Federal Labour Minister Hubertus Heil has presented a draft bill for the “Mobile Work Act” (Mobile Arbeit Gesetz), which is intended to give full-time employees a statutory entitlement to at least 24 days of home office or mobile working per year. Digital working time tracking is also to become mandatory in the home office. Our view: correct time tracking is indispensable in the home office in particular. Here are the reasons:
Background to the draft bill
With Covid-19 case numbers rising and a second lockdown looming, the home office is moving back into the focus of many employers. When employees had to switch to working from home abruptly and unprepared last March, there was a great deal of discussion about productivity while working at home. The experience of recent months has shown that employees in the home office usually work more than they do on site at the business – in the evening hours or at the weekend, for example. That is why Labour Minister Hubertus Heil is planning mandatory digital time tracking. Under the draft bill, employers who fail to meet this record-keeping obligation face a fine of up to €30,000.
Breaking: time tracking becomes mandatory
Working time tracking has been at the centre of attention ever since last year's ruling by the European Court of Justice, which requires EU member states to introduce a mandatory law on systematic working time tracking for all employees. Even though the ruling has not yet been transposed into national law, businesses have to engage with the topic in order to act in line with the Court in future.
What the ruling means for time tracking in day-to-day work, and which requirements the system in question should meet, is explained in our eBook.
Why both employers and employees benefit from correct time tracking in the home office:
Employees in the office usually have fixed working hours during which they are on site. Employers therefore have an overview of when those employees worked. It gets more difficult when employees are in the home office. Many people working at home feel they have to be reachable at all times, to signal to their manager that they are working as agreed and are not letting down their trust.
In doing so they often underestimate their own output and work overtime. Precisely when there are no fixed attendance hours as there are in the office, it is easy to lose track of how much has actually been worked. But time tracking in the home office does not only give employees a better overview of the hours they have already worked, it can also serve to analyse their own productivity. A study commissioned by the DAK showed that 56 per cent of employees who regularly work from home consider their work in the home office to be more productive than in the office.
Systematic time tracking can prevent unintended extra work and counteract the blurring of the line between work and private life – with positive effects on employees' health. According to the DAK study, the share of employees who never or only rarely feel stressed rose from 48 to 58 per cent thanks to working from home. Regular work in the home office could therefore have a clear influence on how often stress-related illnesses such as burnout occur.
Even in situations where extra work has been agreed and is intended by the employee, time tracking brings advantages: the time is recorded as overtime and can be paid appropriately.
Time tracking in the home office is an important step towards a clear separation between work and private life, something many employees still say is missing. Forward-looking employers should therefore ideally start looking at a digital mobile time tracking solution now. With clockin, employees can record their working hours easily via the app. At the same time, the employer has an overview at any moment of who is working on which projects. Best of all: at the end of the month, clockin creates the timesheets completely automatically.
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