What does the labour inspectorate need from you?

The Slovak Labour Inspection Act (No. 125/2006 Coll.) gives the inspector wide powers. They may enter workplaces, request documents and records, including copies, and ask for explanations not only from management but from the employees themselves (Section 12(1)).

When it comes to working time, the quickest thing to surface is a mismatch between three things: what is in the shift rota, what is in the records and what people on the floor say. If a warehouse worker mentions that they usually work Saturdays and there is not a single Saturday in the attendance records, the problem is not in the warehouse. It is in the paperwork.

An employer must keep records of working time, overtime, night work and both the active and inactive parts of on-call duty (Section 99 of the Labour Code). The records must show the start and end of every period in which a person worked or was on call.

A total of ‘8 hours’ in a spreadsheet is therefore not enough. The records must show that Peter arrived at 5:52, left at 14:10 and when he took his break. Attendance in which a whole department arrives at exactly 7:00 and leaves at 15:30, month after month, looks suspicious too. A record like that describes the plan, not the work.

Between the end of one shift and the start of the next, an employee must have at least 12 consecutive hours of rest within a 24-hour period; a young person must have at least 14 hours (Section 92(1)).

A typical scenario: a colleague on the afternoon shift finishes at 10.00 pm and, at 6.00 am the next morning, steps in for a colleague who is off sick on the morning shift. He had eight hours between shifts. The law permits reducing rest periods to as little as eight hours only for employees over the age of 18 and only in specified cases, such as in 24-hour operations, shift work, for urgent repairs where there is a risk to life or health, or in the event of extraordinary circumstances. Even then, you must provide equivalent compensatory rest within 30 days (Section 92(2)). Unless the workplace falls into one of these categories, covering for a sick colleague is not an exception. Rest periods between shifts must not fall below eight hours, even when working overtime (Section 97(5)).

Once a week, an employee is entitled to two consecutive days of uninterrupted rest, which must fall on a Saturday and Sunday or on a Sunday and Monday (Section 93(1)). If the nature of the work does not permit this, these two days may also fall on other days of the week.

Further exceptions cannot be granted without agreement. A shorter weekly rest period may be agreed with employee representatives, or, if there are none, directly with the employee: at least 24 hours once a week with compensatory rest within eight months, at least 35 hours once a week, or at least 24 hours once every two weeks, with compensatory rest to be taken within four months (Section 93(3) to (5)). This applies only to people aged 18 and over.

During the busy season, it can easily happen that someone works ten days in a row because they wanted to earn extra money. However, the fact that the employee wanted to do so is not enough. What matters is whether you followed one of the statutory arrangements and whether the employee actually received compensatory rest.

Anyone working a shift longer than six hours is entitled to a 30-minute break for rest and meals; young people are entitled to this break if their shift is longer than four and a half hours (Section 91(1)). The break must not be taken at the start or end of a shift and is not counted as part of working time. An exception is made for work that cannot be interrupted: in such cases, the employee must be given adequate time to eat without interrupting their work, and this time is counted as part of their working hours (Section 91(4) and (5)).

A common error is half an hour being automatically deducted from everyone’s time, even though people on the production line are eating by the machine. The records then show a break that never took place, and people are missing out on paid time. The opposite scenario is a ‘break’ being moved to the end of the shift so that everyone can leave half an hour early. Convenient, but against the law.

Overtime is work done on the employer’s instruction or with the employer’s consent beyond the set weekly working hours and outside the shift schedule (Section 97(1)). You may order up to 150 hours of overtime in a calendar year. Including agreed overtime, an employee may work no more than 400 hours of overtime a year (Section 97(7) and (10)).

On top of the annual caps there is an average: overtime must not exceed eight hours a week on average over a period of up to four consecutive months, unless you agree a longer period with employee representatives, up to 12 months (Section 97(6)). And average weekly working time including overtime must not exceed 48 hours (Section 85(9)).

Limits are not broken in one go. A big order in March, stocktaking in June, the pre-Christmas rush in November. If payroll adds up overtime by hand at the end of the year, they find out too late. Worse still is overtime that never makes it into the records because it was ‘moved to the balance’ or a manager paid it out as a bonus.

Night work is defined as work carried out between 10.00 pm and 6.00 am (Section 98(1)). Anyone who regularly works at least three consecutive hours at night, or is likely to work at least 500 hours at night per year, is, by law, a night worker. Such a person must undergo a medical fitness assessment before being assigned to night work and thereafter at least once a year. The average length of their shift must not exceed eight hours over a period of no more than four months (Section 98(2), (3) and (8)).

Without a written agreement with the employee, you may not schedule night shifts for two consecutive weeks, unless the nature of the work or operational conditions permit otherwise (Section 90(8)). Night hours must therefore be shown separately in the records, not hidden within the total for the shift.

On-call duty is time when an employee, outside the shift rota, is ready to start work (Section 96). The law distinguishes where and how it is spent. Inactive on-call time at the workplace counts as working time. Inactive on-call time at home or another agreed place does not, but compensation is payable for it. When the employee actually works while on call, that is the active part, and it counts as overtime. You may order at most eight hours of on-call duty a week and 100 hours a year; more only by agreement with the employee (Section 96(7)).

A maintenance technician is on call over the weekend and gets a call at 23:00 on Saturday about a line fault. If the record stops at the word ‘on call’, nobody knows when he set off, when he arrived and when he finished. Yet that is exactly what Section 99 requires: the start and end of every period.

• Attendance copied from the plan: the same times every day instead of real arrivals and departures.
• Untraceable corrections: a record is changed afterwards and nobody knows who did it, when or why.
• Last-minute rotas: you must announce the working time schedule at least one week in advance (Section 90(9)).
• Agreement workers outside the records: for work activity agreements and student temporary work agreements, the law expressly treats it as a serious breach if the time actually worked exceeds the records by more than 10%, and by at least 30 minutes a day (Section 19(3) of the Labour Inspection Act).

You do not pass an inspection on the day the inspector arrives. You pass it at your regular month-end close.

Name one person who knows where the records, shift rotas and agreements with employee representatives (on uneven scheduling, shorter rest or a longer overtime reference period) are kept, and who can print or export them quickly. Once a month, compare the plan with reality and go through the exceptions: who had less than 12 hours between shifts, who did not get two days off, who is getting close to 150 hours of overtime. For every correction to attendance, record the reason and the name of the person who made it.

It also helps that, when setting the amount of a fine, the inspectorate considers whether it is an isolated shortcoming or the result of a system that does not work (Section 19(6)). Records that catch errors as they happen are therefore a strong argument.

The webVisitor attendance system records actual arrivals and departures via a terminal, mobile phone or the web, ensuring that each shift is properly recorded from start to finish. It automatically checks compliance with the Labour Code: continuous daily rest periods, statutory breaks and working hours, taking the employee’s age into account. Overtime, night shifts and public holidays are recorded separately, so you can see them in reports as they happen, rather than only when the annual total is calculated.

Before the closing date, the ‘data traffic light’ system helps: the system approves the correct days, and the manager or payroll officer only deals with those where something is amiss. Monthly attendance is then approved electronically by both the employee and their line manager. And if an inspector enquires about a specific day, the ‘original versus amendments’ report shows what the terminal originally recorded, what was subsequently changed, who made the change and when. You can export reports to Excel or PDF.

Terminals and biometric scanners can be found in the hardware overview.