With its sometimes difficult work pace, catering is a sector requiring special rest periods, in accordance with its HCR collective agreement. But how best to calculate the working hours and rest hours of restaurant staff?
👩🍳 The restaurant sector: working hours and rest periods, key elements of attractiveness
The health crisis has revealed a phenomenon that is not new: the tension in the restaurant industry with 100,000 vacant positions and restaurateurs who are unable to train their teams. Not to mention all the servers and cooks who decided to hang up their aprons to retrain following the pandemic.
In this regard, respecting working hours and rest periods is essential to attract new staff and gain their trust. This promotes loyalty and daily motivation.
🥱 Catering: a minimum rest period linked to the specificities of the profession
Due to the working hours of catering employees, the collective agreement for restaurants (HCR) of 1997 provides for specific rest periods. Cooks can therefore work 11 hours per day, and other employees a maximum of 11.5 hours, or 12 hours for night watchmen.
Similarly, a restaurant employee cannot work more than 5 hours in a half-day (with a maximum range of 6 hours).
📌 But what about rest in light of these specific schedules in the sector?
The weekly rest period for restaurant employees is 2 days per week, consecutive or not. In all cases, the minimum weekly rest period is 35 consecutive hours. Furthermore, as explained above, if the days are split into half-days, they must not exceed 6 hours of work.
For seasonal workers, who are therefore mobilized for a shorter period, rest is at least 1 day per week. However, this can be suspended in the event of increased activity, a maximum of 2 times per month and 3 times per season. At the end of the season, they can recover their unused rest time as compensation, overtime, or on their pay slip.
🧮 What happens when the employees' 2 days of rest are not consecutive?
In this case, the employer has obligations. In the case of an isolated rest day (in relation to the second one to which the employee is entitled), the 24 hours of weekly rest must be added to 11 hours of daily rest in the work week. In other words, an employee cannot finish a night shift and return to work the next day. A 35 hours (24 + 11 hours) must be allowed before the next shift starts.
Apart from this obligation, the allocation of the 2 consecutive or non-consecutive rest days is done with a certain degree of freedom for the employer. The employer can therefore choose to allocate 1 half-day of rest, and 1 and a half days in the same week. The half-day can also be postponed, for a maximum of 4 half-days per month.
🤝 How to optimize the calculation of shifts and rest time?
Even a small restaurant or takeaway business must absolutely respect the rest time and compensation of their employees. To avoid dealing with the Labor Inspectorate and greatly improve your organization, as well as the well-being of your employees, use an automated solution that calculates mandatory rest periods for you. With Skello, which is directly based on the HCR collective agreement, you no longer waste time manually organizing your employees' shifts and rest periods. To do this, the solution calculates actual working time for you. You then know how many hours have been worked, particularly successively, to trigger rest time, by day or half-day.
To improve the experience of your employees, chefs, servers, bartenders, Skello is also a way to communicate with you and with each other. Leave requests, shift swaps, restaurant decisions. You centralize everything in one place and no information is lost!
