Extensive Audits for the Digital Employee Card

The expansion of the Digital Employee Card moves forward with continuous audits, while the measure seems to be firmly established in the minds of workers and businesses in all industries where it is already implemented.

The expansion of the Digital Employee Card measure continues incessantly, and in this context, the Independent Labor Inspection Authority intends to carry out 66,000 audits, starting this year, focusing on non-compliant businesses that do not respect their employees’ working hours. The fines imposed by the Labor Inspectorate amount to €327,000, specifically on banks and supermarkets that do not comply with the implementation of the Digital Employee Card.

According to the data, so far there have been thousands of complaints from workers in the banking sector related to unpaid overtime and inaccurate recording of working hours. Following the intervention of the inspectors, at 138 checkpoints, businesses complied, and additional wages were paid to 2,603 workers.

The Digital Employee Card facilitates audits by the Labor Inspectorate, thanks to transparent and objective procedures. Audits can be carried out remotely, since inspectors can check via ERGANI the records stating when the employees’ working hours start and finish. As a result, they can ascertain overtime worked overtime and then check whether it has been paid.

For example, in the past, in order to establish overtime, as many on-site visits had to be organized as there were working days, which were the subject of the audit. In particular, for one month of work, 25 on-site visits had to be conducted, which made the whole procedure unfeasible, especially if the business had more than one location, i.e. one or more branches.

All this proves, of course, that the Digital Employee Card measure is starting to pay off, as it is being implemented in more and more industries. It should be noted that, currently, the Digital Employee Card helps record the actual working hours of 32,000 employees working in insurance and private security companies, while the first industries to join the new system were banks and supermarkets with more than 250 employees.