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On 1 July 2024, a new legislative amendment will come into effect, requiring all Danish wage earners to register their working hours. This imposes an important responsibility on you as an employer: You must ensure that your company has an efficient system that not only handles this task but also meets the latest legal requirements. In this article, you can learn more about the advantages of implementing a digital solution, thereby ensuring compliance – and preparing you well for the upcoming change.
What does it mean to register working time?
Working time registration is not the same as what many associate with time registration.
Time registration is a well-known phenomenon in industries covered by collective agreements and in technical industries, as well as in IT and service-oriented sectors such as law firms and consultancy houses. Employees in these industries register the number of hours spent on a single task.
However, the new requirements differ from this practice by focusing on working time rather than task-specific time consumption.
This means that employees may, for example, only need to register deviations from their normal working hours.
If, for example, an employee works from 8 am to 4 pm, including a 30-minute self-paid lunch break, it is necessary to register the working time only if the employee starts or finishes at another time; the employee could, for example, work from 8 am to 1 pm and again the same evening from 7 pm to 10 pm. In this case, the employee should register a total working time of 7.5 hours – without specifying the exact times for the start and end of work.
In the above example, however, it is important to note that any variation from the agreed 7.5 hours, whether more or less, is considered a deviation, and the actual working time for that particular day must be registered.
Which legal requirements apply to your system?
There is a high degree of methodological freedom in how your company ensures working time registration. The legislation doesn’t require it to be digital. This means that your company has a range of solution options within the legal framework:
- The employee can register the number of hours in an Excel sheet that is accessible to both the employee and the employer.
- You can use access cards that automatically register when the employee is at the workplace.
- The employee can send an email to his or her boss with the total working time, which the boss then registers.
- You can implement a digital system where the employee enters his or her working time, to which the employer has access.
However, the bill entails rather extensive requirements for you as an employer and requires that your system be ‘objective, reliable, and accessible’, which is why we recommend choosing a digital and integrated solution.
There are several operational and strategic reasons for this, as you as an employer must be able to document the mandatory measures:
- You ensure that the employee has access to his or her own data throughout the employment period.
- You can store the registered data for five years after the expiration of the period that forms the basis for calculating the employee's average weekly working time.
- You can minimise human errors and ensure accurate records of working hours, which is crucial for your company to comply with the new legislation.
- You save time for both your employees and the HR department, as it removes the need for manual calculation of working hours. Often, it’s possible to integrate digital time registration systems with other HR and payroll systems, ensuring a streamlined process from time registration to payroll.
- You get a clear overview of working hours and get an opportunity to set reminders ensuring that you can respond promptly when there is a need to scale up or down the time spent working.
Remember to be aware of ...
... a number of other considerations when selecting a system:
Reporting
It's important that your employees have a clear overview of whether their rights are secured. Your company must continuously be able to check that your employees comply with the provisions so that action can be taken if this isn’t the case. This is particularly important if the authorities request documentation, or if employees complain about their rights.
Integration
Start by examining whether your existing systems, such as your financial system (ERP system), already contain the functions needed, or whether they can be expanded with new modules. If you are uncertain about how to approach this task, our experts from Finance IT Services are available for assistance.
Work patterns
It's important to show consideration for your employees’ way of working, as it places demands on your choice of system. Are they often on the move, or do they sit at a computer all day? Do they usually work within the same time frame, or can their working hours vary?
If your employees are often on the move, it's easier for them to register their working hours via their cell phone.
The act does not require that working hours be registered at specific times or over a specific period. However, the working time registration must be reliable, which means that the time between each registration shouldn’t be too long.
Data storage
If you consider using an ‘easy’ solution such as Excel or a similar quick fix, you must be aware that you are required to store the data for five years. This means that, if you want to implement a more comprehensive system later, it could become more difficult to import master data (all registration) to the new system. That’s why it could be advantageous to start with the right system from the beginning.
Would you like more information about the new requirements?
Do you need help assessing your systems?
We have great experience analysing and documenting the company's system requirements and examining which systems best support the latest legal requirements. You are welcome to contact Partner Morten Boldsen or Manager Casper Jæpelt Petersen for a non-binding talk about what we can do for you.
