LETTERS Working all hours is a poor recipe for productivity

Sir

The catering and food manufacturing industries should welcome plans for the UK to come into line with the European Union's (EU's) maximum 48-hour working week.

Instead of believing doom and gloom stories about how this could choke economic growth, the legislation should be viewed as a major opportunity to increase competitiveness through improved productivity.

We have been sucked into a long hours/overtime culture. This is particularly true of parts of the hotel, catering and food manufacturing sectors -- but it doesn't make us any more efficient and in fact places the health and safety of many employees at risk.

There are mechanisms that allow companies to comply with the legislation and to ditch our very traditional working and shift patterns. These include systems such as annualisation where hours are worked out over the whole year. Using this and other methods has already enabled one high-profile hotel and a leading food manufacturer to comply with legislation with excellent results, reducing absenteeism, increasing productivity and cutting down on labour wastage, for example.

For employees, these systems have the allure of more acceptable and usable leisure time when the work-life balance is becoming increasingly valuable.

It is well documented that people in the UK work the longest hours in the EU.

I would urge more employers to look at positive solutions to the end of the opt-out that can actually bring major benefits to their organisations and help us compete more effectively globally.

Kevin White

Director

Working Time Solutions