Working hours in care: what applies to home care services and care homes

The limits for care businesses

The Working Hours Act names facilities for the treatment, care and support of persons explicitly in several places. They may shorten the rest period, compensate on-call duty differently and employ people on Sundays and public holidays where the work cannot be done on working days. Under section 7(2) no. 3 ArbZG, a collective agreement can additionally adapt working time, breaks, rest periods and night work to the nature of care. If one applies to your business, it takes precedence over the figures below.

Rest periods and on-call duty

Eleven hours of rest lie between two duties. Care facilities may shorten them to ten hours if each shortening is compensated within the same calendar month or within four weeks by a rest period of at least twelve hours (section 5(2) ArbZG). Switching from a late duty until 9 pm to an early duty from 6 am leaves nine hours and is therefore not allowed even with the shortening.

On-call duty has a second special rule. If somebody on call is called out, that interrupts the rest period. In care facilities, such shortenings do not have to be made up immediately as long as they do not amount to more than half of the rest period. They are compensated at other times (section 5(3) ArbZG).

Stand-by duty has to be kept apart from this. Anyone who has to stay at the facility to act immediately when needed is working, according to the case law of the European Court of Justice, quiet hours included. With on-call duty, where the place can be chosen freely, only the actual call-out counts.

Night watch and rotating shifts

Night time is the period from 11 pm to 6 am, night work any shift with more than two hours of it. A night worker is anyone who normally works nights on rotating shifts or does night work on at least 48 days a year (section 2(3) to (5) ArbZG). In a facility with early, late and night duties, that applies to many carers if they normally work nights on rotating shifts, not only to the permanent night watch.

• Ten hours at night only if the average over one calendar month or four weeks is eight hours (section 6(2) ArbZG).
• Right to an occupational health check before starting and then every three years, every year from age 50. The employer bears the cost unless it offers the check free of charge through a company doctor (section 6(3) ArbZG).
• Paid days off or a reasonable premium for the night hours, if no collective agreement covers it (section 6(5) ArbZG).

Home care: rounds, travel time, split shifts

Under section 2(1) ArbZG, working time is the time from the start to the end of work without rest breaks. The drive from one patient to the next lies in the middle of that time, it belongs to the round. In 2015 the European Court of Justice even classed the drive from home to the first customer and from the last customer home as working time where there is no fixed workplace (C-266/14). Anyone who only writes down the time spent with patients underestimates working time, and the rest period and the ten-hour limit are measured against the wrong figure.

Many services split the day into an early and a late round. The free time in between is not working time, but it is not a rest period either: the ten or eleven hours only begin after the late round ends. Someone driving until 9:30 pm can start at 7:30 am the next morning at the earliest, with shortening and compensation.

Record-keeping duty under section 19 AEntG

Minimum working conditions under the Posted Workers Act apply to the care sector, set by the care working conditions ordinance. The sector covers businesses that mainly provide home, day or residential care services or home nursing, but not hospitals (section 10 AEntG).

Section 19 AEntG follows from this: the start, end and duration of each carer's daily working time must be recorded by the end of the seventh calendar day and kept for two years. Where hourly premiums are payable, the start, end and duration of the premium time, with the premium concerned, belong in the record too. For mini-jobbers, section 17 MiLoG applies alongside.

Care in figures

On the reference date of 15 December 2023, according to Destatis, 817,711 people worked in care homes, 240,963 of them full-time. In home care services it was 446,425, of whom 126,251 full-time. In both areas, therefore, only just under three in ten employees work full-time, and every part-timer has their own target hours, duties and time account.

In 2025 customs checked 320 employers and 3,597 persons in care. That is fewer than in hospitality or construction. The records under section 19 AEntG are among the documents a care business has to keep available for such a check (section 19(2) AEntG).

Roster and time tracking in one system

In MetronHR carers clock in via the app on the road and at the terminal with an NFC card in the facility. The times are in the system to the minute on the same day, without rounding. A split duty is kept as two shifts on one day and added together for the daily limit.

In the roster of the Professional plan, MetronHR reports before publication when less than the configured rest period lies between two duties or daily and weekly maximums are exceeded. For pregnant employees it also checks night work, Sunday work and maximum hours under the Maternity Protection Act. Night, Sunday and public holiday hours per person are in the monthly Excel overview and in the payroll file for DATEV at the end of the month.