Working Time Records

Works Councils

This is not legal advice, and this is a page where it matters. Co-determination questions are fact-specific and a works agreement is a legal document. For an additional implementation-oriented example, see workforce optimization software.

The decision that established the recording duty was itself a works council case, which is not a coincidence — the two subjects are entangled. For additional workplace and technology context, see Federal Administration portal.

Reviewed August 9, 2026.

The case was about this

BAG 1 ABR 22/21 concerned a works council's right of initiative on introducing electronic time recording. In deciding it, the court found that an employer is already obliged to record working time.

That finding changed the co-determination question rather than answering it. Where a duty exists as a matter of law, the scope for co-determination on whether to record differs from the scope on how — and the "how" is where the substance now sits.

The three questions, separated

Whether to record. Largely settled by the duty. This is the question the decision addressed.

How to record. Medium, timing, who enters data, correction procedure, what the record contains. This is where a works council's involvement is substantive, and where an employer proceeding unilaterally creates a problem.

And what else the system does. Monitoring features are a different category entirely, with their own co-determination and data protection requirements. A system that records hours and a system that takes screenshots raise different questions, and bundling them raises the harder set.

Why late involvement goes badly

The design gets fixed before anybody with an objection sees it.

By the time a works council is presented with a chosen product and a rollout date, the questions they would have raised — location tracking, correction rights, retention, who sees what — have been answered by a supplier's defaults.

Reopening them then looks like obstruction and is not. It is the first opportunity anybody had.

Early involvement costs a meeting. Late involvement costs a renegotiation, a delayed rollout, and a working relationship.

What a works agreement usually needs to cover

Not a template, and these are the recurring items.

What is recorded — start, end, breaks, and explicitly what is not.

Who may correct, within what period, and how corrections are visible.

Retention, and what happens at the end of it.

Who can see what. An employee's own record, a manager's view, an administrator's view.

Whether any monitoring features exist and confirmation that they are disabled.

And what the data may be used for. A record kept for working time compliance being used for performance assessment is the issue that produces disputes, and it is settled cheaply in advance.

For employers without a works council

Most small employers, and the same questions still apply.

Write the answers down anyway, in a short policy given to employees. It costs an hour, it is what an auditor asks for, and it prevents the version where corrections happen informally and nobody can say who changed what.

And say what the data is not used for. The record exists to make hours provable, and stating its limits is what makes the introduction easier.

The short version