A telemarketing company must pay for the time it takes staff to log in to their systems and get ready to start work, a court in The Hague has ruled.

The case was brought by an employee who objected to the fact he had to come in ten minutes early to log into as many as ten programmes before work proper could start, but was not paid for the time.

The company, Zoetermeer-based Teleperformance, says staff are supposed to be logged in between 20 and six minutes before their shift starts, depending on the project they are working on. During that time no work is required of them, the company said.

The judge, however, said that the time must be considered part of the regular working hours as logging into the systems is ‘preparatory actions needed to do the job’,

The company was ordered to pay the employee €2,900 in back pay and his legal costs.