What Hours Can Your Employer Legally Require You To Work?

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Table of Contents

• What Does the Law Say?
• Practical Considerations 
• Key Takeaways
• Frequently Asked Question

Employees working extremely long hours often leads to less productivity and low employee motivation. Therefore, as an employer, you may wish to monitor your employees’ average working hours. But to do this, you will need to familiarise yourself with the law governing how long employees can work. This article will discuss how long employees are legally allowed to work per week and other key considerations. 

What Does the Law Say?

The Fair Work Act states that an employer must not request or require a full-time employee to work more than 38 hours a week. The law makes an exception where it considers the additional hours reasonable. 

The Act states that if the employee is part-time or casual, they must work less than 38 hours or their ordinary hours in a week. 

When determining whether or not additional hours are reasonable, the law considers many factors, including:

• any risk to the employee’s health and safety;
• an employee’s personal circumstance, e.g. family responsibilities;
• the needs of your business;
• whether the employee is entitled to overtime payments, penalty rates or similar for working the additional hours;
• if you gave the employee any notice; and 
• the usual patterns of work in your business’s industry and the nature of the employee’s role and responsibilities.

Therefore, when requesting additional hours, ensure that you consider these factors required by the Fair Work Act. 

Practical Considerations 

In November 2021, Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work found that employees were working 8.17 hours of unpaid labour per week on average. The study concluded that overworking frequently impacts productivity and motivation. Fortunately, you can take proactive steps to avoid this in your workplace.

Foster a workplace culture that does not expect overtime.

The study revealed that workers between 18 and 30 years’ old were most likely to be working overtime. Often, overworking stems from job insecurity and pressure not to disappoint.

Therefore, it is on employers to ensure that the workplace culture encourages appropriate finish-times and that employees feel encouraged to ask for help before they are overwhelmed. You can also encourage breaks to manage stress and fatigue. Likewise, ensure that workers are comfortable openly discussing working hours and expectations. 

Communication

The best way to prevent employees from working longer than they need to is to ask them why that is the case. Is it an issue of time management? Is it an issue of too much on their plate? As an employer, it is important to ask whether there is a way to automate or streamline a process to make the work less time-consuming for your employees. Also, consider whether flexible working hours is better for them.

Monitor the hours your employees work

Monitoring hours might seem simple but ensure you note those working longer hours. For example, monitoring could be through their timesheet, when they are sending emails or when tasks are finished. 

Key Takeaways

A full-time employee should only work 38 hours per week. Fatigued employees can are frequently less productive and motivated. Therefore, it is essential to manage and monitor how long your employees are working to help them. This will in turn help your business and its productivity. 

If you are unsure of your requirements as an employer, our experienced employment lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents. Call us today on 1300 544 755 or visit our membership page.

Frequently Asked Question