About this site

Fifty notes on working time across several countries, written for the people who have to make one organisation work under more than one set of rules: HR and reward teams, payroll, operations managers with sites in several places, and whoever administers the system that computes the hours.

What it covers

Mapping which regime applies to which population. The dimensions along which working time rules diverge, and which of them matter operationally. What a single policy document can say and where local annexes begin. Configuring a time system for several countries — calendars, week boundaries, time zones, holiday tables. The people no single record fits. Keeping the register current when rules move. And what happens when any of it is tested.

What it leaves out

What the law requires in any particular country. Those figures change, they are jurisdiction-specific, and setting them out here would be both unreliable and a kind of advice this collection is not in a position to give.

Also left out: the mechanics of a single regime's limits and averaging, which is a subject in its own right; rota construction; and payroll processing.

Not advice

Nothing here is legal, tax or payroll advice. Which rules apply to a person, what they require, how they interact with sector regimes and what happens when somebody works across a border differ by jurisdiction and change. Every figure used in this collection is an illustration of what an organisation recorded for itself and is labelled as such. Where a note touches on a legal question it describes the shape of the question, not the answer.