The use of zero hours contracts is rising, Office for National Statistics reveals

There were 744,000 people on zero hours contracts for their main job in the three months to June 2015, up from 624,000 people in the preceding quarter, recent figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have been able to reveal.

On the other hand, ONS said that two-thirds of the growth in these contracts is from people who have been in their job for more than a year, indicating that the overall increase is not necessarily due to new contracts.

Separate research by the CIPD has found that t zero-hours workers, when compared to the average UK employee, are just as satisfied with their job (60 per cent compared with 59 per cent), happier with their work-life balance (65 per cent compared with 58 per cent), and less likely to think they are treated unfairly by their organisation (27 per cent compared with 29 per cent).

John Cridland, CBI director-general, said: “The focus should be on tackling bad practice, as the number of zero hours contracts is less important than ensuring that they benefit both the individual and their employer.

“These figures, which show zero hours contracts are a small proportion of the UK labour market, again illustrate that they are most common among groups where flexibility benefits both parties. For example, more than one third are young people taking their first steps in the labour market.”

Tensor Time and Attendance System – the perfect management solution for “zero hours” contracts

Monitoring the employees’ working hours, especially when they’re hired on “zero hours” contracts, can prove to be difficult at times, but Tensor plc’s comprehensive WinTA Enterprise.NET suite will make everything a lot easier, while also enabling companies to actually save money, by making their HR departments a lot more efficient.

WinTA Enterprise.NET is a complete smart card time and attendance system including European Working Time Directive checking and reporting, providing total control over working rules, Access Control, Job Costing and System Security.

Our advanced time and attendance solution can hold details for up to 2000 employees, including a photograph of each person, and allows the operators to easily search for the details of a particular employee, including their annualized hours. Furthermore, the WinTA Enterprise.NET will store information on up to 1000 production or department jobs, with employees booking time against these jobs via their smart cards or key fobs.

Additional very important features worth mentioning include the payroll and absence summary functions, shift swapping support, shift premiums, secondary pay bands support and auto clockout, meaning that employees will be automatically clocked out at a specific time.

If you want to find out more about Tensor’s WinTA Enterprise.NET suite, our dedicated team is ready to answer all of your questions.