Article 46 of the Labour Act (LTr) requires all Swiss companies to keep records of the hours worked by each employee. This is not a recommendation or a matter of good HR practice: it is a legal obligation. The records must include ordinary working hours, overtime, night work or Sunday work, and breaks of more than 30 minutes. The company must keep these records for five years and ensure they are available for inspection by SECO at any time.
What many people don’t realise is that this record can also be important for the employee themselves. If at any point there is a dispute over unpaid overtime, the calculation of holiday entitlement or your working hours record, this document serves as objective evidence. And you can request it. In practice, many workers only discover that these records exist once a dispute has already arisen. By that stage, the company has them. You don’t.
There are exceptions to the full registration system. Since 2016, companies have been able to opt for a simplified system for workers who have a great deal of autonomy over their working hours, but only if there is a collective agreement that permits this and if the workers’ representatives have given their written consent. If at any point you were asked to sign a document regarding ‘flexible working hours’ or ‘autonomous time management’, it is worth finding out exactly what that agreement covered. Because if you signed a simplified registration exemption, the rules change.
In Switzerland, labour inspectors carry out regular checks at companies, and the first thing they usually ask for is these records. The law is in place, and so is the data. In theory, the system protects workers. In practice, that protection works best when workers know they can access the records.