Background to the topic
In September 2022 there was the first bombshell in Germany: the Federal Labour Court ruled that companies in Germany are obliged with immediate effect to record their employees' working hours. With the written reasoning published in December 2022, the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs is now under pressure to act as well.
In fact, Germany has been obliged to pass a law on working time tracking since May 2019. That was decided by the European Court of Justice. So a law is actually long overdue.
In April 2023 Hubertus Heil, Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, presented a draft law intended to make electronic time tracking mandatory. However, it still has to pass through the cabinet and the parliamentary process.
Until this law is passed, the obligation to record working time declared by the Federal Labour Court therefore continues to apply.
You can find more information on what is mandatory now here.
Flextime - your definition
The flextime working model is built on the concept of core working hours. This means that under flextime the employer specifies when employees have to work (Monday to Friday from 10 am to 3 pm). Whether that work takes place on site in the office or can also be done remotely from home is usually specified as well. If the core working hours are set separately for each department, this is also referred to as functional hours within flextime.
Within the flextime band or overall framework hours that go beyond this, however, employees are free to organise their working hours themselves. So they can decide for themselves whether they want to start earlier, leave later, or prefer regular hours. The hours are then usually booked to what is known as a flextime account and can be viewed at any time.
If these working hours are laid down in the contract, the employer can only require working hours outside the core working hours in exceptional cases.
We have covered the topic of working time accounts in more detail here.
Accordingly, an example of flextime working could look like this: Monday to Friday from 10 am to 3 pm.
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How is overtime handled under flextime?
How overtime is handled under flextime differs from company to company. As a rule, overtime must always be recorded and balanced out within 6 months. If the company works with a working time account, the overtime simply feeds into that account and can therefore be balanced out automatically and flexibly by the employee.
Negative hours, which arise from doctor's appointments for example, are handled in exactly the same way. However, negative hours can only arise at all if the company works with a working time account.
What if I have to go to the doctor during core working hours?
If you have to go to the doctor during core working hours, you should enter and document the time for the appointment as an interruption to work. In many companies this is booked as an absence or a break. You can arrange to balance out the time or to take the absence in agreement with your employer. What matters is that you record this correctly in your time tracking.
As a rule, though, your employer is obliged to release you for doctor's appointments during core working hours as well. They can ask you to schedule appointments within the flextime band instead, but they cannot demand it. Especially when it comes to appointments during pregnancy or with specialists, it is usually not possible to choose appointment times freely.
Advantages and disadvantages of flextime working
Advantages of flextime from the employer's perspective
- Simple to regulate with little organisational effort
- Fewer absences thanks to greater flexibility
- Optimal availability for customers
Disadvantages of flextime from the employer's perspective
- Written agreements required
- Not suitable for all departments at the same time - risk of dissatisfaction through unequal treatment
- Greater need for coordination, as not all employees are on site at the same time
Concerns about freedoms
Employees now worry that time tracking will cost them the freedoms of flextime. Depending on how working hours are recorded, this may for example mean clocking in with a chip in the office. Working from home would then no longer be possible under flextime. And the topic of ‘monitoring’ can cause concern too.
The obligation to record working time is discussed so intensively above all because it keeps becoming clear that companies lack an overview of the actual situation. Employers often do not know exactly how much and when their employees work. That leaves them unable to meet their duty of care and in breach of the German Working Hours Act (Arbeitszeitgesetz, ArbZG).
In the end, recording working hours only serves to check that rules such as break times and rest periods are observed, that overtime is documented, and that neither employees nor employers are exploited. That matters above all with flexible working time models such as flextime, but also trust-based working hours.
Time tracking with flextime - how it can work
So how do I reconcile flextime with the obligation to record working time without limiting the flexibility of the working models in my company? With the right tool it is fairly easy: whether mobile from home or at a fixed point in the office - with digital time tracking via app, employees can record their working hours at any time from anywhere. The data is passed on to the admin via a cloud and archived. Depending on the system, the app even produces an automatic timesheet from it at the end of the month.
The aim is to take as much work as possible off your hands as an employer. Instead of pen and paper that get lost, an app that uploads all data to a cloud automatically. And instead of worrying about data protection, software that meets all statutory requirement
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