One of the year’s biggest holidays is approaching fast – does your business keep track of public holidays, allowances, and working regulations during Christmas? What are the actual rules for days off and holidays? What are the actual public holidays, and do your employees have to work on those – or do you have to plan their days off? And what about allowances – when are they supposed to be paid?

Let TimePlan help you with these issues and others that may occur during the Christmas holidays, including:

• Planning your employees’ time off/annual leave
• Keeping track of collective agreements
• Regulating working hours – even at odd times

Christmas is a time which, for some companies, is marked by coziness and the opportunity to take time off. For others, Christmas can often mean busyness, irregular working hours, overtime, and bonuses.

Days off and vacation during Christmas time

The majority of the Danish population have time off both on December 24^th and 31^st – often without deduction from their salary. However, these two dates are not official holidays, but rather ordinary working days, where your employees are to meet at their normal working hours.

In Denmark, the official Christmas holiday dates are Christmas Day and Boxing Day, which consists of the 25^th and 26^th of December. In addition, January 1^st is also an official holiday held around Christmas. On these days, your employees have the right to take time off without using their annual leave.

Working on a public holiday?

Workplaces such as retail and parts of the hotel and restaurant industry may require their employees to work on public holidays. However, there are fixed rules in the Danish ‘Shops Act’ for when shops may stay open. Furthermore, these rules include the holidays around Christmas and the New Year – which is made clear on the Danish Business Authority’s website.

But are you forced to pay wages for overtime or supplements when your employees work on public holidays? Unless otherwise agreed upon, you don’t have to, as your employees are only entitled to regular pay – despite the dates being public holidays.

Although at the end of the day, it is up to the individual collective agreements and labor market rules, as there oftentimes are different agreements and rules in those. Hereby, the collective agreements are where the answer will be found, due to the applicable rules for whether your employees must receive supplements on public holidays are found therein. In TimePlan, you have the option of entering applicable collective agreements into our program, after which TimePlan itself takes calculating supplements – for all public holidays – into account.

Company shutdown and enforced holiday leave

If the Christmas period is a rather quiet period for your business, you can opt to close cooperatively for the holiday. However, you must be aware that closing during the holidays needs to be notified to your employees at least one month in advance.

If you chose to do this, then your employees are obliged to – at their own expense – take time off during that period. Furthermore, you should be aware of how much annual leave each individual employee of yours has earned:

• If the employee has accrued 15 days of holiday or less, you are free to notify them about the holiday period, and they must pay at their own expense.
• On the other hand, if your employee has earned more than 15 days of annual leave, you, as the employer, must ensure that your employee saves days of annual leave during the holiday period. If you forget to remind them of this, you must pay the employee’s salary for the period your business is closed.

Create an overview in advance

As an employer, it is important that you get an overview of the rules for public holidays as early as possible. This can be done if you aim to plan and consider the Christmas holidays in advance – this applies to both creating rosters, but also if you choose to close your business during the holidays.

Here, TimePlan can be of assistance to help you get an overview of:

• Roster planning during Christmas (and the rest of the year)
• Time registration – even for odd working hours
• The rules from the relevant collective agreements for your business

Remember that you, as a manager, have a responsibility to ensure that these rules are complied with.

Feel free to contact us to further explore your options for using TimePlan at Christmas time as well as the rest of the year.