New working time registration requirements in Denmark

When do the new rules come into force?

The working time registration obligation comes into effect on 1 July 2024. All employers irrespective of size, number of employees or business sector must adhere to the time registration obligation.

What do the new rules mean?

Pursuant to the new section 4b of the Danish consolidated act on the implementation of parts of the Working Time Directive, the employer must introduce an objective, reliable and accessible working time registration system that makes it possible to measure the daily working time of all employees.

There is no requirement to register the exact time period during which the work is performed.

It is also permitted to only register deviations from the normal working time.

Requirements to the registration system

There is freedom of method in relation to how the daily working hours are registered. Thus, the rules only require that the time registration system must be objective, reliable and accessible. 

The new rules do not require investment in a specific time registration system. Employers are free to choose their own methods, and if they already have a system for registering employees' daily working hours, they can continue to use this system. 

The employer must, however, ensure that the employee can access their own information in the working time registration system in place.

How long must the data be stored?

The employer must store the information registered for 5 years after the expiry of the period that forms the basis for the calculation of the employee's average weekly working hours.

Sanctions

An employee whose rights under the act has been violated may be awarded a compensation. As a rule, compensation will not be awarded for breach of the duty to register. 

However, in the preparatory work to the bill, it is stated that in a potential case where an employee's rights have been violated, failure to comply with the duty to register may have adverse inferences on the employer. This means that a judge – as a main rule – will accept the employee’s own working time registrations, if the employer has failed to introduce an objective, reliable and accessible working time registration system.

Exemptions from the rules

As a starting point, all employees must register their working time. 

However, employees who are characterized as so called “self-schedulers” (in Danish: selvtilrettelæggere), and who have made an agreement with their employer to be exempt from rest and working time rules, are not obliged to register their working hours. 

Self-schedulers are employees whose working hours, due to specific characteristics of the work performed, may not be measured or predetermined, or who can set their own working hours, make independent decisions, or have managerial powers. 

Regarding the scope of this exception, it does not appear to be unambiguously or exhaustively defined by previous EU Court of Justice case law. However, given that the existing case law indicates that the organization of working time as a whole must be left to the employee or cannot be determined in advance, it must be assumed that the scope is quite limited. 

If an employee is deemed to fulfil the conditions to be exempt as described above, this must be stated in the employment contract that sections 3, 4, and 5 of the act do not apply to the employee in question.