A couple of months ago, the Government approved a new law that obliges companies to keep a record of workers' working hours. If you have been alert to these latest developments, you will know that organizations have time until May 12 (a period of two months, in total) to apply a system to control working hours in their companies.
The new time control system did not come overnight. Nothing is further from reality. In March 2017, a Supreme Court ruling exempted companies from keeping track of ordinary hours, only keeping track of overtime.
But at the end of January of this same year, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) corrected the Supreme Court, to force companies to implement a system that serves to calculate the hours worked . Hence, the Government of Pedro Sánchez approved a decree law that from this week obliges companies to keep a record of the days and workers to sign.
The advantages of re- signing with the time control law
Some companies have accepted the legislation reluctantly. Not surprisingly, the new law requires the implementation of a system, manual or automatic, with which the hours are recorded. The organizations, in addition, will be obliged to keep track of the days of their workers and will have to keep these records for up to four years , at least, so that they are available to both the company, the workers or any inspection of work that can be given.
It must be borne in mind, however, that this law has a meaning and aspirations and that therefore, it presents advantages for all parties . Companies, for example, will have the opportunity to have the working hours of all workers at hand: they will know how many hours they work, if they exceed the time established by their contract, if they arrive early, if they arrive late or if they leave early. This information is gold when it comes to making policies related to employer branding, productivity and talent retention.
And what advantages does the new time control law have on the workers' side? Although it may seem incredible, more than half of Spanish workers claim to work more than 40 hours a week . Employees hired part-time also say that they do not have a day that matches what their contract actually says. And we do not say it. These are data from the Labor Force Survey (EPA) for the fourth quarter of 2018, in which to make matters worse, 48% of the people who work overtime, affirm that they do not get paid.
Free templates to keep track of time in companies
Although there are tools specially designed for this purpose, it is possible that if your company is small, you will have more than enough to keep track of your employees' hours through a document . You can do it through a simple Excel, so that, although you will have to do it manually, you can perfectly control the hours, both ordinary and overtime.
In this case, of course, you should especially take into account a couple of issues :
- That you will have to keep the record manually (with all the work that all this entails)
- That you should keep this information for at least four years (in case an inspection occurs)
We have found some templates that you may find useful and that you can easily run through Microsoft Excel or Google Docs. The first template that we propose is Factorial RH. On this page you will find instructions to make your own Excel for time control , which has its substance. Although if this spreadsheet is not your strong suit, the best thing you can do is download a ready-made template directly, although in this case it is in PDF format.
But where we have found the best templates in Excel to carry out the time control is on the Free Excel page. Here you have different options, all very useful and operational: the first is a two-page spreadsheet from which you can keep track of a large number of employees (if you need it). The document is not password protected. The second is a three-sheet template, in which we can enter the date, time of entry and exit and the reference to search. This document is password protected.
In case you needed it, we also found it interesting to recommend this other template, which is the same as the others, but includes breaks , in case in the case of companies it is necessary to add them. And finally, we also want to propose the download of a new template to keep track of time that includes other columns and cells, useful for entering additional data.
If these templates that we have provided do not convince you, let's take a look at GestuEmpresa's , which can also be very useful. The first is for part-time contracts, with monthly summaries of the records. It contains two sheets, one with the continuous work schedule and the other for the split days. Let's look at the second template, which in this case is useful for full-time contracts. Within the Excel document itself, two sheets are differentiated according to the type of schedule, the continuous and the match.
Payment software for time control
If you have a large company or you prefer to forget about carrying out the manual control of your employees, you have another option: hire a software that offers you this service in an automated way . Most services directly offer the signing service and install biometric identification services, through cards or other technologies.
Woffu is a very interesting tool, because in addition to offering vacation management (something very useful for both HR teams and employees), it helps us keep track of employees' time control , perfectly complying with the legislation it has approved government. In fact, all the information will be kept in the cloud, can be consulted in real time and, obviously, will be kept for (at least) the four years required by law.
And although this is a very complete tool to manage the issue of time control , there are other services, also paid, that you can choose to get rid of the cumbersome task of manually keeping track of your employees' hours worked. You have solutions such as Exact, Labor Control, Workmeter or AmsySystem.