You will not receive a reply. Submissions that include telephone numbers, addresses, or emails will be removed. Table of contents. Length of shift Breaks 5 hours or less No break entitlement More than 5 hours but less than 10 hours At least one minute break 10 hours or more At least two minute breaks.
Contact Connect with Employment Standards or sign up for updates. Was this page helpful? Yes No. All fields are required unless otherwise indicated. What were you trying to do? What went wrong? In all circumstances you should check your contract with the agency to see what it says about maximum weekly working time.
Read more about agency work. As the aim of the regulations is to protect health and safety, the amount of combined hours worked per week should not be excessive. Each employer must take reasonable steps to ensure that if the worker is also working for another employer, the total combined working time does not exceed 48 hours per week.
In this instance you should have an agreement with both employers if you intend to work more than 48 hours on average. To monitor hours, we advise that it is reasonable for your employers to ask for details of any other jobs held and hours worked, but no further details such as salary. Check your contract - it may state that you must have the prior consent of your first employer before taking up a job elsewhere.
Long hours, fatigue and lack of rest breaks or time to recuperate between shifts are associated with an increased risk of errors. Healthcare professionals therefore need to be vigilant about the impact of fatigue on their professional practice.
Nurses should, for example, consider their obligations under the NMC code regarding the management of risk. You should also consider the impact of multiple jobs and your working hours on your ability to practice safely. Issues such as an inability to take scheduled rest breaks, insufficient rest periods between shifts and pressure to carry out excessive overtime - or to stay on after the shift has ended - are legitimate issues to act on and raise professional concerns about.
Read our raising concerns guidance and if your concerns are not being addressed by your manager, contact us for help and support. Get answers to your contract questions including notice queries and whether your employer can change your contract.
With COVID circulating alongside the usual winter viruses, protecting yourself and your patients is vitally important. Search Menu. Nursing careers resource Nursing Support Workers Nursing Workforce Standards Partnership learning agreements Practice based learning Principles of nursing practice Professional services.
Publications Research and innovation Revalidation Scholarships and bursaries Work experience Your career. End of life care Female genital mutilation Infection prevention and control Medicines management Mental health Modern slavery and human trafficking Neuroscience nursing Nursing in justice and forensic health care.
Nutrition and hydration Older people Patient safety and human factors Public health Safeguarding Safety in numbers Supporting behaviour change Women's health. Library Books, journals and databases Subject Guides.
Exhibitions and Events Support. Archives About us. Sick leave and sick pay Statements, investigations and discipline Your contract Your pay Working time, health and safety. News and Events News Events Blogs. Congress Press office RCN magazines archive. Our structure Our history Our influencing work Transforming to meet the future of nursing. Diversity and inclusion Work for us Working with us.
Working time and breaks. If you have concerns If you have concerns about your working time, speak to your employer in the first instance. What is working time? The following are generally not regarded as working time: breaks when no work is done, e. The 48 hour weekly limit You cannot be forced to work over 48 hours a week over a standard reference period of 17 weeks. Breaks, daily rest and weekly rest Rest breaks during a shift You are entitled to a minimum break of 20 minutes when your daily working time is more than six hours.
This should: be uninterrupted be away from your workstation be during working time not be taken at the start or end of the working day not overlap with your daily rest. What if I'm the only registered nurse? Daily rest breaks You are entitled to a rest period of at least 11 consecutive hours in each 24 hour working period. Weekly rest breaks You are entitled to an uninterrupted rest period of at least 24 hours in each seven day reference period.
Compensatory rest The regulations state that compensatory rest must be given when the relevant rest requirements cannot be met. Compensatory rest will most likely be necessary when you are either: working a shift pattern and the shift extends beyond thirteen hours due to an unforeseen situation or emergency working on-call from home and are called upon to work during the period of duty whenever staff are rostered to be resident on-call for more than 13 hours continuously.
If you devote one day a week to 4-hour shifts and give two 4-hour shifts or one 8-hour shift to employees who are outside the group, the remaining four crews would average 40 hours a week. This does not require the averaging of pay over a 2-week period or a pattern with staggered 36 and hour weeks. In the sample shown below, there is an 8-hour gap in coverage on Wednesday that would have to be given to part-time employees or someone outside the four crews.
Reduce the work days to If you include a minute unpaid meal break in the hour shift, you only have to pay employees for You would have to adopt a hour shift pattern in which the hour weeks and hour weeks were staggered. This won't completely eliminate the overtime, and you would have to be able to average the work hours over a 2-week period. An example is shown below:. If you are subject to Federal law that requires overtime after 40 hours a week, you won't be able to use Options 2 or 4.
These can only be used by organizations such as police departments that are allowed to average the work hours over a 2-week period. If you don't have enough part-time employees or you don't have employees from another department to cover the 8-hour gap in coverage every week, you'll won't be able to use Options 2 or 3. You'll either need a 5-crew schedule see Option 1 , a schedule with Let's do a quick cost comparison of 4-crew schedules vs. If you already have enough staff to create a 5-crew schedule, here's a way to save money.
Keep the OT in the schedule and use your extra capacity to build relief coverage into the schedule to cover absences. Similar to Option 1, you would have a 5-week schedule that averages 42 hours a week. The difference is that the 5th week of the schedule would be devoted to relief coverage.
Doing this would shift the OT from outside the schedule to inside the schedule. When it's inside the schedule, it is shared equally by the entire staff. In many cases, the total overtime is less. If you merely want to learn more about hour shift schedules, please read this comprehensive article: Hour Shifts. Bruce thank you so much. I really hope they wake up and realize that their squabbling over the small amouth of money is stupid.
What are they saving? Thanks again. Black Cat,. I take it from your comment that you disagree with my position on this topic. That's fair. It's just my opinion. However, I wish you would have stated why you disagree rather than resorting to name calling.
0コメント