Blog article: Time tracking

What the employer must consider

2 min. read

In May 2019, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that employers must document every single hour worked. This judgment applies to all European countries and the companies located there. All employers will be required to objectively and reliably record and archive the hours worked by their employees.

Time recording from the 0th hour

Previously, the employer was only required to document working hours in excess of eight hours per day. From now on, however, time recording must take place from the 0th hour. The requirements of the European Court of Justice and the Federal Labor Court on time recording are that it must be reliable, objective and easily accessible. Implementation of this requirement thus necessitates systems with which employees must accurately record the beginning and end of their working hours. Break times should also be recorded accurately.

Consequences of inaccurate working time recording

If working hours are not recorded in a compliant manner, there may be serious consequences for the employer. One example is a case from Emden. There, an employee won a court case against her former employer. The employer had to pay the employee €20,000 for overtime worked on a basis of trust. When pronouncing its verdict, the court referred to the fact that the employer was unable to prove that the corresponding hours had not been worked. In its ruling, the court referred to the recording of working hours required by the ECJ. As a result of this precedent, employers are now under an obligation, confirmed by the courts, to record working hours objectively and reliably if they want to avoid such additional payments.

Accurate recording of working hours is not difficult!

How can employers circumvent such back payments and implement the working time recording prescribed by the ECJ? There are many different solutions, such as stationary time clocks, hardware solutions such as computers or tablets that are only used for logging in and out, and of course the possibility of offering such a time clock digitally and as an app. Hardware solutions are often expensive to purchase and often require maintenance during operation, thus incurring initial and ongoing costs. The option to digitize the time clock is thus often the easier and more cost-effective alternative. In this field, there are of course many vendors that provide such functionalities, but these programs often cost between 5 and 10€ per employee, which again makes the digital time clock an expensive venture for small and medium sized businesses.

For both problems StampLab offers the solution:

• StampLab was developed specifically for small and medium-sized businesses. It aims to offer the respective entrepreneurs a fair price of €1, which will not turn the digitization of their own company into a costly undertaking. Rather, StampLab is designed to support entrepreneurs through ease of use and the industry's lowest price.
• The accruing data is stored under the highest security standards within a certified data center in the Frankfurt area. DSGVO-compliant, no other companies have access to this data.

StampLab thus stands out as the most secure time recording application in the German area and can thus relieve entrepreneurs at a time when cybercrime is becoming increasingly common.

Find out how time tracking works in StampLab here.

For more information, please feel free to arrange a consultation with our customer advisors