Downtime at the Enterprise

Downtime at the enterprise is an official temporary stoppage of work at the enterprise, which may occur due to inappropriate technical conditions or organizational conditions, force majeure, or other circumstances.

Downtime can be short-term (several hours to the entire shift) and long-term (several working days or months), local (within a small group of employees) and mass (within the personnel of the entire enterprise).

Who Can Cause Downtime?

Employees, employers, and circumstances beyond the control of employees and employers can cause downtime.

The following actions of employees can cause downtime:

1. Illegal behavior, disciplinary misconduct.
2. Unauthorized absence from the workplace.
3. Non-compliance with security measures.
4. Deliberate damage to equipment, and tools, without which further work is impossible.

The following factors, for which the employer is responsible, can cause downtime:

1. Technical – ignoring the need to repair equipment, lack of planned preventive maintenance.
2. Organizational – lack of raw materials, lack of work at one or more workplace, etc. due to improperly established processes by the employer.
3. Economic – lack of orders, financial difficulties of the company, and so on.

What Circumstances Belong to the “Others” Category?

Currently, Ukrainian legislation does not specify which circumstances of downtime at the enterprise are considered “other”. Each company determines at its discretion what it can be. Such circumstances may include, for example:

• malfunctions of tools or equipment;
• lack of raw materials or their late delivery;
• power outages;
• overtime equipment repair;
• military action near the location of the enterprise;
• force majeure (such as a pandemic or natural disaster).

How to Protect the Company From Downtime?

When concluding a collective agreement, the parties should study and anticipate possible downtime and consider the actions of units in this case. This includes determining which employees will remain in the workplace and whose work will be suspended. Also at the enterprise, it is possible to carry out service of the equipment according to the planned preventive maintenance schedule, unscheduled repair of premises, routine works, etc.

It is impossible to fully protect the company from downtime, as they can occur through the fault of the employer, and through the fault of employees, and due to external circumstances. But it is important to detect and prevent downtime as early as possible. For example, to think through the logistics, buy energy resources in advance, measure indicators of work of the equipment (vibration, temperature, operating modes), etc. Sensors that do equipment downtime classification can send alerts about possible malfunctions before the equipment stops. In this case, workers can begin repairs as early as possible.