This page covers how working time registration at AU applies to employees.
It also contains information for managers on their role in administering the guidelines in practice.
If you’ve been exempted from the working time registration requirement, you don’t have to take any action in this regard. If you’ve been exempted, this will be stated in your employment contract or in an addendum to your employment contract.
If you believe that you are eligible for an exemption from the working time registration requirement and you don’t receive an addendum to your employment contract by Digital Post by the end of October 2024, please contact your manager for more information about the assessment of the nature of your work.
As a manager, you are responsible for ensuring that your reports comply with policies and procedures for working time registration. Here’s an overview of what this means in practice and what tools are available to you.
As a manager, it’s your responsibility to ensure that exemptions are granted on the basis of a concrete, case-by-case assessment. HR will send out draft lists which indicate which employees are eligible for an exemption in the respective units. Relevant people managers must double-check and formally approve the lists. This task can be delegated, and you can agree locally who is to perform it. Instructions on how to process the lists will be sent out along with the lists.
Employees who are granted an exemption will receive an addendum to their employment contract from HR. Exemption will be a standard clause in the employment contracts of new hires.
As a manager who has reports who are required to register their working time, you must:
Following up on employees’ working time and ensuring an appropriate balance between tasks and working time is your responsibility. This applies regardless of whether the employee is required to register their working time or has been exempted from this requirement.
You have access to the forms of reports who register their working time. Be particularly aware of the situation of employees whose working hours are close ot the maximum limit of 48 hours per week on average over a four-month period.
Employees may continue to use their units’ customised forms for registering working time until the end of 2024, after which everyone should use the official AU working time registration form if at all possible. You can download the form on this page.
The working time registration form has been designed to accommodate as many employees as possible. However, there are a few exceptions:
If you have reports who register project time for a project they’re working on, please be aware that this does not count as working time registration. In addition to registering their project time, these employees must also register their daily working time on the working time registration form.
If you are not sure whether your reports must/can use the AU working time registration form, contact your HR department.
Under the act on working time registration , employers must store data about their employees’ working time for five years.
Regardless of whether you use AU's working time registration form, other customised versions or time sheets for hourly-paid employees, working time data for all employees in the unit must be stored in SharePoint according to the following procedure:
We use SharePoint for this at Aarhus University because it’s easily accessible and allows secure local storage of data. Each unit is responsible for ensuring that its working time registration form are archived.
As of 2 July 2024, Denmark implemented the EU working time directive in Danish legislation, under which it is mandatory for employees to register employees’ working time.
The purpose of the act on working time registration is to protect the rights of workers and ensure that employers comply with applicable regulations on working time.
Like the other universities in Denmark, Aarhus University will adhere to the recommendations of the Danish Employee and Competence Agency with regard to how the act should be interpreted and implemented in the university sector.
AU's obligation as an employer to comply with working time regulations andoccupational health and safety regulations is not affected by the implementation of the new act on working time registration.
‘Working time’ is defined as the time during which you are at work and at your employer’s disposal. The opposite of working time is daily/weekly rest.
According to the Danish Employee and Competence Agency’s interpretation of the EU’s Working Time Directive, some categories of workers can be exempted, on the background of case-by-case assessments performed by their manager. Whether or not you are eligible for an exemption depends on the nature of your work. Your manager is responsible for assessing your eligibility in consultation with HR. Your manager’s assessment will primarily be focused on whether you are an academic staff member (including part-time academic staff) or a people manager.
The form has been filled out in advance to reflect a standard full-time working day of 7.4 hours, which is what applies to most full-time employees. If you work part-time, you can edit the form manually to reflect your own standard work hours. To do this, you edit the field on the form labelled ‘standard work hours’.
Your standard total daily working time has been registered in advance on the working time registration form, so you only need to register deviations. There’s no university-wide policy on how often employees should register deviations from their standard working time. But it goes without saying that registering your working time on an ongoing basis would be a good idea.
If you don’t have your own computer, you have access to a shared pc you can use to register your working time.
No national minimum threshold has been set. Your unit may have agreed on a minimum threshold, however. What’s important in this connection is making sure your working time doesn’t exceed the 48-hour rule, which means you shouldn’t work more than 48 hours per week on average over a reference period of four months.
You don’t have to register breaks as deviation if they last under 30 minutes and you remain on call. Such breaks count as part of your working time.
The time you spend on your daily commute to and from your normal place of work is considered part of your daily rest period, and you shouldn’t register it as a deviation on the form. Transportation to and from a different place of work than your normal place of work is also considered part of the daily rest period, unless this travel time exceeds the amount of time you normally spend on transportation to and from the workplace. In such cases, the additional travel time is considered working time, and you should register it as a deviation on the form.
You shouldn’t register illness, vacation, leave and other forms of paid absence on the working time registration form. These forms of absence are part of your daily standard work hours. You should register these forms of absence in mitHR.
You can always go back and register a deviation retroactively – even for the previous year.
Regularly discussing your working time and tasks with your manager is important to ensure a good work-life balance. It’s your responsibility to update the working time registration form to reflect your actual working time as needed. You should discuss your situation with your manger if your working time deviates significantly from the agreed level in your unit over an extended period.
According to the Danish act on working hours, the registration system must be objective, reliable and accessible. AU has chosen a format that requires fewest possible modifications to existing solutions, and which many employees are already familiar with. At the same time, the chosen format takes considerations of cost-effectiveness and resources into account.
You should register absences such as illness and holiday in mitHR, in addition to project time if that’s relevant for you. You should register deviations in your standard daily work hours on the working time registration form.
The working time registration form replaces any customised solutions used by different units, such as flexitime forms currently used for registration of working times, unless you agree otherwise in your unit.
In a few cases, there will be units and employees who will be unable to use the AU working time registration form to register their hours, for example employees whose standard working hours are outside of normal business hours. In such cases, customised forms for working time registration will be necessary.
But regardless of what kind of form is used, it must be stored in accordance with the guidelines.
If you need to register project time for a project you’re working on, do so in mitHR or another local solution. However, project time registration doesn’t count as working time registration, so you need to register your daily working time on the working time registration form as well.
The working time registration form will be stored in SharePoint, and only you and your manager will have access to your form.
Under the act on working hours, AU must store working time registration data for five years after the period on which calculation of the employee’s weekly working time is based, cf. section 4b(3). The data will be stored in SharePoint, and only you and your manager will have access to your data.