Get the hang of the details related to the 11-hour rule

The 11-hour rule is one of those rules that are important to know as an employer. But what does it entail? And which consequences does it have if you don’t keep it? Get the overview here. 

What is the 11-hour rule?

The 11-hour rule is one of those rules that originates from the EU work directive. With the 11-hour rule common european standards for the employee’s privileges concerning resting time is ensured. 

The 11-hour rule states that an employee’s resting period has to be at least 11 coherent hours within a period of 24 hours. 

This means that an employee that is off duty at 2 pm has a resting period until at least 1 am.

What happens if the employer does not keep the requirement about 11 hours rest? 

If the 11-hour rule is transgressed, it is important that the transgression is noted down – for example in a supervision book. 

Here, it is to be noted: 

  • what kind of deviation it is
  • for how long time
  • how many employees were involved
  • when the transgression happened 
  • why there was a transgression

As an employer you can risk receiving a fine if the 11-hour rule is violated.

Are there no exceptions to the requirement of the 11 hours? 

Yes – there are very few rules that do not have exceptions. The same goes for the 11-hour rule. 

You are not allowed to reduce the resting period to 8 hours – and this can only be done one time per week. However, in the regulations it is written that the resting period only can be reduced if you are doing one of the following types of work: 

  1. shift changes in companies that works in shifts when it is no longer possible to keep the daily resting period between the completion of one of the team’s work and the beginning of the other. 
  2. agricultural work for up till 30 days in a calendar year
  3. companies annual records and status or sell-out but only 14 times in a calendar year
  4. work in warehouses and stores the last 14 days before Christmas. 

Besides this it is written in the regulation that it is also relevant when meetings, cultural arrangements and the like are held in connection with work that is normally done in the daytime hours, but whereas contact to other groups makes it appropriate that this work is done in the evening hours. The reduction of the resting period can in such cases happen no more than 20 times in a calendar year. 

Apart from this, the rules about resting hours can be deviated if there are natural circumstances, accidents, machine collapses or similar unforeseen events that disrupts or has disrupted the routine operation – however the deviation can only happen in a necessary scale and is to be noted.

What can you as an employer do, if the resting period has to be shortened?

Before you decide to lower the daily resting period you have to have a talk with the union representative. The planning of the work and the scale of the resting period reduction has to be discussed. If there is no union representative in the company, the employers have to discuss it with the employees instead.  

The result of the discussion is not binding for the employer that in any case has to keep the employee’s and the union representative’s wishes in regard. 

Besides knowing the 11-hours rule it is important that you as the employer know the details of your collective or local agreements. In the agreements there can be statements that changes the general rules for resting hours – and it is important to keep track of whether this is the case for your employees. 

What about transportation time? 

One of the things employees spend time on is transportation. It is important that you as their employer know, if the transportation counts as working time or as a part of the resting period. 

Regular driving between the employee’s home and workplace counts as a part of the employee’s resting period. 

If the employee instead is hired to drive from their own home to the workplaces, this counts as working hours as soon as the employee places themself in the service vehicle and is driving for work. This counts on the trip back as well. The working hours counts from the employee drives out of their own driveway until they return by the end of the day. 

If you in a special case have to attend a meeting at another place that is your permanent workplace this means that the extra transportation time counts as working time – and is therefore not a part of the employee’s coherent resting period.

Does the 11-hour rule also apply to business trips? 

Business trips counts as a special situation. The rule about a daily resting period of 11 hours does not count in business trips to foreign countries. 

However, the employee should have 11 hours coherent resting time calculated from the arrival at home. This does not count if the employee has had an 11 hour resting period on the last day before the individual has returned to work. 

How do you ensure that your company meets the requirements for the 11-hour rule? 

It can be difficult to have the full overview of how many hours one’s employees are working and if they have had 11 hours of rest. But the 11-hour rule is important to keep track of and comply with. For that reason it is a good idea to look into some of the many tools that can help you maintain the full overview of the employee’s working hours. 

Some of the tools that can be found are time management systems. Here you can get your employees’ hours gathered digitally. This means that you can keep track of if your employees are working as much as they should and that they get the breaks they need. Thereby it becomes easier for you to ensure that you comply with the requirements found in the EU’s work directive.

The EU court says that time registration is important

A case between a Spanish work union and the Deutsche Bank in 2019 resulted in a determination about time registrations. The determination from the EU court is that the member countries are obliged to require employers to incorporate an ‘’objective, reliable and accessible system that makes it possible to measure the length of every individual employee’s daily working hours’’ (ed.). By this determination the EU court obliged the member countries to require from the employers that they introduce and use a time registration system. This can have consequences for Danish employers in the future. You can read more about EUs work time directive here.

Cookie settings