All employers in Germany must offer staff an official clocking-in system. But when do your working hours officially begin? We explain the ins and outs of clocking in across different German industries.

Workers in Germany must record their hours

Since March 2024, anyone who works in Germany has been legally obliged to record their working hours. As such, employers must provide staff with an official way to track their daily hours.

This is to prevent employees from working overtime which is not compensated with pay or additional holiday leave. According to figures from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) 4,6 million people in Germany worked overtime hours in 2023, and one-fifth of these hours were unpaid.

The regulations were introduced after a 2019 European Court of Justice ruling was poorly enforced, leading the German Federal Labour Court (BAG) to introduce the country’s own legally binding system. Previously, only employers paying minimum wage were required to set up a system to log working hours.

When does work officially begin in Germany?

If you are required to log your hours, it is important to know when exactly work begins and ends. In some jobs this is clear, but in others, it might be more ambiguous.

Broadly speaking the rule applies that working hours begin when an employee reaches their workstation, lawyer Johannes Schipp explained to German broadcaster ntv. 

If you work in an office, this means from the moment you sit at your desk. If you turn on the computer and it needs an update or is slow to start, these tasks count as having begun work.

So what if more extensive preparation is required for you to begin working? You may work in a restaurant and have to change into your uniform and pack away your things before serving customers, or in a hospital and have to thoroughly clean your hands before interacting with patients.

In this case, the same broad rules apply. If your employer requires you to do these preparatory tasks, the time you spend doing them counts towards your working time.

Do commuting and travel count towards working hours in Germany?

Commuting and travel hang another question mark over when working hours officially begin. What happens if long commutes mean the working day exceeds the 10-hour maximum, or disruptions to transport mean they are late to their workstation?

The broad rule applies that travel and commuting count towards working time if employees cannot pass the travel time as they please. For example, on your commute to work, you are free to listen to a podcast or read a book, but if an employer rules that staff must use travel time for mobile working, this time should be paid.

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