Number of employees on zero-hours contracts tops 700,000, the ONS reveals

Close to 700,000 employees are currently on zero-hours contracts in the UK, the latest statistical figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have been able to reveal.

Separate ONS data shows that 1.8 million zero-hours contracts were used by businesses during the height of summer 2014.

Conor D’Arcy, policy analyst at think tank the Resolution Foundation, said the continued growth of the contracts during economic recovery “suggests that they are more than just a recession-related phenomenon”.

He added: “While many employers may have started to use zero-hours contracts during the downturn, it looks like most are sticking with them. Growing awareness of zero-hours contracts among survey respondents may explain part of the increase but the longer these figures continue rising, the stronger the argument looks that they are here to stay.”

Time and attendance software can help employers manage 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.