example, flexible working hours, as is often the case. However, the time perspective of the working time bank is longer than that of flexitime - up to years instead of months.
Unlike before, the new Working Hours Act allows all workplaces to agree on a working time bank, regardless of whether the employer is bound by a national collective agreement. The new law requires that agreements on time bank agreements contain a minimum set of elements that must always be agreed between the employer and the employee when introducing a time bank, such as the types of items and types of compensation that can be transferred to the bank and the principles on which the employer grants time off. There are also statutory limits on certain points, such as the maximum accumulation of working time in the time bank.
Like flexible working hours and flexitime, the working time bank serves the best interests of both employer and employee - on the one hand, it gives the employer better possibilities to resource peak periods and, on the other hand, it gives the employee flexibility to combine work and leisure time.
Teleworking - Working time must also be calculated for all teleworking in future
As late as the 1990s, it was largely decided to exclude telework from the Working Time Act. The restrictions of the law, which was soon to be repealed, do not apply at all to work carried out at home or ”in other circumstances where it is not the employer's responsibility to control the organisation of the time spent on it”. Such work did not need to be subject to any form of supervision or record-keeping.
Today, teleworking is so commonplace that there is no reason to separate it from work at the workplace. The new Working Time Act has therefore removed this distinction - all work done outside the workplace will now be included in the monitoring of working time.
It is often worth agreeing clear ground rules for teleworking, at least in terms of working hours and location.
Leadership - doesn't mean you don't have to follow the law
The Working Time Act and its restrictions do not apply at all in certain specific cases. The most important of these exceptions is the managerial position of an employee, which was already an exception in the -96 law. Under the new Working Time Act, however, managers are expected to have greater effective power to decide on their own working time, so that the Working Time Act and its restrictions do not apply to them.
The Working Time Act does not apply because of the employee's managerial position if two conditions are met. Firstly, the work must be regarded, by reason of the employee's duties and position, as management of an undertaking or an autonomous part of it, or as an independent task equivalent to such management. To meet this condition, the responsibilities and interests must be substantial - for example, middle management is not typically considered to meet the condition.
No managerial status required: for example, people who are solely responsible for the administration or finances of the company may qualify even if they are not subordinate. The key is ultimately power and responsibility.
The second condition is completely new. It requires that a worker's working time is not predetermined and that the use of working time is not monitored. What matters is that the worker has real possibilities to influence the length and organisation of his working time. What is not decisive, however, is, for example, the fact that the contract of employment does not specify the working time, or that the employer merely states that it does not actively monitor the employee's working time. The new condition of autonomy of working time will bring more managers within the scope of the Working Time Act - at least in theory.
As under the old law, the assessment of both of the above conditions is an overall assessment. Borderline cases are still considered as situations where the Working Time Act is normally applied. At the start of the employment relationship, legal risks can be reduced by already stating explicitly in the employment contract (managerial contract) that the parties consider the managerial activity to be outside the scope of the Working Time Act, if there is agreement on this.
Article by Lawyer Tuula Rainto, Amos Law Firm. You can always call him free of charge on 010 299 5090. You can consult our price list Here
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