Contents
What the framework achieves
It makes availability plannable without dictating the timing of working time. Anyone who knows that nobody works before 06:00 or after 20:00 can schedule meetings without asking every time.
It also limits the risk: work outside the framework is not flexitime but extra work that has to be ordered, and that creates a clear line for both sides.
The collision with the rest period
A framework from 06:00 to 20:00 leaves only ten hours of rest on paper where somebody uses the full framework on two consecutive days. That breaches section 5(1) ArbZG, and the breach arises with no ill intent at all.
Anyone setting the framework wide therefore needs a check when clocking: the system has to know the earliest permissible start on the following day and report when it is undercut. Without that check, a wide framework is a promise the business cannot keep.
What else belongs in the arrangement
Whether a core time applies within the framework. How many flexi-days may be taken a month. Whether and how time is counted on days with a business trip or training. And what applies where somebody has to work outside the framework.
Example: a framework from 06:00 to 20:00
- Monday worked until 19:45.
- Eleven hours of rest end on Tuesday at 06:45.
- The framework allows a start from 06:00, the law does not.
- The system has to release the start from 06:45, not from 06:00.
Common mistake
The framework gets set generously because it signals freedom, and the rest period is not checked along with it. The breach then arises regularly and nobody notices, because it lies between two days.
This is not legal advice; for a specific case at your workplace you are better off asking someone qualified to give it.
Published by: AMNAU GmbH
Editorial responsibility: Ugur Aydogan, Product development.
Last reviewed: 2 September 2026