According to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), employers have been obliged to document their employees’ working hours in detail since 2019. In addition, the Federal Labor Court ruled in 2022 that time recording with clock-in and clock-out times is also mandatory in Germany. As a result of these decisions and in the light of digitalization, centralized, electronic time recording has seen an increase in demand in recent years.
From the precise tracking of working hours to the improved planning and organization of future projects – electronic time recording has become an indispensable tool in the modern working world.
Our microTOOLers have responded accordingly with a tool extension for time recording to include clock-in and clock-out times, which we would like to present to you today
Expanding time recording to include clock-in and clock-out times
In objectiF RPM you could already use time recording for activities before. We have added an additional “Employee attendance” mask for arrival and departure times that corresponds to the current legal situation. Your employees enter the start and end of their working day and then assign this entered time to their activities in the previous time recording mask.
With the new mask, it is possible to enter several time intervals per day, as the classic nine-to-five job is increasingly giving way to alternative, more flexible working time models. With our tool, any working time models are supported without any problems. For example, employees who have appointments in the afternoon or want to spend time with their family can divide their working hours between the morning and later in the evening. The time in between, when no work is being done, is automatically recognized by the system as break time.
Another advantage is the automatic labelling of insufficient break times. In order to ensure compliance with the provisions of the Occupational Health and Safety Act, appropriate break times must be observed during the working hours completed. Accordingly, a break of 30 minutes must be taken after a working time of six hours and an additional 15-minute break after nine hours. In the new mask, the user is immediately notified if the break time does not comply with the provisions of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
According to the law, overtime must be documented in detail in addition to the start and end of work and break times. With objectiF RPM, this could not be easier. Overtime is automatically calculated by the system from the difference between the employees’ basic availability and the hours entered. This makes it easy to prevent incorrect entries.
Another frequent point of criticism is that accurate time recording can itself become a time waster. This may be the case if time recording is not well organized on paper or in error-prone Excel spreadsheets, but also if different systems are used for the start and end of work and the booking of project activities. With objectiF RPM, you can now record all relevant time recording data in just one tool and save yourself the hassle of switching between different systems.
Time recording report
Figure 2 shows the working times allocated to the corresponding activities and cost centers in the “Evaluation of time recording” mask and the resulting differences. Based on these recorded times, project managers can use earned value analyses and other evaluations, for example, to gain an excellent overview of the status of their projects. Were the employees able to complete the work packages within the planned working hours? Or were they even faster? You can find the answers in the time recording analyses. Based on the earned value analysis, you can optimize the budget, resource and project planning of your future projects.
Conclusion
The legal requirements for recording working hours in Germany and at European level have brought the need for precise time recording systems to the fore. objectiF RPM offers employers the possibility of verifiable compliance with legal regulations on working hours in just one tool.
The system retains flexibility in the organization of working time despite extended recording, as any working time models can be mapped. The extended time recording in objectiF RPM should serve as a support to record working time as error-free as possible and to record deviations correctly.
Time recording in objectiF RPM focusses on efficiency, transparency and user-friendliness. With version 7.8 you can use our tool extension. Get the best possible overview to manage your projects even more successfully and ensure an appropriate workload for everyone involved.