Is the arrangement for working hours sound?

Employer’s responsibility

The employer must assess whether working hours are soundly arranged, taking into consideration the health, welfare and safety of the workers. This also applies when a collective agreement includes arrangements on working hour arrangements, and when special exemptions from the rules for working hours apply.

Which arrangements must be assessed?

In principle, it will not be necessary to assess the soundness of arrangements where working hours fall within the parameters of normal working hours (up to 9 hours per day and 40 hours per week). Ordinary arrangements, where workers have regular workdays without shift or rota work, can be deemed sound without further evaluation and assessment.

Biologically there is no difference between work performed on weekdays and work performed on weekends or holidays, but weekend work can have consequences for the worker’s social life or welfare.

Arrangements deviating from the statutory norm and a normal circadian rhythm must be assessed in more detail. This includes:

• workers performing shift or rota work
• day workers who participate in shift arrangements
• extended overtime
• use of average calculations
• night work

Read more about how working hours can affect the health of workers and increase the risk of accidents (pdf, in Norwegian)

When to assess arrangements?

The soundness of the arrangement must be assessed when a new arrangement is established and when existing arrangements are changed.

Regular evaluations should also be carried out – e.g. annually – to uncover unforeseen, detrimental strain potentially caused by the arrangement.

Such assessment and evaluations shall be carried out in collaboration with the safety representatives, the workers and their elected representatives.  

Knowledge is necessary

It is important that leaders, safety representatives and employee representatives have knowledge about the potential consequences of different arrangements for working hours on health, welfare and safety. They should be familiar with the arrangements in use for the workplace in question and know how to assess the soundness of the arrangement.

Collective agreements

Collective agreement sometimes include clauses on how working hours are arranged that go beyond the requirements of the Working Environment Act. Nevertheless, the employer and the employee cannot agree on arrangements of working hours that endanger the employee’s health, welfare or safety.

This means the limits of such agreements cannot always be applied in full, and assessing the soundness of arrangements in the context of the specific workplace are supposed to cover this.

What are the consequences of an unsound arrangement of working hours?

The longer the workdays and work weeks are, the more physical and mental strain workers are exposed to in their jobs. In addition, the risk of accidents and errors increases with the length of the shift.

The biggest problem with long daily working hours is that they limit the workers’ free time between shifts and their opportunity to sleep. Sleep is a basic human need and essential for good performance and good health. Sleep and restitution are daily needs that cannot be deferred without causing detrimental strain.

Research shows that long workdays can increase the risk of accidents or errors. Specifically, workdays exceeding 8 hours have increase the risk of accidents by around 50 percent, and, similarly, workdays exceeding 12 hours increase the risk around 100 percent.

In the short term, a lack of sleep can affect workplace safety. Health risks also increase when work disrupts sleep patterns. It has been well-documented that both long workdays and shift/night work increase the risk of health problems and disease, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Consequences of unsound arrangements for working hours include:

• disordered sleep/fatigue
• reduced physical and mental performance
• greater risk of errors, which affects workplace safety
• physical and mental health problems
• poor work-life balance

Night work has, among other things, a well-documented correlation with an elevated risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, as well as a limited correlation with an elevated risk of breast cancer.

The occupational health service can help identify risk factors and assess potential consequences.

The increased risk of errors can affect the safety of the workers themselves, colleagues or third parties, such as customers or patients. In some workplaces, the consequences of errors are minor, or errors can easily be corrected at a later time. In other workplaces, the consequences of errors can be fatal or unacceptable for other reasons.

Research on working hours show that shift work, night work and long workdays all have negative consequences for health and safety. The research also points to potential measures that can compensate for the increased risks.

The Labour Inspection Authority recommends the following risk-reducing measures when arranging working hours: 

• Organise working hours to ensure that workers are able to get enough sleep
• Shifts should not be longer than 12 hours
• Night shifts should not be longer than 8 hours if the work is associated with special risks or exposes the worker to considerable physical or mental strain
• Rotate shifts forward (clockwise), not back
• Workers should not work more than three nights in a row
• Workers should be able to rest before night shifts and be given opportunities to take breaks
• Self-regulation in the work and sound on-call arrangements are especially important for workplaces with night work and long workdays.
• The work-free period should be longer when it occurs outside the time a person normally sleeps (at least 11 hours of free time at night or 16 hours during the day)
• Work-free days after night shifts (the more nights in a row someone has worked, the more time they need to recover)
• Do not combine night shifts with demanding work requirements if at all possible
• Account for individual variations
• Avoid long workdays and limit overtime for high-risk work (this type of work already has shorter weekly working hours due to the higher risk)

Read more about working hours and how they affect health and safety (stami.no, in Norwegian)

What about workers who are exempt from the rules on working hours?

Workers in senior or particularly independent posts (in Norwegian) are exempt from the ordinary provisions on working hours under the Working Environment Act. The same applies to workers who are subject to a collective agreement with arrangements that depart from the statutory provisions on working hours.

Similar to other workers, these workers must not be exposed to detrimental physical or mental strain, and their working hour arrangements must not negatively affect safety.

Workers who are exempt from the provisions on working hours shall still have a sound arrangement for their working hours; agreements cannot exempt the employer from this responsibility. The employer must therefore take care to assess the soundness of their working hour arrangements in the same way they do for other workers.

In the assessment, it is important to identify the true working hours of workers who are exempt from the provisions on working hours. This requires the employer to have an overview of the individual worker’s workload.