The legal framework
Now, after two and a half years of Corona and with it the introduction of the home office for many companies in Germany, is the end of the home office approaching?
As the Federal Labor Court ruled in September 2022, all companies in Germany are obliged to record the working hours of their employees. This means that not only the hours that count as overtime or overtime must be documented, but also all other hours worked.
The BAG therefore forces German companies to introduce a time recording system. After all, Greifen already does this today, even if no specific law has yet been approved. In April 2023, Hubertus Heil, Federal Minister of Labor, presented the federal government’s first bill. You can find more information about it here.
But how can I do this when my employees work from home?
Specifications of a time recording system
The BAG does not dictate to anyone which time recording system should be introduced. In principle it is sufficient that the working times of all employees are documented and archived. Of course, data protection requirements must be respected.
The situation is different with the ruling of the European Court of Justice, on which the Federal Labor Court and the new draft law are based. In 2019 this established that all European member states must adopt a law on recording working time. To date this has not happened in Germany; the first bill is currently being discussed.
According to the requirements of the European Court of Justice, recording of working hours must be carried out reliable, lens AND accessible To be.
How can time tracking work in the home office?
The traditional system for recording working hours is the time clock. Arrival and end times are stamped on the card and recorded on the card. This means that time recording is location dependent and can only be recorded at the workplace. Of course, time tracking doesn’t work in the home office.
This system is now also available in electronic format. Instead of the paper card, an electronic chip is used which, by scanning, records the working hours. But this system also depends on a terminal and is therefore not suitable for the home office.
Another very popular solution is manual recording. Whether pen and paper or an Excel table, in this variant the start and end of work and break times are manually entered into a table. At best this happens at the beginning and end of the job, but often only shortly before the end of the job.
The problem with this solution is not only that the real times are not documented, but also that this system does not comply with the requirements of the European Court of Justice. Unfortunately, with this variant we cannot speak of a reliable and objective time recording: pieces of paper get lost, can be easily manipulated and times often have to be estimated retrospectively.
From a structural point of view, this system is very suitable for the home office, but unfortunately it does not comply with the law. But there is a third timestamping solution that is not only mobile, but also meets all the requirements of the CJEU, the ABG and those of the new bill.
The ideal time recording system for the home office
We are talking about digital timekeeping: recording via electronic devices that simultaneously store the data in a cloud and are therefore not only reliable and objective, but also allow accessibility to all authorized parties.
Digital timekeeping relies on an app or website through which employees can clock in to start work in the morning, record breaks, and clock in again at the end of the workday. Data is not lost thanks to the cloud-based system.
This allows companies to be flexible again: working times can be recorded from anywhere and are not lost. Furthermore, this solution complies with the law and is cheaper than an electronic watch.
The right solution for your company
Today there are numerous systems on the market for digital time recording. They differ significantly in functions and pricing systems, but sometimes they do not differ at all at first glance. To save you the research step, we would like to introduce you to a digital time recording solution here.
To stay legally compliant when working from home, you need a system that also allows you to work from home reliable registered. The easiest way to do this is through an app on your phone. With the clocking in app you can clock in in the morning and go out in the evening with a simple click. The data is collected automatically and even if there is no Internet connection at the time of clocking in, the data is still saved and uploaded to the cloud at a later time.
But complying with the law is not enough: with clockin your data always remains in its original form. If recorded times are later corrected, the original data can be accessed at any time. This is the only way the system can do it tamper-proof To be.
Clockin not only offers the possibility of recording time in digital format. The app can also be used to easily send vacation requests, log time for specific projects or travel time, and even document projects. Depending on how your business works and what you need, you can use the different functions for yourself.
In the admin dashboard view, you can also view employee data, create work plans, track projects, and export a completed timesheet for each employee at the end of the month.