In September 2020, we switched to a new holiday system, which has led to some changes for Danish employees and employers. Are you up to date on the Holiday Act and what it means for you and your workplace?
What changed with the new Holiday Act?
When a new Holiday Act was introduced in 2020, it was particularly for the benefit of new graduates or people who are new to the job market. With the new Act, new employees or graduates would earn 2.08 vacation days from the first month of their employment without having to work for a year before earning vacation days.
The holiday system has gone from an accrual principle, where you took your vacation days staggered, to a simultaneity principle, where you accrue and take your vacation days at the same time within the holiday year. This means that everyone – newly graduated or not – can use the earned vacation days already from the following month. The holiday year now starts on the 1st of September instead of the 1st of May.
In addition, it is now possible for an employee to take vacation days in advance – i.e. without having earned the vacation days yet – as long as this has been agreed with the employer.
This means, for example, that if Ulla wants to go to Australia for three weeks in January, where she has earned 8.32 vacation days, she can get the remaining vacation days in advance, so that she can still take three weeks of vacation. However, this is not something the employee is entitled to, but can be agreed upon between the employee and the employer.
What should you know as an employee?
The advantage of the simultaneity principle is that you will continuously accrue vacation days and thus can also take holiday continuously from the first month of employment. However, it also requires you as an employee to keep track of your vacation days – how many you have earned, used and have left.
The holiday year runs from the beginning of September to the end of August of the following year, but the holiday can be taken during the holiday period from 1 September to 31 December of the following year. You thus have 16 months to take the holiday.
You are entitled to take five weeks of holiday during the holiday period from 1 September to 31 December of the following year. This corresponds to 25 holiday days. If you have not earned paid holiday, you can take holiday without pay or holiday pay. However, if you have accrued holiday days in the autumn that you have not taken, they must be taken before 31 December of the year in question.
You may have a maximum of 8.32 days left on the last day of the holiday year. If you have not taken a holiday, they will not be saved, but will expire. The value of these passes and is managed by Arbejdsmarkedets Feriefond.
What should you remember as an employer?
Employees have faster access to their holiday pay, because they must be able to take holiday as they earn the holiday. This means that there is a requirement for faster case processing, and that you as an employer generally have to be a little more flexible and at the same time remember the important deadlines.
The deadline for reports and payments to Feriepengeinfo and Feriekonto follows the Holiday year: 1 September – 31 August. Here you must report all vacation days for your employees – this applies to both paid and unpaid employees.
Keep track of the vacation days
Our user-friendly time registration system, Intempus, makes it easier than ever to keep track of employees’ holidays. The employee simply registers their vacation days in the Intempus App, where they and you as an administrator can also continuously keep track of how many they have earned and used.
The system can also ensure that the right number of vacation days is transferred to the new holiday year, if the employee should have some (max 8.32 days) left over from the previous holiday year.
Are you interested in hearing more about how Intempus can make the working day easier for your company in particular? Then give us a call on: +45 26390400 or book a free and non-binding demo here:
