Trust working time

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Trust working time (also called trust flexitime , trust work or trust time ) is a model of work organization in which the completion of agreed tasks is in the foreground, not the employee's presence . It is a model of work, not the work, and the workers themselves for the design and acquisition of working responsible. However, the responsibility for compliance with the statutory and collectively agreed working time regulations remains with the employer.

According to the requirements of the company management, personnel costs should be reduced and performance resources such as qualifications, entrepreneurial thinking and personal responsibility should be more strictly placed in the service of increasing earnings. With the extensive abolition of time recording and the introduction of trust-based working hours, companies are sending out signals that no more extra hours will be built up or that they will have to be reduced again in the short term. With an entrepreneurial mindset, the employees are obliged to use the time saved for the company. If there should be no work, there is also nothing to work with the trust-based working hours; However, any overtime has to be worked off without any special remuneration or time compensation. In contrast to the usual employment relationship, this is no longer noticed by the employer.

concept

As a rule, the concept of trust work is based on the assumption that the position of the working hours is (no longer) so relevant, but rather the period or time in which a certain work task should be completed. In this respect, “trust” is made in the fact that the work is or has actually been performed - even without keeping track of the working hours with a time clock.

In the culture of trust on which trust-based working hours are based, trust in the reliability of employees is important, as is trust in the managerial skills of the manager. This places high demands on the skills of those involved: on the social skills and ability of employees to manage themselves, and the leadership skills of superiors.

The trust-based working time is spreading particularly in the growing service sector , especially in industries such as software development , multimedia or telecommunications . It is agreed here primarily in areas with predominantly more highly qualified or academically trained employees (key employees, high potentials, “high potentials”).

In the case of trust-based working hours, specific goals are set out in a target agreement , along with time windows for their achievement (" Management by Objectives "). This also entails a particularly high level of responsibility : a trust-based working time model assumes, for example, that the time limit is realistic and that risk planning is made that includes, for example, "disruptions" in the expected workflow that endanger the achievement of the goal can, must be responded to, for example by changing the time or content of the goal or releasing additional resources. It is necessary that, in the given case, a threat to the target is actually communicated early enough so that action can still be taken. (For information on management by exception, see also Monitoring projects ).

The performance assessment is not based on the time spent on the tasks, but rather based on the work result. A further control of the performance comes about through the work structuring in team and project work . This corresponds to the fact that parts of the remuneration are paid based on performance (degree of target achievement).

working time

Under the trust-based working time, the employees are not free to organize their time, their disposition continues to be determined primarily by the interests of the company - not only factually, but also legally. When in doubt, personal interests have to take precedence. Even with trust-based working hours, it is by no means a matter of indifference how long someone works. Rather, the completion of the agreed working hours is still an obligation under the employment contract . However, there is no need to check, which is often perceived as petty, as to whether the working hours have been performed up to the last minute. There is no longer any delay. Nobody is forced to look busy all the time - even during periods of creative pause - in order not to give the impression that there is a lack of work. And finally: the time organization of the work can be adapted to individual needs rather than if the work is assigned by superiors. Working hours are flexible in trust work . In contrast to models of “flexible working hours with self-managed working time accounts”, there is usually no working time account; Working hours are therefore not saved.

With trust-based working hours, working hours as such play a minor role. A (automatic) time and attendance is not required. A complete lack of working time recording in Germany would, however, contradict the regulations of the Working Hours Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act , which are intended to protect employees from excessive stress and delimitation and the resulting effects on health . The employer has to organize his company in such a way that he can guarantee the implementation of the applicable laws, collective agreements and works agreements himself. According to Section 16 (2) of the ArbZG, the employer must record those working hours that exceed eight hours a day. In addition, he must (be able to) provide the works council with information about the start and end of daily working hours and the extent of the weekly working hours actually worked by the employees. Typically, with trust-based working hours, time recording is delegated to the employee, while the responsibility for correctness remains essentially with the employer. A control by the employer takes place insofar as he, like the works council, has to monitor compliance with all protective laws and any collective agreements; a more extensive control can be omitted. At the same time, in some cases, all sides hardly make any serious efforts to ensure that these are actually complied with.

In some cases, time clocks are also used for trust-based working hours, but mainly to help the employee keep his or her individual protocols. However, it cannot be ruled out that the employer may use the time logs, for example for personnel planning.

In companies with a works council , all regulations on working hours are subject to co-determination. Works councils now have experience in drafting works agreements on working time regulations, including modern working time models, and can also draw on external advice.

Involving the occupational safety officer or the company doctor as well as setting up an arbitration board consisting of members of the staff or works council and company management or the personnel department can be helpful in individual cases.

