Seven Phantom Hours a Month: How Small Timesheet Lies Became a Dismissible Offence

A department head who logged seven invented overtime hours every month for years — as a workaround for an allowance that had been scrapped — was fired without notice after the arrangement came to light. The twist: a member of the HR team had suggested the scheme to him in the first place. The case sits at the centre of a fresh round of analysis published in early November 2026 examining where private activity during working hours ends and criminal time fraud begins.

The numbers behind the problem

German business daily Handelsblatt reported on 2 November 2026 that time fraud is no petty offence, with some companies absorbing substantial financial damage as a result. Sascha Stowasser, who heads the Institute of Applied Industrial Science (IFAA), said the practice carries enormous macroeconomic consequences and that absenteeism is very expensive for employers.

Everyday habits tell a different story from the rulebook. A survey of 1,000 German employees by market research firm Consumerfieldwork found that 13 percent routinely fail to record their hours correctly. Three in four respondents admitted they had handled private matters during working time at some point.

Absences do not always stem from genuine illness either. According to a Yougov survey from the previous year, more than one in four employed people have called in sick under false pretences at least once. Health insurer Pronova BKK put firmer figures on the trend: 60 percent of employees have reported in sick while feeling well enough to work, 7 percent do so often, and roughly half said they do it sometimes or rarely.

What the courts count as paid time

The legal picture hinges on how paid working time is defined. In 2025 the Higher Labour Court of Hesse (Hessisches Landesarbeitsgericht) ruled that walking time across a large airport site does not become compensable working time merely because of company security and access rules. Getting to the actual workplace is, in principle, part of private life. An appeal is pending at the Federal Labour Court under case number 5 AZR 75/25.

Preparation and set-up time is treated differently. Under Federal Labour Court precedent, prescribed protective clothing on site — and the internal walks directly connected to it — can be compensable. Booting up a computer at home also counts as working time under established case law.

Travel risk, by contrast, stays with the employee. Staff must arrive punctually even in black ice, cancelled trains or rail strikes, or face consequences that can extend to a formal warning. Executives classed as senior managers under § 5(3) of the Works Constitution Act (Betriebsverfassungsgesetz) fall outside the Working Hours Act under § 18(1) No. 1, so pay obligations in their case must be assessed separately.

For pure travel time, German law permits divergent or lower pay as long as the minimum wage floor is respected. The minimum wage has stood at €13.90 since January 2026 and rises to €14.60 on 1 January 2027. One calculation by the platform Gegen Hartz puts the unpaid gap at €407.73 a month in 2026 and €428.27 from 2027, based on 7.5 paid hours a day plus 40 minutes each way across 22 working days. Claims are often subject to deadlines of three to six months; minimum wage claims can be pursued up to three years from the end of the year, with the window for 2023 closing on 31 December 2026.

Brussels wants every hour logged

The European Court of Justice has long required EU member states to oblige employers to document each individual working hour, reasoning that hours and overtime cannot be established objectively and reliably without systematic records. A DGB estimate suggests one in five employees currently does not track their own hours. Comprehensive documentation duties already apply to mini-jobs, shift work, professional drivers and the public sector.

Enzo Weber of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) called recording regular working time a remarkably small step. A specialist lawyer noted that employees and works councils will in future be far better placed to prove overtime and working-time violations through an objective, reliable and accessible system.

Blurred boundaries, mounting strain

The line between work and free time is fading at the same time. The DGB's Index Gute Arbeit 2025 found 43 percent of employees frequently work more than eight hours a day, mostly not by choice. Nearly half of that group regularly feel empty or burnt out, and one in three cannot switch off after hours.

Representative surveys show constant availability now touches large parts of the workforce: a majority of employees are reachable privately for work matters at least in exceptional cases, while around half occasionally handle personal matters with a work connection.

Elke Ahlers, a working-time expert at the Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI), warned against softening the daily maximum working time. Rest periods of under eleven hours lead to more frequent exhaustion — a growing risk given that almost a quarter of Germany's workforce is aged between 55 and 64.