As you know, according to the law, work must be interrupted by a break when the work day exceeds a certain duration.
Often, employees are not aware that they do not comply with the minimum break duration. Others prefer to take a shorter break, to finish earlier. But the law is very clear: the company has the responsibility to enforce the rule, and this in the interest of the employees.
Studies indeed show that in the long run, days without breaks (or with too short breaks) end up exhausting employees and thus increase the risk of illness and therefore absenteeism. This is certainly not desirable for anyone.
And what does the law exactly say?
The minimum duration of the break depends on the length of the workday. Thus breaks must be at least:
a quarter of an hour, if the work day lasts more than five and a half hours;
half an hour, if it lasts more than seven hours;
one hour, if it lasts more than nine hours.
The goal of the SECO (State Secretariat for Economic Affairs) and this law is to protect the employees by requiring the company to give them this time to recharge. It is therefore the responsibility of the company to enforce these breaks.
tipee helps you manage these breaks!
To make the person taking a short break more responsible, tipee automatically corrects the second stamp to extend the break. In this case, tipee alerts the person, so they can avoid it in the future.
Let's take an example: a person works an 8h day and should therefore take a break of at least 30 minutes.
(a) If the break taken is too short (say 25 minutes), it will automatically be extended to 30 minutes and the person will be warned.
(b) If this person takes a 40-minutes break, then the time stamps count (so the 40 minutes of break are kept).
For implementing the autocorrection of legal breaks, consult our article on this subject.