What are the legal requirements for flexible working?

Flexible working has no law of its own. The requirements that always have to be met apply here too. But if employees can decide for themselves, it may be necessary to brief them on the rules, such as break times and rest periods.

How do I keep an overview of my business when not everyone is always there?

There are many tools today that are meant to make working from home easier. A first step is to enable time tracking digitally alongside general communication. That way you always keep the overview and know, for example, who might still have capacity.

Flexible working: what German law allows

What exactly is flexible working?

The term flexible working questions rigid, long-established working time models such as the classic nine-to-five job. The aim is to respond to the personal needs of employees instead.

It can be understood in two ways (or a combination of both): by time or by place.

Flexible working hours

The working model is often looked at in terms of working hours. Classic “flexible” working models are flextime or trust-based working hours. Here, when and how much has to be worked on a given working day is chosen freely, or at least flexibly. Another approach is to reduce the hours across the board. In some companies, the target working hours of full-time employees are cut from 40 to 35 hours a week.

You can find a good overview of the working time models and their pros and cons here.

Flexible place of work

Another form of flexible working relates to the place of work. The business offers the option of choosing where to work. Employees are free to choose whether they want to work remotely, that is from home, or on site in the office. These freely chosen days can also be set in advance, or there is a certain quota of office days.

Benefits of flexible working: a larger talent pool, as employees from other locations can be recruited too; lower costs through reducing office space and utilities; time saved for employees and with it savings on transport and, for example, childcare costs; higher quality of work, as employees can work when they are most efficient; often higher employee engagement; increased output; fewer absences; lower turnover

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What are the benefits of flexible working?

Countless studies document the benefits of flexible working, not only for employees but for the business itself:

How flexible working can work

To put flexible working into practice in a business, it is usually not enough to question the working processes within the company. The whole of internal communication has to be looked at as well. So we have written down what you should not forget when introducing flexible working models:

1. Set clear agreements and rules in advance.

That can mean introducing core working hours during which employees have to be reachable. But a specific quota of days working from home per week can be set as well.

2. Not every employee works well from home.

Some prefer working in the office and a structured eight-hour day. Employees should therefore be free to decide how far they want to make use of the offer.

3. Do not neglect your duties as a manager just because employees are not around.

Criticism, recognition and appreciation are important parts of everyday work and should not get lost, even if you may not see your employees in person quite as often. Regular meetings or phone calls can be very helpful for staying in touch

4. Use digital tools for collaboration.

Flexible working – especially with a flexible place of work – also requires acting more digitally, so that important data can be accessed from anywhere. That includes the meeting culture. Short discussions may not need to take place in person at all, and there are many tools on the market for holding meetings virtually. Topics that mostly still run on paper, such as working time tracking or project management, can also be handled digitally with the right tools.

5. Do not forget the team.

Even when collaboration no longer happens 100% on site, team spirit should not get lost with flexible working. At the very least, processes must not suffer for it. That can happen when the sense of community is not strengthened. So you should keep the summer or Christmas party all the same.

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6. Trust matters.

You should not check everything your employees do in the office either. The same applies when they work from home. Trust and the ability to “let go” can lead to better work in the end.

7. Performance should be measured somehow.

It should of course not run along the lines of “trust is good, control is better”. But your employees are of course also entitled to make demands and to see that they are met. So establish in advance (ideally in writing) what your requirements are and how you want to measure them.

8. Do not neglect your duty of care.

As an employer you are obliged to make sure that the rules of the German Occupational Safety Act (Arbeitsschutzgesetz, ArbSchG) are observed. That means that even when your employees are not on site in the office, or you are not working at the same time, rest periods and break times as well as maximum working hours have to be observed.

Legal requirements for flexible working

On a legal level, flexible working means nothing other than any other model does: statutory requirements on working hours have to be met. These are the most important ones:

Break times

Employees are entitled to a statutory break from six hours of working time in a row. It must be at least 30 minutes and may only be split into two periods of 15 minutes. From nine hours onwards, a break of 45 minutes is required. For minors the rules are somewhat stricter. You can find an overview here.

Rest periods

The subject of rest periods should not be underestimated either. A rest period differs from a break in that it separates two work assignments from one another. It has to last at least 11 hours in a row. This rule can only differ in the context of on-call duty in hospitals.You can find the details of the exception here.

Maximum working hours

The law prescribes maximum working hours of eight hours. They may be extended to up to ten hours without any special reason, but this has to be balanced out by a shorter work assignment afterwards. Only at management level or as a chief physician can this figure not apply. More on maximum working hours can be found here.

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Sundays and public holidays

In principle, work on Sundays and public holidays is not allowed! There are industries, however, in which it is permitted after all.

What has to be observed in those industries when working on Sundays and public holidays, you can read here.

Who is actually allowed to work on Sundays and public holidays? Nursing staff in hospitals or care facilities, emergency and rescue services, the fire brigade, hospitality, water and energy supply, transport operators, news agencies and the press, agricultural businesses, site and plant security

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Flexible working with digital time tracking

An important tool for introducing flexible working without losing touch with your employees is working time tracking. It lets you build an overview of how much your employees get done. In the context of flexible working in particular, that works best with digital tools.

With clockin your employees can record their working hours from anywhere, whether through a tablet terminal in the office, through the browser or via the app. clockin can be used mobile and flexibly. The app is user-friendly and offers exactly the features you need for your step into flexible working.

As an admin you can also see who is clocked in and out, so you know who is reachable right now. And the hours overview shows you who might still have capacity. So clockin gives you the means to keep an overview of your business, entirely independent of time and place.