The obligation to record working hours is the big bang
Is there an obligation to record working hours and suddenly you realize that your employees aren’t taking breaks? This can have serious consequences for you and your business.
The BAG’s 2022 ruling is based on the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Based on employers’ duty of care, the Federal Labor Court has ruled that employees’ working hours must be recorded in all German companies. This is the only way to ensure that employers fulfill their duty of care and that the Occupational Safety and Health Act and therefore the Working Time Act are complied with. This also includes compliance with breaks and rest times prescribed by law.
You can find more information about the obligation to register working hours and the first draft law here.
Rest and break times: what’s the difference?
The law clearly distinguishes between rest period and rest period. Rest periods are the times between the end of a work assignment and the start of a new one. Rest breaks or break times, on the other hand, are interruptions to a work assignment.
What are breaks and rest times for?
Breaks ensure that employees remain focused and productive even after working for several hours. Rest periods, in particular, help employees regenerate and guarantee safety and health protection. This is why breaks are particularly important during physical work and shift work.
How long these must be respected is also established by law:
Legal requirements for breaks
The Working Time Act (ArbZG) stipulates that employees must take a certain amount of time off from their daily working hours. According to the ArbZG, employers are obliged to ensure that employees comply with these regulations.
The length of the break depends on the length of working hours. A distinction is made here between working hours of less than six hours, six hours or more and nine hours or more, as well as the age of the employees.
Up to six hours
If you work up to six consecutive hours, breaks are not required by law. However, there is nothing wrong with taking them anyway to improve your performance.
From six hours
If you work between six and nine hours, you are legally entitled to a 30-minute break. You can also split this break into two 15-minute breaks. What is not possible, however, is dividing the break into 10 and 20 minutes!
More than nine hours
If you work nine hours or more you are entitled to a break of at least 45 minutes. This can also be broken down into 15 minute breaks. However, working more than six hours without a break is not legal!
Minors
The legal regulations for young people are slightly different: According to the Youth Employment Protection Act, special exceptions must be taken into account for minors. When working for 4.5 hours or more, young people under 18 must take a break of at least 30 minutes. After six hours they are even forced to take a break of over an hour.
Exceptions
There may also be exceptions! Paragraph 7 of the Working Time Act stipulates that so-called «short breaks of adequate duration» may be used in shift work and transport companies. The allotted 45 minutes, for example, can be divided into less than 15 minutes.
Legal requirements for rest periods
Paragraph 5 of the Working Time Act requires a rest period of at least 11 hours. This means: if Maren works until 8pm on Tuesday she cannot work again until 7am on Wednesday morning. It doesn’t matter if it’s the same job or your second job.
According to Article 7 of the Working Time Law, the rest period can be reduced by up to two hours “if the nature of the work so requires”. However, the reduction in the rest period will have to be compensated within a compensation period to be defined. Even during on-call duty, rest times can be adapted to the specifics of the service, as long as employees do not occupy more than half of the rest time.
In various institutions, for example in hospitals, nursing, agriculture or restaurants, the rest time can be reduced by up to one hour. This shortening will also have to be compensated within a month.
What happens if rest and break times are not respected?
The supervisory authorities are responsible for verifying that employers ensure compliance with the working time law in their company. You have the right to visit companies and ask the employer to inspect relevant company documents.
If employees violate the requirements of the Working Time Act for their own motivation, their superiors are obliged to report this and, if necessary, issue a warning.
Only employers risk a fine of up to 30,000 euros or, in extreme cases, a prison sentence of up to one year, making it even more important to remind employees to comply with the law.
Ensure breaks and rest times with digital time recording
It is therefore essential that employees comply with legal requirements regarding breaks and rest times. To keep track of the situation and be able to intervene in an emergency, you need a tool that gives you a good overview of the hours worked and breaks taken by your employees.
That’s why we want to introduce you to clockin: a tool for digital time recording. clockin allows you to easily and securely record your employees’ break and rest times and thus always have them under control. To do this, your employees clock in in the morning with one click via the tablet terminal, browser or via an app on their mobile phone. You can easily record your breaks and clock in again at the end of your work assignment. The collected data ends up directly in the cloud and therefore in your office center, where you can view it effortlessly.
clockin also creates an automated timesheet for you at the end of the month, which you can easily forward to your accounting department using the interfaces.
Do you work on projects and would like to log time separately for projects? Clockin also allows you to do this. With project time tracking your employees can clock in on their respective projects, record travel and loading times, clock breaks and, with our digital project file, they also have all important information for the project directly on their mobile device.
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