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To ensure workers' rights, attendance tracking becomes mandatory in Danish workplaces from July 1st, 2024

The new Working Time Act aims to ensure that the limitations on the weekly working hours for employees and daily and weekly rest periods are observed.

Documentation of the employees daily working hours

The new regulations will essentially apply to all employers, who must, therefore, implement a system for registering working hours. The system must be able to document employees’ daily working hours, and the information must be stored for five years. It is the employer’s responsibility to grant employees access to their own information in the system. Although there is freedom to choose the method, the attendance tracking system must be objective, reliable, and easily accessible.

The system must be able to record when work is performed during the day to comply with rest period regulations. According to the Working Time Act, the average working time over a seven-day period, calculated over a four-month period, must not exceed 48 hours, including overtime, which is referred to as the 48-hour rule.

Exceptions to the obligation of attendance tracking include self-organisers, defined as:

Workers who cannot plan their working hours in advance due to the nature of their work.

Employees who can determine their own working hours and make independent decisions or have managerial functions.

Employees whose employment is related to the performance of religious activities in churches and religious communities.

The second key element includes the possibility of an "opt-out" agreement

The proposal for the Working Time Act also introduces an option where certain employees covered by collective agreements can enter into individual agreements with the employer to work more than 48 hours per week on average (the so-called “opt-out” agreement). However, the average weekly working hours should generally not exceed 60 hours calculated over a period of 4 months. Furthermore, this exemption option only applies to employees covered by collective agreement provisions regarding on-call duty and those performing critical societal tasks. Thus, the possibility of agreeing to an “opt-out” from the 48-hour rule is relatively limited when we look at the Danish labor market as a whole.

Conclusion

It’s crucial for employers to be prepared for the proposed changes taking effect on July 1, 2024. It would be advantageous for employers to soon clarify how an attendance tracking system shall be implemented in the workplace. There are benefits for both employers and employees, such as transparency, better work-life balance, and stress reduction. However, a disadvantage could be that it becomes an administrative burden for you as an employer. Electronic attendance tracking with iBeacon is an obvious solution to avoid this becoming an administrative burden.

Overview

The new rules on attendance tracking aim to enable workers to document their actual working hours and ensure compliance with labour regulations.

This entails
specifically:

The average working hours do not exceed 48 hours per week.

Employees remember to take breaks and vacations.

The weekly day off is adhered to.

What obligations do the new rules impose on you as an employer?

As an employer, you are obligated to implement an objective, reliable, and easily accessible attendance tracking system that enables all your employees to measure their daily working hours.

The chosen method of attendance tracking must be able to document all aspects of the rules. It is the employer’s responsibility to ensure that employees always have access to their own information.

It should be noted that exceptions exist for self-managers, and there is the possibility to deviate from the requirement of a maximum weekly working time (“opt-out”).

What are the benefits for employees?

They are better protected and have full control over their own working hours and data.

They are ensured daily rest periods of 11 hours and weekly days off.

It’s just a matter of getting the law started for our part, we’re ready.

Thomas Rugholm
Manager, OK

Attendance tracking with SameSystem prepares you for the Working Time Directive

With iBeacon, you can easily register working hours. It saves valuable time and payroll costs when you have control over the shift schedules. SameSystem iBeacon is developed entirely from scratch for our more than 1,100 international customers in retail and hospitality.

If employees forget to check in or out, they can later check in/out using the timestamp from when they passed by the iBeacon in the store.

Employees check in and out with a quick click in the app.

If they check in or out at a different time than planned, they must select the reason why.

iBeacon requires neither power supply nor internet.

iBeacon eliminates any doubt about arrival/departure times and also makes it easier to be a store manager. We ensure that the employee receives the correct hours and salary. iBeacon allows us to confidently look into the upcoming legislation on attendance tracking.

Monica Brandtberg Larsen, HR Specialist

Attendance tracking is essential in retail and hospitality

Employees who arrive late or leave early have their working hours adjusted, typically saves 2-7% in payroll costs.

The store manager doesn't need to note when employees arrive, leave, or take breaks - and canfocus on the customers.

Discover patterns, For example, employees who arrive late or leave early, and employees who return late from breaks.

Schedules are updated continuously, and payroll can be processed without waiting for the shifts to be reviewed.

When the employee enters the workplace, the phone will connect to an iBeacon using Bluetooth. The moment they pass the iBeacon will be registered.

The advantage of using Bluetooth is that it is more precise than, for example, GPS. It consumes less battery, provides better privacy protection, and can function without an internet connection.

The employee checks in for their shift. If they forget to check in, it should be done later.

When the employee finishes their shift and goes home, the iBeacon has registered when they passed it, so they can check out later.

The app checks the registered check-in/check-out time against the scheduled time and requires an explanation when there are deviations.

As a manager, you can quickly and easily approve shifts and manage deviations. It is clear who has worked when, as well as the reasons for any changes.

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