Since trust-based working time is result-oriented, it is considered a suitable basis for home work and teleworking .

criticism

According to critics, the introduction of trust-based working hours leads to a. to an increase in working hours. There are two main reasons for this: On the one hand, projects and goals are initially planned largely independently of the time required for them. Jobs are acquired in the company from positions that have nothing to do with work organization. The yardstick is the customer's request, not the workload. The assessment of what is actually feasible is made by other institutions and is an important corrective against overload. Anything that does not fit into the available time budget given by the staffing needs to be organized differently. This instance is lost if the trust working hours give the impression that all capacities are available at all times. Ultimately, no one has to seriously grapple with the question of what can really be achieved. After all, the employer has delegated the tedious task of time management to the employees. As long as they don't protest, everything seems to be possible. Usually this protest does not come or comes much too late. Labor is again tied more closely to the external market, to the demand and its fluctuations. Work itself becomes a commodity.

The model of trust-based work is criticized as a way of getting employees, when confronted with market constraints, to work on their own initiative for years without this being remunerated or converted into free time in the long term. With a decoupling of working and attendance time, necessary breaks at work are not guaranteed. There is also a permanent maximization of efficiency on the part of the employees who want to show the agreed performance without having to report working time violations; Employees would not primarily gain freedom of action, but rather would be confronted directly with entrepreneurial constraints on all levels. As a result, trust-based working hours result in self-organized work intensification , which in the medium term leads to an increase in the volume of work.

The trust-based working time could also lead to the self-exploitation of employees. They suddenly act like self-employed people who have to compensate for all risks previously borne by the employer, such as illness of colleagues, technical defects, etc. Instead of a time limit, employees now have to meet a target - and therefore work longer: not because the supervisor demands it, but because they fear that they will not be able to do it otherwise. Vacation is postponed, time off for overtime is not taken, the 35-hour week becomes a farce. Shifting the obligation to document the work actually performed from the employer to the employee, paired with inadequate recording, can lead to the loss of claims from overtime work because there is no longer any documentation. Workers who constantly overwork themselves to achieve goals belittle teammates who try to work moderately, branding them as failures and refusers. On top of that, the income is reduced if the degree of target achievement is too low. Fatal consequences not only for the employees and their teams, but also for the company in which such a working atmosphere prevails.

In this respect, trust-based working hours can also be used as an instrument of rationalization in the classic sense. Used in this way, a trend that has been observed for a long time is being accelerated. According to the Institute for Work and Technology in Gelsenkirchen, the actual weekly working hours in the salaried area, which is particularly predestined for such a system, has risen continuously in recent years - in contrast to the collective wage agreement.

After a ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on May 14, 2019 on the requirement to record working time, the question is whether and how this working time model can still be practiced in Europe. The employers' association Gesamtmetall declared after the judgment that the trust work was "practically dead".

See also

credentials

  1. ↑ a b c d In time? Risks, opportunities and design of flexible working time models  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , 2nd edition, February 2007, ISBN 978-3-88261-542-5 , pp. 42–44 (accessed on January 2, 2007)@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.baua.de  
  2. ↑ a b c d e "Work is what you do, not where you go ..." - On the debate about trust-based working hours , Martin Dieckmann. Published in express, magazine for socialist company and trade union work, 10/01
  3. ↑ Jan Kutscher: Overtime: "Good times - bad times". (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on April 14, 2008 ; Retrieved March 1, 2008 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.symposion.de
  4. ↑ On the legal status of employees in highly flexible working time systems, see Schüren, ArbuR 96, 381.
  5. ↑ Managers and family. How companies can promote work-life balance (PDF; 1.2 MB), BMFSFJ , status: summer 2004, reprint: November 2006, p. 30 (accessed on January 2, 2007)
  6. ^ A b Robert CW Hofmann: The limits of substitution in the working time law. 2007, ISBN 3-89936-571-2 .
  7. ↑ Rudolf Buschmann, Jürgen Ulber: Working Hours Act - Basic Commentary ... Each current edition.
  8. ↑ Michael Kittner, Ralf Pieper: Occupational Safety and Health Act - Basic Commentary. Current edition.
  9. ^ Federal Labor Court decision of May 6, 2003 - 1 ABR 13/02 .
  10. ↑ BAG 1 ABR 13/02
  11. ↑ Frank Lorenz, Günter Schneider (Ed.): Trust working time, working time accounts, flexi models - concepts and operational practice. 2005, ISBN 3-89965-108-1 .
  12. ↑ Margaret Mörig-Raane (Ed.): Time issues are issues. 2005, ISBN 3-89965-106-5 .
  13. ^ IG Metall: Handbook “Gute Arbeit”. 2007, ISBN 978-3-89965-255-0 .
  14. ↑ Working hours based on capital , GegenStandpunkt 4-2000 (accessed on January 11, 2008)
  15. ↑ AGBR Conference 2005  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.helmholtz-muenchen.de  
  16. ↑ Work without (time) limits - trust-based working hours at IBM-Düsseldorf. Retrieved June 29, 2008 .
  17. ^ German General Sunday Gazette of July 16, 1999
  18. ↑ Christian Kerl: Verdict: Employers have to record working hours precisely. May 17, 2019, accessed May 18, 2019 .

Web links